terest in the development of the Grand-Duchy, which he evidently regarded
as a place where experiments in political liberty were being worked
out that might later be applied to the rest of Russia. The weakness of
Finland's position lay in the fact that her liberties really depended upon
the personal whim of the Grand-Duke: in theory her constitutional laws were
only alterable by the joint sanction of monarch and people; in practice the
small but courageous nation had no means of redress should the Tsar,
swayed by bureaucratic reaction, choose to go back upon the policy of his
ancestors. And in 1894 a Tsar mounted the throne, Nicholas II., who did so
choose.

The word went forth for the "Russification" of Finland. After picking a
quarrel with the Diet on the military question, the Tsar on February 18,
1899, issued a manifesto suspending the Finnish Constitution and abolishing
the Diet. Finland became with a stroke of the pen a department of the
Russian Empire. A rigorous Press censorship was established, the hated
governor-general Bobrikoff filled the country with gendarmes and spies,
native officials were dismissed or driven to resign, an attempt was made
to introduce the Russian language into the schools, and, though the Finns
could only oppose a campaign of passive resistance to these wicked and
short-sighted measures, at the end of seven years the nation which had for
almost a century been the most contented portion of the Tsar's dominions
was seething with ill-feeling and disloyalty. The inevitable outcome was
the assassination of General Bobrikoff by a young student in June 1904; and
when the Russian universal strike took place in October 1905, the entire
Finnish nation joined in as one man. Finland regained her liberties for
a time, and immediately set to work putting her house in order by
substituting for her old mediaeval constitution a brand new one, based on
universal suffrage, male and female, and employing such up-to-date
devices as proportional representation. The only result of seven years'
"Russification" was the creation of a united democracy, with a strong
socialistic leaven, in place of a nation governed by an antiquated
aristocratic Diet, and divided into two hostile political camps on the
question whether Swedish or Finnish should be the language of the national
culture. But the fortunes of Finland were accidentally but inextricably
bound up with those of the party of reform in Russia, and when the
bu