secret about the fact that the Social Democrats were always
trying to bring about revolt in the army and the navy. They had openly
proclaimed this, time and again. In the appeal issued at the time of the
dissolution of the First Duma they had called upon the army and navy to
rise in armed revolt. But the betrayal of their plans was a matter of some
consequence. Azev himself had been loudest and most persistent in urging
the work on. Stolypin demanded that all the Social Democrats be excluded
permanently from the Duma and that sixteen of them be handed over to the
government for imprisonment. The demand was a challenge to the whole Duma,
since it called into question the right of the Duma to determine its own
membership. Obviously, if members of parliament are to be dismissed
whenever an autocratic government orders it, there is an end of
parliamentary government. The demand created a tremendous sensation and
gave rise to a long and exciting debate. Before it was ended, however,
Nicholas II ordered the Duma dissolved. On June 3d the Second Duma met the
fate of its predecessor, having lasted one hundred days.

IV

As on the former occasion, arrangements were at once begun to bring about
the election of another and more subservient Duma. It is significant that
throughout Nicholas II and his Cabinet recognized the imperative necessity
of maintaining the institution in form. They dared not abolish it, greatly
as they would have liked to do so. On the day that the Duma was dissolved
the Czar, asserting his divine right to enact and repeal laws at will,
disregarding again the solemn assurances of the October Manifesto, by edict
changed the electoral laws, consulting neither the Duma nor the Imperial
Council. This new law greatly decreased the representation of the city
workers and the peasants in the Duma and correspondingly increased the
representation of the rich landowners and capitalists. A docile and "loyal"
Duma was thus made certain, and no one was very much surprised when the
elections, held in September, resulted in an immense reactionary majority.
When the Third Duma met on December 14, 1907, the reactionaries were as
strong as the Socialist and Labor groups had been in the previous Duma,
and of the reactionaries the group of members of the Black Hundreds was a
majority.

In the mean time there had been the familiar rule of brutal reaction. Most
of the Social Democratic members of the Second Duma were arrested and