t of burden,
toiling as he was bid, and finding recreation only in besotting
himself with strong drink whenever he could find the means to indulge.
Mental faculties, save such as are inseparable from animal instinct,
had lain dormant; moral perception was limited between the knout on
one side, and gross superstition on the other. Could such a being be
intrusted with life and property? When the serf, brutalized by
generations of oppression, should come to understand that he was free
to do as he pleased, and that the hovel where he and his brood were
styed was his to do with as he pleased, what could he be expected to
do? Would he not seize the opportunity to indulge in his favorite
craving, and, having sold his property, swell the army of homeless
vagabonds?

The mir was the only means to prevent this, and mir meant serfdom
under another name. The landowners disposed of their land, or of so
much as was required to support the peasants, not to individuals but
to the mir. To indemnify the owners, the mir could secure a loan
whereby the debt was transferred from the owner to the government, and
the mir was responsible for its payment as well as for the taxes. The
moujik, as part of the mir, was responsible to the community for his
share of the debt, and was not allowed to leave his village without a
written permission from the starost or elder. He was, therefore, (p. 224)
in a worse position than before the emancipation because in time of
distress it was his lord's interest to support him, whereas after it
he had to deal with a soulless government that demanded the taxes
regardless of circumstances. The mir might succeed so long as the
peasant remained in a state of tutelage; education only could lift him
out of this,--but this means was not considered by the government.

But whatever may have been Alexander's intentions, the men charged
with their execution had no sympathy with the moujik. The question
never occurred to them: How shall we raise the peasant from his
degradation? The problem before them was, how he should be made to
support the State, as he had done before. The Russian statesmen had no
conception of the truth that the wealth of a State is gauged by the
prosperity of the people.

As to the serf, he did not consider that a boon had been bestowed upon
him. The soil and the hovel were his, descended to him from his
forbears! Why, then, should he pay for them? He clung to this idea
with all the stubbornness