s. 9d. per acre, and secondly, for the punctual
payment of the moderate poll-tax, which the exigencies of the State
required them to contribute. Those expectations began to vanish soon
after they had been formed, and at the present time we see the
previously rich agricultural plains of Russia, abandoned, as they almost
wholly are, to the slovenly husbandry of a rude and greatly demoralized
peasantry, deteriorating from year to year in the quality of their
produce, and thereby opposing less and less impediment to the successful
competition of other corn-growing countries.[25] The great fall that has
taken place in the value of Russian cereals is apparent from the fact
that, notwithstanding the depreciation of the paper currency of the
country to the extent of about 25 per cent. since the serfs were
emancipated (and nearly 37 per cent. from the par value of the standard
rouble), the corn-grower in Russia actually receives for his produce, in
paper money, some 40 per cent, less than he obtained for it when the
currency was less debased.

Despair, and the absence of that restraint which education, and the
moral elevation inseparable from it, are establishing in other European
countries, have driven the rural inhabitants of entire districts, and
even provinces, into habits of drunkenness stronger and more general
than those which existed before the autocratic creation of 'peasant
proprietors' in Russia.

Among the earliest measures adopted in Russia during the present reign
was that of a reduction and partial remission of the 'redemption dues,'
which, on the 1st of January, 1885, represented the interest and sinking
fund on nearly 113 millions sterling,[26] expended by the Government in
the partial expropriation of the now ruined landlords of the
country.[27]

During the year 1884, alone, those reductions and remissions inflicted a
loss of 1,135,000l.[28] on the Imperial Treasury. The most recent
measure of alleviation has been the total abolition of the poll-tax[29]
(to be completed by the end of the present year); and, consequently, the
State-contribution of at least 85 per cent. of the population of Russia
is being limited to the excise duty on drink, an item of revenue with
which the Imperial Government cannot possibly dispense, since it brings
in a sum more than adequate for the maintenance of the imposing military
forces of the Empire.

Simultaneously, 'Peasant Land Banks' have been established by the State
in ord