ed. This produced a two-fold effect.

In the first place, it greatly increased the importations of goods from
foreign countries, and thus promoted the intercourse of the Russians with
foreign merchants, manufacturers, and artisans, and gradually accustomed
the people to a better style of living, and to improved fashions in
dress, furniture, and equipage, and thus prepared the country to furnish
an extensive market for the encouragement of Russian arts and
manufactures as fast as they could be introduced.

In the second place, the new system greatly increased the revenues of the
empire. It is true that the tariff was reduced, so that the articles
that were imported paid only about half as much in proportion after the
change as before. But then the new laws increased the importations so
much, that the loss was very much more than made up to the treasury, and
the emperor found in a very short time that the state of his finances was
greatly improved. This enabled him to take measures for introducing into
the country great numbers of foreign manufacturers and artisans from
Germany, France, Scotland, and other countries of western Europe. These
men were brought into the country by the emperor, and sustained there at
the public expense, until they had become so far established in their
several professions and trades that they could maintain themselves.
Among others, he brought in a great many carpenters and masons to teach
the Russians to build better habitations than those which they had been
accustomed to content themselves with, which were, in general, wooden
huts of very rude and inconvenient construction. One of the first
undertakings in which the masons were employed was the building of a
handsome palace of hewn stone in Moscow for the emperor himself, the
first edifice of that kind which had ever been built in that city. The
sight of a palace formed of so elegant and durable a material excited the
emulation of all the wealthy noblemen, so that, as soon as the masons
were released from their engagement with the emperor, they found plenty
of employment in building new houses and palaces for these noblemen.

These and a great many other similar measures were devised by Le Fort
during the time that he continued in the service of the Czar, and the
success which attended all his plans and proposals gave him, in the end,
great influence, and was the means of acquiring for him great credit and
renown. And yet he was so