The serfs of Russia differ from slaves with us in the important particular that they belong to the soil, and cannot be sold except with the estate; they may change masters, but cannot be torn from their connexions or their birthplace. One sixth of the whole peasantry of Russia, amounting to six or seven millions, belong to the crown, and inhabit the imperial demesne, and pay an annual tax. In particular districts, many have been enfranchised, and become burghers and merchants; and the liberal and enlightened policy of the present emperor is diffusing a more general system of melioration among these subjects of his vast empire. The rest of the serfs belong to the nobles, and are the absolute property and subject to the absolute control of their masters, as much as the cattle on their estates. Some of the seigneurs possess from seventy to more than a hundred thousand; and their wealth depends upon the skill and management with which the labour of these serfs is employed. Sometimes the seigneur sends the most intelligent to Petersburgh or Moscow to learn some handicraft, and then employs them on his own estates, hires them out, or allows them to exercise their trade on their own account on payment of an annual sum. And sometimes, too, he gives the serf a passport, under which he is protected all over Russia, settles in a city, and engages in trade, and very often accumulates enough to ransom himself and his family. Indeed, there are many instances of a serf's acquiring a large property, and even rising to eminence. But he is always subject to the control of his master; and I saw at Moscow an old mongik who had acquired a very large fortune, but was still a slave. His master's price for his freedom had advanced with his growing wealth, and the poor serf, unable to bring himself to part with his hard earnings, was then rolling in wealth with a collar round his neck; struggling with the inborn spirit of freedom, and hesitating whether to die a beggar or a slave.
The Russian serf is obliged to work for his master but three days in the week; the other three he may work for himself on a portion of land assigned to him by law on his master's estate. He is never obliged to work on Sunday, and every saint's day or fête day of the church is a holyday. This might be supposed to give him an opportunity of elevating his character and condition; but, wanting the spirit of a free agent, and feeling himself the absolute property of another, he labours grudgingly for his master, and for himself barely enough to supply the rudest necessaries of life and pay his tax to the seigneur. A few rise above their condition, but millions labour like beasts of burden, content with bread to put in their mouths, and never even thinking of freedom. A Russian nobleman told me that he believed, if the serfs were all free, he could cultivate his estate to better advantage by hired labour; and I have no doubt a dozen Connecticut men would cultivate more ground than a hundred Russian serfs, allowing their usual non-working days and holydays. They have no interest in the soil, and the desolate and uncultivated wastes of Russia show the truth of the judicious reflection of Catharine II., "that agriculture can never flourish in that nation where the husbandman possesses no property."