The _Times_ also, whilst pleading for Solovieff's execution, acknowledged the fact of the sway of Czardom being rotten to the core, in the following words:--"It cannot be disputed that whole classes in Russia are penetrated almost to desperation with a sense of social oppression and wrong.... A social condition like this is the natural soil in which the brooding temperament which seeks a remedy in assassination is nourished."
When all the safety-valves are closed, Nature takes its revenge, and ever and anon occasions the inevitable outburst. Russia is at present under a state of siege from St. Petersburg to Moscow and Warsaw, from Kieff to Kharkoff and Odessa. An Army of Porters, about 15,000 strong, must watch the streets of the capital, day and night; and policemen are set to watch the watchers. Under General Gurko, the crosser of the Balkans, who is now Vice-Emperor, the last lines of legality have also been crossed--if the word "legality" applies at all to Russian institutions. He is invested with unlimited powers, in the place of the disheartened tyrant. The very Grand Dukes are under his orders. Arrests among officers of the army have been the immediate consequence of General Gurko's satrap rule. In several cases, compromising letters and prints were discovered, and executions both of officers, like Lieutenant Dubrovin, and of privates, have followed. The gallows are in permanent activity. But perhaps the most significant feature--and a promising one too--is the order issued, under court-martial law, that in all the barracks a list of the soldiers' arms is to be drawn up, and to be handed over to the police! This is the strongest sign of a suspicion against the army itself; and on the army the whole power of Czardom reposes.
When we hear of the arrest of a Senator, of a Director of the Imperial Bank, of Professors, of the son of the Chancellor of the dreaded "Third Section," of the wife of the procurator of a Military Court, of the nephew of the Chief of the Secret Police, and many other such cases, we are driven to the conclusion that, in spite of its furious acts of repression, the autocratic system has become untenable--that it must sooner or later fall. Like the Roman Emperor, Alexander II. might be glad if revolt had but a single neck. But is it possible for him to imagine that there exists but one party of malcontents? Do not the very arrests just mentioned belie such an assertion?