for about two hundred and fifty years, | itself. The account 01 mat, as to and shut it off from Europe as by a Chinese Wall.

of

All independent modern Russian writers agree in stating that the long Mongol dominion sadly affected the character of the populatic_3 throughout the land. With the exception Novgorod and the few kindred communities in the North, the spirit of freedom had scarcely existed in Russia even before, among the mass of the people. But the Tatar yoke wrought a fearful change for the worse.

Political slavery [writes Prince Peter Dolgorukow, whose family traces its descent from Rurik, in his work, "La Vérité sur la Russie"] destroyed all feeling of personal dignity. The Russian rulers were compelled to go to the Horde of the Tatar Khan in order to receive the investiture for their States. Admitted to the presence of the khan, they had to remain on their knees before him. Having left his tent, they had still to pay an assiduous and obsequious homage to the most influential men of the Mongol Horde. If they incurred the khan's disgrace, they were loaded with chains, tortured, killed. No humiliation was spared to them. When they had bought their investiture very dearly, they went back to render the yoke of their own subjects more heavy, in order to indemnify themselves, by tyranny and by exactions, for the insults they had had to bear among the Horde. The laws were altered; the manners became of a harshness and a barbarism unknown until then. corporal punishment nobody was exempt; not even those highest in office-neither the boyars, nor even the members of the princely houses, who hailed from Rurik.

From

A most repulsive picture of the bondage of all classes of the Muscovite nation is given in a famous little work, written by the French Captain Margeret, and published at Paris in 1607, at the order of Henry IV. Margeret had served under Czar Boris Godunow, and afterwards under the first pseudoDemetrius. It was at the time when Russia was shaken by long dynastic and civil wars, and usurpers started up in all directions, whilst the Poles rushed in with an army and took possession, for a time, of Moscow

despotic rule in Russia, tallies to the fullest extent with what Herberstein had seen nearly a century before. Speaking of the State Council, the French captain says:

"There is no fixed number to this Council; for it entirely depends on the emperor to appoint as many of them as it pleases him. The Privy Council, when matters of high importance are at issue, is usually composed of the nearest relatives of imperial blood. By way of outward form, the advice of the Church dignitaries is taken, the Patriarch being summoned to the Council

with

some bishops. But, properly speaking, there is neither law, nor Council. There is nothing but the will of the emperor, be it good or bad, who is free to waste everything with fire and sword, to strike alike the innocent and the guilty. I hold him to be one of the most absolute monarchs in the world; for all the inhabitants of the country, whether nobles or commoners, even the emperor's own brothers, call themselves clops hospodare-that is, slaves of the emperor."

The title of Margeret's book is: "Estat de l'Empire de Russie et Grande Duché de Moscovie; avec ce qui s'y est passé de plus mémorable et tragique, pendant de règne de quatre Empereurs: à sçavoir depuis l'an 1590, iusques en l'an 1606, en Septembre." Here the title of emperor is fully indicated. Margeret, moreover, makes the clearest possible distinction between the title of "czar" and that of "emperor." The earlier Russian rulers he quite correctly calls grand dukes, that is, grand princes. Of the later monarchs he speaks as czars of Russia and grand dukes of Muscovy. Then he alleges that Ivan II. Wassiljewitch had first received the title of emperor from Maximilian, the emperor of the Romans (the German emperor) after the conquest of Kasan, Astrakhan, and Siberia "Johannes Basilius, le quel a premier receu le tiltre d'Empereur par Maximilian Empereur des Romains après les conquestes de Casan, Astrican, et Siberie."

In this latter statement, Captain

was a soft-witted creature, a weak
ruler, a sort of Muscovite Romulus
Augustulus; his government being
practically in the hands of Boris
Godunoff, the grandson of a Tatar
Mirza, who afterwards became a
usurper czar. Yet Feodor, too, clung
to the claim of the imperial title, even
as his predecessor, Ivan the Terrible,
had done.

Margeret, or course, simply reported last monarch of the race of Rurik. He
what he had been told in Russia. He
was not aware that he had been de-
ceived by men at court, who gave a
fictitious account of the origin of the
title. The elected head of the "Holy
Roman empire of the German nation" |
was, in those days, still held to be the
sovereign source of much princely
power even beyond the boundaries of his
immediate dominion. This will explain
why the courtiers and scribes of Rus-
sian rulers, after their country had been
freed from the Tatar yoke, should have
tried to father the creation of their own
newly assumed title upon the monarch
who, since the early Middle Ages, was
looked upon as the successor of the
ancient Roman Empire.

