Immediately after the governor-general in the hierarchy comes the military governor, who is not only commander of the troops, but in a certain way Minister of War of Eastern Siberia.
The first establishment in Irkutsk I visited was the Lyceum. There is only one thing to remark there, especially when free instruction is the order of the day. There are no professions in Russia free and independent. Not only are engineers, as in France, Government officials, but also the lawyers and doctors. The Government gives them appointments according to their rank, just the same as to other servants of the Crown. People that are rich, it is true, are accustomed to pay for the services they receive, but a poor patient may call in any medical man he pleases, without being under any obligation to give him the smallest recompense. The Government, contrary to the general opinion, is desirous of extending instruction; fearing, however, the consequences of an education absolutely gratuitous, it enters into an engagement with its young subjects desirous of instruction, by virtue of which it gives at first to the student the necessary instruction, and this accomplished, the latter, in return, is bound to give to the State five years of gratuitous services in the profession he has chosen. If the young man, however, does not succeed in passing his examination, he is obliged to enter the army to acquit himself of the debt of five years’ service. As this gives undoubted facilities in the choice and adoption of a career, it seems to me a very ingenious organization.
Then I visited the prison, but it was a sight to make me shudder. To be bound not only to Irkutsk, but to a prison in Irkutsk, is something terrible. When I had contemplated the features of these assassins and robbers, faces no longer human, where, instead of intelligence and sensibility, nothing but rage and thirst for blood is seen depicted, my commiseration speedily vanished. I lamented only one thing here, and more than elsewhere, and that is the pernicious Siberian habit of keeping the windows always closed; certain chambers of this prison were tenanted by seventy or eighty prisoners without having ever been ventilated!
Before leaving this lugubrious sight, my guide took me to the chamber of political prisoners. There were about fifteen men there, nearly all very young, thrown together without any consideration, and probably for long periods. Let us drop a veil over such unhappy beings. Be it far from me to hurl any reproach at the Czar; for, considering the enormous responsibility that rests on him, he must necessarily be driven sometimes to cruel decisions, if there be no other means of securing the tranquillity and welfare of his people; but for all that, I tremble on thinking of the victims of these arbitrary judgments, of these young spirits, similar to those misguided lights led astray by guilty revolutionists in France, and who so innocently imagine that true liberty is to be found elsewhere than in respect for law and order. If justice could be ubiquitous and reach every culprit, I know which class of offenders would predominate in the prison of Irkutsk and in our _bagnes_ also.