RUSSIAN EMANCIPATION.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1671, 5 March 1890, Page 4

RUSSIAN EMANCIPATION.

After a trial of a quarter of a century the Emancipation Act is now acknowledged to have utterly failed, the reports of Russian officials, of statistical professors at Moscow, such as Jansen and the Nihilists, with Stepniak at their head, all alike agree that the misery of the rural class is greater than even in the days of serfdom ; cultivation is at the lowest ebb, the yield is wretched and less than iv any other European country. Each peasant mast plough, sow, and reap as his neighbours do. The three- field system of corn, grpe.n- orops, .and fallow, which waa abandoned in. all .good agriculture long ago,] goes 04 with disastrous results. .As the lots are changed by the Mir at their pleasure, after every year, the temporary owner does not care to manure, etci, or in any way to improve the land. Although the rent is sometimes as low as 2s an, acre,' yet the peasant cannot live. Agriculture is abusiness requiring capital, knowledge, and a sufficient amount of land to enable' different crops to be grown, so tbat if one fails' it does not mean starvation, for another may succeed. The Russian peasant has none of these qualifications. The paasant proprietors can neither pay the money owing to the Government for their, land, nor even the State and communaLtaxes, and are flogged by, hundred^ for non-payment. In one district of Novg'prod fifteen hundred peasants were thus condemned in 1887. EW hundred and fifty had already be6n flogged, when the- inspector interceded for tha remainder. Widespread famine is found .over a great. part of the country ; nsurers, tjie bane of peasant proprietors in all countries, are in possession of the situatum ; the' , Kqulaks and Jews " mireiters* " supply money on mortgage, then' 'foreclose, and when the land is in their own possession get 'the work done for nothing as interest. These '"bondage laborers,'' as they are called; are in fact slaves,; and are nearly starved, while the small pieces, of land a,re often requited into considerable estates, and their new owriers consider they. have only rights and, no duties. Meantime, as forced labor is at an end and free labor is of the worst possible kind, the old landowners oan get nothing done; they have tried to employ maohines, bought by borrowing from the banks and are, now unable to repay, the money. The upper olaas has been ruined with no advantage to the peasant. " The >astefui culture of the cottier," as Stepniak calls it, " on these' small plots is sdifeid that the geaeral welfare of the country^" says Professor Jansen, "is in dapger by> the small yield; «f the soil.^ In fpite of th,e philanthropic intentions of. tbe.,C!ziir, jiejsbelieved tOthaye aimed at diminishing^, the, power of the^ nobles aa much as impr^gg^tHe condition of the peasants, -^c Bueipe&led; the nobles in mwK*i>tricts'arI r &raly ruined, and 1 th, ere is nothing! now . between the unlimited power of the- autocrat and hit ! 90,(^0i0q0 ( suJb jeotft,.fif tx-jixtjjs^of whom ' *A pious" old lady at Tojrontp devotes the profits nocrliinjg f^roni the sale of all the^eggs 'laid by her fiens Bn Sunday to • the missionary cause.