In the second half of the sixteenth century, this imperial Russian title was certainly acknowledged by English sovereigns. Sufficient proof of it is contained in Richard Hakluyt's work: "Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation, made by Sea and Over-land, to the remotest and farthest distant quarters of the Earth. London: 1598." There is "The copie of the Duke of Moscouie and Emperour of Russia his letters, sent to King Edward the Sixt, by the hands of Richard Chancellour." It begins thus: "We, great Duke Ivan Vasilivich, by the grace of God great lord and Emperor of all Russia, great Duke of Volodomer, Mosco, and Novo

Thus, when Theodor Johannes [Fedor Ivanowitch], Zar of Russia, had raised the siege of Narva, before which he had lain, and when the ambassadors and

grad, King of Kasan, King of Astracan,
lord of Plesko, and great Duke of Smo-
lensko," etc.

th

Richard Chancellor also speaks of the Russian "Emperours or Dukes." He says: "This Duke is Lord and Emperour of many countreis, and his power is marvellous great." Sir Hugh Willoughby also calls the Russian monarchs "Emperours." The title of the then ruling czar, he reports, was loudly pronounced at court as "the great Duke of Moscovie and chiefe Emperour of Russia, John Basiliwich." Again, John Hasse and others always mention the czar under the appellation of "the Emperour of Russia."

deputies of both parties were assembled,
in order to conclude peace between Rus-
sia and Sweden, they wrangled for more
than two days about that title of emperor,
which Theodor claimed, whilst the Swedes
would not acknowledge him as such. The
Russians say that the word "Zar" is even
greater than the word "Emperor;" and
So an agreement was made that they
would always call him Zar and Grand-
Duke of Muscovy; each party thinking
that it had deceived the other by that
word "Zar." The King of Poland writes
to them [to the Russian monarchs] in
the same way. The Emperor of the Ro-
mans [the German emperor] gives him
the title of Emperor; and the late Queen
Elizabeth did the same, as does also the
King of Great Britain, the King of Den-
mark, the Grand-Duke of Tuscany, the
King of Persia; and all those of Asia give
him the titles he chooses to assume.
to the Turk, seeing that there was be-
tween them, at my time, neither corre-
spondence nor any intercourse by envoys,
I do not know what title he gives them.

As

Czar Feodor Ivanowitch, who is mentioned in the above quotation, was the

In the report of his voyage to Russia,
Anthony Jenkinson wrote:-

destroyed, and to be replaced by another, in which it was laid down that Michael Romanoff was elected czar "and Autocrat" of all the Russias. Gradually, the convocation even of a merely consultative Assembly became less and less frequent. Finally, its existence was altogether done away with. After 1682 no convocation took place any more-except once, under Catherine II., for a mere temporary object.

From The Contemporary Review.
A PLEA FOR RUSSIA.

How many are there of those who inveigh against Russian "perfidy" who have ever been to Russia or have even seen a Russian? In my own case, if chance had not taken me to a remote corner of the world, where a number of Russian officials and merchants were settled (temporarily, like myself), and if I had not been led to study Russian in order to kill time, I should never have visited Russia; and if I had never visited Russia I should never have modified my preconceived opinion of what the Russians were. I am therefore an exceptional case. I have had the unusual good fortune to live amongst Russians of the official and mercantile classes, to have studied Russian, and to have travelled all over Russia; and yet I feel myself ignorant. What, then, must be the condition of those who, at best, have only the same newspaper and book facilities for informing themselves that I have, and who have never had even my limited experience? I have never seen a single Russian except as above stated, and therefore I presume the vast majority of my countrymen cannot of their own experience know anything about that interesting people.

It is to these sporadic cases of StatesGeneral, if they may be called so, and to a charter enshrouded in some historical doubt, that Russian Liberals have in our time, now and then, referred as to a precedent. At least they did so in writings published abroad; Russian censorship having forbidden the subject to be touched upon at all. Peter I., Catherine I., Peter II., Anna, Elizabeth, Peter III., Catherine II., Paul I., Alexander I., Nicholas I., Alexander II., Alexander III., all ruled on the strict autocratic principle, which Nicholas II. is still bent upon continuing. Peter I., the Great, enlarged upon it by extending the liability to corporal punishment from the nobility to the imperial family itself. He had his own sisters whipped! He put his own son to the torture, who died from it. He, too, took a delight in chopping off the heads of a row of political offenders, whilst quaffing brandy between each fatal stroke of his reddened axe. It was Sultanism with a vengeance. This Peter the Great assumed, or resumed, the title of emperor, which had been claimed, borne, or recognized nearly two centuries before. Considering the full historical evidence before us, it is strange that so unquestionable a fact should be forgotten even by prominent writers. But just as there are "lost sciences" which had been known to antiquity, and are re-discovered as perfectly new, so there are historical a "grab" policy; where none were prefacts also over which a wave of forget-pared to take action; and where it is fulness is allowed to pass, until they are brought to light once more from their extraordinary entombment. May, 1896.

Before I enter upon my plea I will narrate an amusing incident, which is strictly true, by way of illustrating how international misunderstandings may arise, and how often the supposed "perfidy" and "diplomacy" of this or that country is simply the result of drifting, blundering, or accident. Instead of the Sino-Japanese conflict which has just stirred up the world, imagine a parallel complication in quite another corner of the earth, where Russia and several other great powers were eagerly watching opportunities; where each one was suspecting the other of

quite certain that most of the powers concerned had not yet even formed the embryo of a conception what they really wanted. A high official, anxious

2