RUSSIAN LIBERALITY

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 185, 13 October 1876, Page 15

RUSSIAN LIBERALITY

It has often seemed strange to us that the people of the United States should regard Russia with such admiration and sympathy. There is nothing in her history, or in. the spirit and policy of her government, to inspire such feelings. Her people are ignorant and semi-barbarous. The nobles are luxurious, immoral, cruel and arbitrary in their treatment of their dependents. The Czar is a despot, nor can all bis patronage of literature and art conceal the arbitrariness and tyrarny which have always characterised, and which characterise to-day the severity and cruelty of his government. Frederick 11. of Prussia was a patron of literature and of art, but no less a tyrant for all that. And in Russia, whatever efforts are made to advance education, are made, not in the interests of the people, but in those of the Government. The schools and other educational institutions are managed and sustained simply as engines for increasing the strength of the Government. Religion is employed in the same manner. The RussiaGreek " Church " is simply a State organisation, entirely under State control ; and for a member of that " Church "to openly abandon and become a Catholic, is regarded by the State as an act of rebellion and treason, as much so as open resistance of any State enactment. Russians may be Rationalists, Atheists, Infidels of any school or class whatever, may live in the most open immorality, and yet, as long as they nominally adheie to the State "Church," are regarded as loyal, Christian subjects ; but if they separate from that "Church," and practice, or profess Catholicity, they are treated as rebels and traitors. The public is familiar with the accounts of almost inconceivably cruel barbarities practiced by the officials of the Russian Government in the past, and up to time quite recent ; but it seems to be supposed that, of late years, and under the " enlightened " administrations of the previous and of the present Czar, all this has been done away with. It is not so, however. And if evidence that it is not were wanting, it would be found in the manner in which thousands of Catholics in Poland have been beaten, scourged, and banished, or starved by Russian soldiery, with a view to compelling them to abjure the Catholic religion and practice that of the " Greek Church." Great account has been made of the emancipation of the serfs by the Government of Russia j but those who are acquainted with the real nature of that step and the present condition of things, know that it was a blow aimed at the nobles with a view to diminishing their importance and power, which the Czar regarded as dangerous to himself, and that the real interests of the serfs was the last thing cared for. The serfs, in fact, liave only changed masters. From dependents of the nobles, they have become slaves of the municipalities or communities into which they are aggregated, and they are no more freemen to-day than they were before the decree of emancipation was made.--' Catholic Standard.'