I was present at one of the official visits of the Government procuror,' says the same author, and when the cabbage of which the prisoner complained was by his order brought before him, and he saw with his own eyes that it positively teemed with worms, I heard him command the prisoner to eat them up.

The sensational element in all this, if it be found to possess one, must be admitted to be inherent in the facts themselves, which are certainly striking, even should it be proved that the miseries described are inflicted on abandoned wretches in whose souls the most approved purificatory processes, human or divine, would fail to leave the slightest residuum of truth, honesty, or humanity. This, however, is so far from being proved that the contrary is most frequently the case. It is perhaps needless to insist on the circumstance that the usual crimes and misdemeanors for which men are sent to Siberia or to prison are scarcely heinous enough to justify their being treated worse than destructive vermin. But even if they were, the justification of the Russian authorities would be as far off as before; for it is unfortunately a fact, and a lamentable one, that tens of thousands of innocent men and women, known and officially acknowledged to be innocent, who were never charged with, nay, never suspected of crime, subjects of the Tsar supposed to be in the full and perfect enjoyment of those extensive civil rights of which we have heard so much of late, are subjected to the worst forms of the treatment described

above.

Let me explain what must seem to English readers a riddle or a joke. There are many members of the Mirs (peasant societies who till and own land in common), who for no more serious misdemeanors than that which caused the Greeks to ostracise Aristides are expelled from their community, without trial or accusation, and sent to Siberia by the Government acting on the suggestion of the Mir. The judicious distribution of a cask of vodka by a rival is sometimes quite sufficient to ruin an unoffending man in this way; and even this is not always needed. The expelled peasant is then deported to Siberia along with cut-throats and highwaymen, shut up with them in the forwarding pris

* Law Messenger, No. ii. p. 335.

But it is not of the hard lot of these people that I speak. Nor yet of the thousands of innocent men and women who are kept languishing in the prisons described for long years, until at last the judgment day arrives and they are proved innocent. They are subjected, exactly like condemned felons, to the treatment just detailed, which were it practised in Africa or connived at in Armenia, would speedily call forth all the latent horror of which a correct English public is capable.*

But, terrible as their lot is, it is not even of these people that I am speaking, but of a very numerous class of men and women, boys and girls, who are wanted by the authorities (not on account of crime, but for other reasons-to give evidence, for instance)-or sent for by their own relatives; or simply because they have accidentally mislaid their passports, or are kept a week or two without them by the greedy official (the village pissar or secretary), who is waiting for a larger

* I trust it is needless to dwell on the circumstance that this paper is written from a humanitarian and therefore a purely objective point of view. It is certainly not meant as an indirect glorification of English humanitarianism. Englishmen, it must be admitted, are rarely in love with their own laws and customs; but those who happen to be, and who feel flattered by the contrast afforded by the present record of Russia's doings, should remember that in England there are occasionally abuses to reform even in the prison system. The following is doubtless an isolated instance and was speedily remedied, but this is no reason why it should be wholly lost sight of: "Shocking Treatment of Prisoners.-Mr. Justice Wills, at the Leicester Assizes, yesterday, called attention to the disgraceful treatment of prisoners at Leicester Castle. said he was painfully surprised to learn that persons waiting for trial were confined in boxes which were 2 feet by 1 foot 8 inches. It shocked his sense of justice that they should be rendered miserable in cupboards in which done away with, as it was intolerable that huno lady would hang her dress. It must be

He

man beings should be shut up in places which were unfit for the accommodation of dogs.''Daily Telegraph, November 30, 1889.

A peasant leaves his home to seek for work as a field laborer, wherever he can find work to do, and, like every Russian, male and female, he takes his passport with him, which is quite as much a part of him as his soul is. It is always a halfyearly passport, which he must renew at the end of the six months, sending it home in a registered letter to the pissar of his native place, and enclosing the legal fee and something over for the trouble. The time of renewal draws near; the workman gets a letter written to the pissar of his commune requesting a new passport. The pissar, like the god Baal in Elijah's days, is pursuing, or is on a journey, or, peradventure, he sleepeth, as most Russian officials do, and must be awaked. Whatever the cause, he does not send the passport in time. The honest working man, who is earning his bread in the sweat of his brow, and by the practice perhaps of exceptional sobriety is trying to earn a pittance for his family, is suddenly arrested and "sent home by étape "—that is, is flung into a forwarding prison, whence he emerges to join one of those convict parties just described which contain the cream of criminality, and is ground down and made to suffer hell's torments before he gets home. When he arrives he gets his passport, and is a free agent once more, a loyal subject of his little father the Tsar. M. Ptitsin informs the Government that when he visited the Markovsk prison in February, 1883, all the prisoners there were confined only for passport irregularities.

Take another case. The daughter of a Russian official wishes to study medicine and obtain a midwife's certificate. Her father discourages her in every way; but in vain. She leaves home without his permission, and goes to one of the uni

*Cf. Law Messenger, 1890, ii. p. 336. Loc. cit. p. 337.

versity towns to study. Her father writes a letter to the police, asking that she be sent home at once, and she is sent as a convict; hungry, naked, insulted, deflowered, in time only her dead body reaches her native place-perhaps not even that.

