tance bequeathed to us by our
ancestors,--a mission which, in the course of events, Divine Providence
called upon us to fulfil."

It will be observed that the Czar goes no farther back than the
beginning of the reign of his uncle, sixty years since, in speaking of
the measures that have been taken for the improvement of the peasants'
condition; and he names only his father and his uncle as reforming
Emperors, though his language is such as to warrant the belief that
all his ancestors, who had reigned, had been friends of the serf,
and anxious to promote their welfare. But Alexander II. is too well
acquainted with the history of his family to venture to speak of the
actions of either the Great Peter or the Grand Catharine toward the
peasants. Gurowski tells us of the effect of one of Peter's acts in very
plain language. "In 1718," he says, "Peter the Great ordered a general
census to be taken all over the empire. The census officials, most
probably through thoughtlessness or caprice, divided the whole rural
population into two sections: First, the free peasants belonging to the
crown or its domains; and, secondly, all the rest of the peasantry,
the _krestianins_, or serfs living on private estates, were inscribed
_khrepostnoie kholopy_, that is, as chattels. The primitive Slavic
communal organization thus survived only on the royal domain, and there
it exists till the present day. The census of Peter having thus fairly
inaugurated chattelhood, it immediately began to develop itself in all
its turpitude. The masters grew more reckless and cruel; they sold
chattels separately from the lands; they brought them singly into
market, disregarding all family-ties and social bonds. Estates were no
more valued according to the area of land they contained, but according
to the number of their chattels, who were now called souls. In short,
all the worst features of chattelism, as it exists at the present day in
the American Slave States, immediately followed the publication of this
accursed census."[B] The same authority states that Nicholas in reality
was the first Emperor who granted estates excepting therefrom the
resident peasantry.

[Footnote B: _Slavery in History_, pp. 245, 246.]

Alexander II., in his Manifesto, expresses his confidence in the
nobility of Russia, which compliment is pronounced ironical, inasmuch as
they did not yield their consent to emancipation until they discovered
that the Czar and the serfs had unite