A RUSSIAN TO HIS CZAR.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1288, 5 November 1896, Page 10

A RUSSIAN TO HIS CZAR.

“ gire !—Your throne is surrounded by men in whose interest it is that the true condition of your empire should be hidden from you, and who prevent you from knowing how your subjects judge their condition. You prevent the press from expressing itself ; allow us to speak to you. “ As long as you regard yourself justified, Sire, to think, decide, and act for millions of people, as long as every criticism of the existing order of things, every aim at reform is treated a 3 an attack upon your sacred rights, so long can your officials cheat Your Majesty, so long cau they act according to their own interests in defiance of the welfare of the people. Your Majesty's name covers the guilty parties, who would otherwise be brought to justice. These robbers do not want the old, patriarchal autocracy, which granted to the people a certain share in the deliberations for tho welfare of the people. Neither do they uphold the new autocracy, that which is vested in Y r our Majesty’s person alone. What they want and what teey have is t he sovereign power of officialdom, and they will defend it to the last. May not Your Majesty be deceived by the pomp and display the coronation ! If the houses of jour capital are brightly illuminated, it is because the police have ordered it so, and taxed the householders according to their means. If deputations arrive and present costly gifts to Your Majesty, it is because they have been forbidden to present petitions. When you hear the masses cheer, it is because the police have drilled the schoolboys to do it, because the governors have ordered the country folk to do so, and because detectives are among the crowd to see that the order is obeyed. The millions spent in honour of your coronation have been wrung by blows, threats, and imprisonment from the poor oppressed people. I “ Sire, you tremble before the spectre 1 of revolutionary terrorism, and the majority of the Russian people, far from assisting the revolutionary movement, acknowledge your right to defend yourself. But your government does not solely prosecute the terrorists, it tries to strangle every vestige of life in the nation, and thus the nation itself is gradually aroused. Thus it happened that the police must take precautions in Moscow against a national rising. A great number of regiments are drawn together in the capital, and the police are enormously increased. The garrets of all the houses and streets through which you passed

were locked and sealed. No one was allowed to enter the houses without a card of permission The workmen of the factories are subject to especially strict supervision, and great numbers of them were ordered out of the city. About 4000 honest citizens have been forced to leave the capita], well-to-do, quiet men, just because the police were suspicious of them. Young girls have had the privacy of their rooms invaded, men so old that their race is almost run were visited three times a clay by the secret police to see that they hurried their preparations for ‘voluntary’ exile." — Revue JBlanche, Paris.