While thus largely influenced in its economic policy by military considerations, the Government did not entirely neglect other branches of manufacturing industry.  Ever since Russia had pretensions to being a civilised power its rulers have always been inclined to pay more attention to the ornamental than the useful—­to the varnish rather than the framework of civilisation—­and we need not therefore be surprised to find that long before the native industry could supply the materials required for the ordinary wants of humble life, attempts were made to produce such things as Gobelin tapestries.  I mention this merely as an illustration of a characteristic trait of the national character, the influence of which may be found in many other spheres of official activity.

If Russia did not attain the industrial level of Western Europe, it was not from want of ambition and effort on the part of the rulers.  They worked hard, if not always wisely, for this end.  Manufacturers were exempted from rates and taxes, and even from military service, and some of them, as I have said, received large estates from the Crown on the understanding that the serfs should be employed as workmen.  At the same time they were protected from foreign competition by prohibitive tariffs.  In a word, the manufacturing industry was nursed and fostered in a way to satisfy the most thorough-going protectionist, especially those branches which worked up native raw material such as ores, flax, hemp, wool, and tallow.  Occasionally the official interference and anxiety to protect public interests went further than the manufacturers desired.  On more than one occasion the authorities fixed the price of certain kinds of manufactured goods, and in 1754 the Senate, being anxious to protect the population from fires, ordered all glass and iron works within a radius of 200 versts around Moscow to be destroyed!  In spite of such obstacles, the manufacturing industry as a whole made considerable progress.  Between 1729 and 1762 the number of establishments officially recognised as factories rose from 26 to 335.

These results did not satisfy Catherine II., who ascended the throne in 1762.  Under the influence of her friends, the French Encyclopedistes, she imagined for a time that the official control might be relaxed, and that the system of employing serfs in the factories and foundries might be replaced by free labour, as in Western Europe; monopolies might be abolished, and all liege subjects, including the peasants, might be allowed to embark in industrial undertakings as they pleased, “for the benefit of the State and the nation.”  All this looked very well on paper, but Catherine never allowed her sentimental liberalism to injure seriously the interests of her Empire, and she accordingly refrained from putting the laissez-faire principle largely into practice.  Though a good deal has been written about her economic policy, it is hardly distinguishable from that of