* Amongst themselves the peasants are not addicted to thieving, as is proved by the fact that they habitually leave their doors unlocked when the inmates of the house are working in the fields; but if the muzhik finds in the proprietor’s farmyard a piece of iron or a bit of rope, or any of those little things that he constantly requires and has difficulty in obtaining, he is very apt to pick it up and carry it home.  Gathering firewood in the landlord’s forest he does not consider as theft, because “God planted the trees and watered them,” and in the time of serfage he was allowed to supply himself with firewood in this way.

** Until last year (1904) they could use also corporal punishment as a means of pressure, and I am not sure that they do not occasionally use it still, though it is no longer permitted by law.

In Russia, as in other countries, the principle holds true that for good labour a fair price must be paid.  Several large proprietors of my acquaintance who habitually act on this principle assure me that they always obtain as much good labour as they require.  I must add, however, that these fortunate proprietors have the advantage of possessing a comfortable amount of working capital, and are therefore not compelled, as so many of their less fortunate neighbours are, to manage their estates on the hand-to-mouth principle.

It is only, I fear, a minority of the landed proprietors that have grappled successfully with these and other difficulties of their position.  As a class they are impoverished and indebted, but this state of things is not due entirely to serf-emancipation.  The indebtedness of the Noblesse is a hereditary peculiarity of much older date.  By some authorities it is attributed to the laws of Peter the Great, by which all nobles were obliged to spend the best part of their lives in the military or civil service, and to leave the management of their estates to incompetent stewards.  However that may be, it is certain that from the middle of the eighteenth century downwards the fact has frequently occupied the attention of the Government, and repeated attempts have been made to alleviate the evil.  The Empress Elizabeth, Catherine II., Paul, Alexander I., Nicholas I., Alexander II., and Alexander III. tried successively, as one of the older ukazes expressed it, “to free the Noblesse from debt and from greedy money-lenders, and to prevent hereditary estates from passing into the hands of strangers.”  The means commonly adopted was the creation of mortgage banks founded and controlled by the Government for the purpose of advancing money to landed proprietors at a comparatively low rate of interest.