Or take another case: A soldier is sent by the Government to serve at Ak Boolak or some such place, thousands of miles away from his native village. He is married and thinks that life with his wife near him would be more tolerable than it is without her, and he requests the authorities to forward her on. They accede to his prayer, arrest the soldier's wife forthwith, and put her in prison till a convict party is organized, which she is sent to join; she becomes one of this dreary family, travels several thousand miles by étape, sleeps under plank-beds, is maimed, insulted, violated; this goes on for months and perhaps years, during which she cannot take a step without her guards until she reaches her destination. "Unfortunately she does not always reach her destination; many a soldier's and priest's wife arrives in such a pitiable condition that she has nothing for it but to lay violent hands upon herself. When we undertook to Russianize Central Asia thousands of soldiers' wives were thus forwarded by étape from all parts of Russia to their husbands. Hard by Orenburg there is a little bridge across the river Sakmar, and many a soldier's wife has cast herself from it headlong into the river below, in order not to show herself to her husband, in order to escape from consciousness of her miserable existence after passing the terrible nights that she has experienced on the étape."*

A peasant woman named Avdotya was sent in the same way, by étape, through the prison of Yelets to her native village of Berezovki (Kozinski district). One day she was found hanging from a piece of ribbon behind the door in the cell of the Serghievsk volost board (Yelets district). The guard on duty, who a few moments previous was chatting with her, while he was lighting the stove, had only gone for a moment to another room and,

returning almost immediately, found her hang

ing. Instead of cutting her down at once and giving her assistance, he ran off, terrified at the sense of his responsibility, to fetch a village policeman and then to inform the hospital doctor. By the time medical help came it was fruitless. The motive for the suicide was the following:-Towards the end of August the deceased, along with several inhabitants of her own village, set out on a pilgrimage to Voronesh - a distance of sixty to seventy versts. On arriving they all repaired to the * Cf. Law Messenger, No. ii. p. 337.

monastery, except Avdotya, who, lingering in the rear, got separated from her companions, who had her passport for safe keeping. Not possessing this important document, although it was in the hands of her friends, who were only a few miles off, she was taken up and put in prison, and sent home by étape. At last the wretched woman, having marched from prison to prison for about a month, reached Serghievsk (distant only from sixty to seventy versts) with unmistakable indications of unsound mind." ""*

"In the autumn of 1882, in the City of Astrakhan, the police arrested three workmen on the landing place because they had not their passports on their persons. They were all three of them Russian peasants from the district of Laisheff. One of them had been ill, and had thus allowed the term for renewing his passport to expire; the two others had done their duty by sending the old one to the volost board in due time for renewal, inclosing the legal taxes and fees. These assertions of theirs were not, and in such cases never are, believed (nor verified). They were sent by étape to Tsaritsin, where they were kept in prison one whole month, waiting for the formation of a convict gang, of which, when organized, they were sent to form part. The gang was detained at so many junction roads on the way, that they did not get to Moscow till January, 1883. Here they were confined for several months, till a Siberian party was organized, and with whom they were sent to Nischny Novgorod. In this city the breaking up of the roads in spring kept them and their convict gang back for a considerable time, and it was only in May that they reached Kazan, where they were again confined in the forwarding prison; after which they were sent on to Laisheff, and thence to their native volost. When they arrived there the pissar told them that their passports had been already sent to Astrakhan for them, and that he would give them no others. So they had no option but to wait here till their passports came back from Astrakhan, and it was only in June, 1883, that they were free to return to Astrakhan, where they found themselves exactly at the starting-point where they had been nine months previously "t

These men had been robbed by the convicts with whom they were forcibly associated; an unnameable crime had been committed upon one of them, a young fellow of seventeen. They complained to the authorities, but they might as well have poured forth their complaints to the icy wind that blows from the Arctic Ocean. "I saw these men," ," says our authority of the Law Messenger, "when they were on their way from the Kazan forwarding prison to Laisheff; they were inere shadows of human beings. "I

Another class of innocent men who

have to pass through this infernal ordeal are the unfortunate soldiers who, being sent from one place to another for service, or returning home when it is over, are forced to herd together with convict gangs and march on by étape. And lastly, any one, whether he have his passport or not, may, if any member or members of the police like to make him feel what they can do, be sent to his native place in order to verify his identity. The following instance will leave no doubt as to what is meant by this curious operation, and as the names and places are given, it may

serve as a test case :

"A priest's son, Hyppolit Krassotsky by name, educated in the Ecclesiastical Seminary of Nischny Novgorod, had taken up his permanent residence in the government of Ufa, where he served at first in an office under the crown, and afterward became a clerk and manager on the estates of Colonel Paschkoff, and the former minister of the interior, General Timashoff (both these gentlemen are still alive; the former is said to be now living in London). After this he was appointed secretary of the District Court of the Justices of the Peace, and was confirmed in this post by the Governor of Ufa. Every one in the entire government of Ufa knew him perfectly well. And yet the police Ispravnik in 1880 conceived the plan of verifying the identity of this man. M. Krassotsky handed in his passport, his photograph, the affidavits of many persons and institutions who knew him both in the government of Ufa and in Nischny Novgorod. But the Ispravnik declared it desirable to apply to him a measure at that time temporary, but now the law of the land, namely, to send him by étape to his native place, in order to verify his identity. Krassotsky was arrested and the day was fixed for his deportation to join the rufian gang, when the governor, to whom numerous and energetic representations had been made, graciously dispensed him from go. ing."*

"I know of nothing more helpless and hopeless than the existence of these unfortunate persons who accompany convict gangs 'not in the guise of prisoners.' I know of which they receive at the hands of the aunothing more horrible than the treatment thorities and from the ringleaders of the prisoners, both on the march and in the prisons; for they have to submit to imprisonment on their way like the rest. They are pariahs among the offscourings of the criminal world, who insult, degrade, rob them, and do them all manner of violence. At night they are cast out of the plank beds and forced to sleep under them, on the cold, slushy, or frozen ground. The old men among them are beaten, the old women scoffed at and insulted, the

* Law Messenger, p. 339. M. Krassotsky is still living in Ufa,