ital questions in which the Russian people were so keenly
interested. It was a speech which might as well have been made by the first
Czar Nicholas. But there was no need of words to tell what was in the mind
of Nicholas II; that had been made quite evident by the new laws and the
new Ministry. Before the Duma lay the heavy task of continuing the
Revolution, despite the fact that the revolutionary army had been scattered
as chaff is scattered before the winds.

The first formal act of the Duma, after the opening ceremonies were
finished, was to demand amnesty for all the political prisoners. The
members of the Duma had come to the Taurida Palace that day through streets
crowded with people who chanted in monotonous chorus the word "Amnesty."
The oldest man in the assembly, I.I. Petrunkevitch, was cheered again and
again as he voiced the popular demand on behalf of "those who have
sacrificed their freedom to free our dear fatherland." There were some
seventy-five thousand political prisoners in Russia at that time, the
flower of Russian manhood and womanhood, treated as common criminals and,
in many instances, subject to terrible torture. Well might Petrunkevitch
proclaim: "All the prisons of our country are full. Thousands of hands are
being stretched out to us in hope and supplication, and I think that the
duty of our conscience compels us to use all the influence our position
gives us to see that the freedom that Russia has won costs no more
sacrifices ... I think, gentlemen ... we cannot refrain just now from
expressing our deepest feelings, the cry of our heart--that free Russia
demands the liberation of all prisoners." At the end of the eloquent appeal
there was an answering cry of: "Amnesty!" "Amnesty!" The chorus of the
streets was echoed in the Duma itself.

There was no lack of courage in the Duma. One of its first acts was the
adoption of an address in response to the speech delivered by the Czar to
the members at the reception at the Winter Palace. The address was in
reality a statement of the objects and needs of the Russian people, their
program. It was a radical document, but moderately couched. It demanded
full political freedom; amnesty for all who had been imprisoned for
political reasons or for violations of laws in restriction of religious
liberty; the abolition of martial law and other extraordinary measures;
abolition of capital punishment; the abolition of the Imperial Council and
democratization o