IX. CHAP. may perhaps assign a cause for their inactivity, in necessity. Can there exist any inducement to labour, when it is certain that a ruthless tyrant will deprive industry of its hard earnings? The only property a Russian nobleman allows his peasant to possess, is the food he cannot or will not eat himself; the bark of trees', chaff, and other refuse; quass, water, and fish oil. If the slave have sufficient ingenuity to gain money without his knowledge, it becomes a dangerous possession; and, when once discovered, it falls instantly into the hands of his lord. A peasant in the village of Celo Molody, near Moscow, who had been fortunate enough to scrape together a little wealth, wished to marry his daughter to a tradesman of the city, and offered fifteen thousand roubles for her freedom -a most unusual price, and a much greater sum than persons of his class, situate as he was, will be generally found to possess. The (1) "A few thousands of their fellows eat wheaten bread, because thirty millions of slaves browse on herbs and gnaw birch bark, on which they feed, like the beavers, who surpass them in understanding." Secret Mem. of Court of Petersburg, p. 268. (2) This anecdote of a peasant's wealth, and the example mentioned in p. 109, seem to prove an incorrectness in the description given of the hardships sustained by the lower order of people in Russia; unless the tyrant took the ransom; and then told the father, that both the girl and the money belonged to him, and therefore she must still continue among the number of his slaves. What a picture do these facts afford of the state of Russia! It is thus that we behold the subjects of a vast empire stripped of all they possess, and existing in the most abject servitude; victims of tyranny, and of wickedness; exposed to a more unprincipled dominion, and to severer privations, than the most wretched vassals of any other system of despotism upon earth. Traversing the provinces south of Moscow, the land is as the garden of Eden; a fine soil, covered with corn, and apparently smiling in plenty but enter into the cottage of the poor labourer, who is surrounded by all these riches, and you find him dying of hunger, or pining СНАР. IX. the Reader be further informed, that the term Peasant, as applied to the population of Russia, does not necessarily imply that part of it who are poor. A peasant may be very rich. He may be found in the exercise of a lucrative trade, or engaged, as a merchant, in commerce; yet, as he belongs to the class of slaves, both his wealth and his person belong to some particular lord. Sometimes the lords content themselves in receiving a moiety of the earnings obtained by their slaves; but very frequently they seize all within their power, and hence arises the necessity a rich peasant feels of concealing what he may possess. It is the agricultural peasant who sustains constant privation, in the midst of apparent wealth. VOL. I. IX. CHAP. from bad food, and in want of the common necessaries of life. Extensive pastures, covered with cattle, afford no milk to him. In autumn, the harvest yields no bread for his children. A selfish and misdoing lord claims all the produce. At the end of summer, every road in the southern provinces is filled with caravans, bearing corn and all sorts of provisions, every produce of labour and of the land, to supply the nobles of Moscow and Petersburg with the means of wealth, and the markets of those two capitals, which, like whirlpools, swallow all that approaches their vortex, with never-ending voracity'. (1)“A few cities enjoy the pleasures of life, and exhibit palaces, because whole provinces lie desolate, or contain only wretched hovels, in which you would expect to find bears, rather than men." Secret Mem. of the Court of Petersburg, p. 268. FROM MOSCOW TO WORONETZ. Departure from Moscow-Celo Molody- Serpuchof- X. Ir is now necessary to take leave of Moscow, CHAP. where we passed some pleasant hours, and many others of painful anxiety, exposed to insult, and to oppression, from the creatures, CHAP. spies, and agents, of the contemptible tyrant cow. X. who was then upon the Russian throne. Our situation, and that of every Englishman in the empire, was not better than the condition of prisoners on their parole. We had been allowed to move about, it is true, but always under the vigilant eye of a troublesome and capricious police. We were detained a long time, before we could learn when we might go, or by what route we should be allowed to pass. An escape by the Livonian frontier was Departure utterly impracticable. At last, without any from Mos- passport for leaving the country, but encouraged by the advice and exertions of our excellent and friendly ambassador, who secretly conveyed to us letters from the Governor of Petersburg to the Governor of Moscow, and to General Michelson, Commander-in-chief in the Crimea, we determined to set out for that Peninsula, by a circuitous route, through the country of the Don Cossacks; and, if possible, to visit the more distant regions of Kuban Tartary and of Circassia. Having, by means of these letters, procured the long-wished-for poderosnoy, and placed our carriage again upon its wheels, we left the city on the evening of the thirty-first of May, visiting our banker at his country-seat near Moscow, and proceeding that night only twenty-seven versts, to a place called Molodtzy, |