to error and subject to be intimidated by a Governor-General.  It is prudent, therefore, to demand that the decision of the council be confirmed by the Procureur, who is directly subordinated to the Minister of Justice.  When this double confirmation has been obtained, an architect examines the stove, and makes an estimate.  But it would be dangerous to give carte blanche to an architect, and therefore the estimate has to be confirmed, first by the aforesaid council and afterwards by the Procureur.  When all these formalities—­which require sixteen days and ten sheets of paper—­have been duly observed, his Excellency is informed that the contemplated repairs will cost two roubles and forty kopecks, or about five shillings of our money.  Even here the formalities do not stop, for the Government must have the assurance that the architect who made the estimate and superintended the repairs has not been guilty of negligence.  A second architect is therefore sent to examine the work, and his report, like the estimate, requires to be confirmed by the council and the Procureur.  The whole correspondence lasts thirty days, and requires no less than thirty sheets of paper!  Had the person who desired the repairs been not a Governor-General, but an ordinary mortal, it is impossible to say how long the procedure might have lasted.*

* In fairness I feel constrained to add that incidents of this kind occasionally occur—­or at least occurred as late as 1886—­in our Indian Administration.  I remember an instance of a pane of glass being broken in the Viceroy’s bedroom in the Viceregal Lodge at Simla, and it would have required nearly a week, if the official procedure had been scrupulously observed, to have it replaced by the Public Works Department.

It might naturally be supposed that this circuitous and complicated method, with its registers, ledgers, and minutes of proceedings, must at least prevent pilfering; but this a priori conclusion has been emphatically belied by experience.  Every new ingenious device had merely the effect of producing a still more ingenious means of avoiding it.  The system did not restrain those who wished to pilfer, and it had a deleterious effect on honest officials by making them feel that the Government reposed no confidence in them.  Besides this, it produced among all officials, honest and dishonest alike, the habit of systematic falsification.  As it was impossible for even the most pedantic of men—­and pedantry, be it remarked, is a rare quality among Russians—­to fulfil conscientiously all the prescribed formalities, it became customary to observe the forms merely on paper.  Officials certified facts which they never dreamed of examining, and secretaries gravely wrote the minutes of meetings that had never been held!  Thus, in the case above cited, the repairs were in reality begun and ended long before the architect was officially authorised to begin the work.  The comedy was nevertheless gravely played out to the end, so that any one afterwards revising the documents would have found that everything had been done in perfect order.