revenue; and these duties fall entirely on
the upper classes; as the Russian peasant
does not make any appreciable use of foreign
goods. Crown estates yield less than three
millions and a half; and under the head
crown estates are included mines, forests, and
gold-washings, with nearly half the estates in
the empire, the real annual profit obtained
from each crown peasant being not more
than three shillings and fourpence. The rest
of the imperial revenue is extracted from the
sale of brandy.

The Czar is the great brandy-merchant to
his people. The brandy trade is his monooly,
and his chief means of livelihood as a
potentate. Before he took to the spirit-trade,
licenses for the distillation and retailing of
brandy used to be always sold to the same
persons, who acquired enormous wealth by
their transactions. Government, aware of
this, reduced their profits by conditions and
changes which at last drove out of the market
all but those persons who carried on a wholesale
business on the largest scale. A few
hundred wholesale distilling firms, too deeply
concerned in their trade to bring it to a
stand-still, carried on their business at the
mercy of the emperor; who soon ordered that
all brandy produced by the distillers should
be sold to the government, which then
doubled its quantity with water, and supplied
it to licensed dealers for retail sale—of course,
after more dilution—at fixed prices to the
public. Licenses are sold by auction, and
their prices are often run up by agents
of the government; so that speculators in
them are almost as likely to be ruined as to
thrive.

Much has been said of a mysterious treasure
sure belonging to the crown, yearly
augmented by a procession of millions of roubles
to the vaults of the fortress of Saint Petersburg.
Mr. Donai does not believe in this
problematical deposit of wealth; because its sources,
being such as have been here detailed including
borrowed money, cannot accumulate.
Borrowers are not usually people whose coffers
overflow with millions. The real truth is
that the Russian government gets money as
savages get fruit, by cutting down the tree;
and lives upon capital as well as interest.
The loan of last year may have covered the
interest of former loans, and perhaps the cost
of arms purchased in Belgium; but even
that is not certain, for six issues of paper
money have already been forced into
currency; private contributions have been
claimed and urged upon the people from
the pulpit with no very great result; and
this reminds us that one source of money
to the Czar has not been named in the
preceding summary. It is the Russian church.
There remains the bag of money in the pocket
of the church. When, in eighteen hundred
and forty-five, the empress was to go to Italy,
the clergy paid a contribution of two millions
—the price of the forcible conversion of the
peasants in the Baltic provinces. The present
war is set forth as a holy war, and the church
may be asked fairly to assist in paying for it,
and no doubt is asked very perseveringly,
and for no small sums. But how heavy is
the purse of the Russian church? Its
contents used to be valued at twenty-six
millions sterling; and, although the holy fathers
may contribute even to the last farthing, we
unfortunately know that twenty-six millions
are soon swallowed up when a great war is
being waged.

Thus the case is said to stand as regards
money. It is not any better in respect of
men. In time of war the Russians do not
abhor military service as they do in time of
peace; because they are then better treated,
and have prospects of advancement. But it
appears that the Russians do not make a
soldier fit to be led against the enemy until
after several years' drilling. Deduct from
the Czar's million of men four hundred
thousand that can form lines only on paper,
and three hundred thousand destroyed in the
present struggle, only three hundred
thousand old soldiers remain to cover the whole
frontier, north, south, east, and west. Another
campaign will destroy them nearly all, and
there will remain nothing but an army of
recruits. Fanaticism may be infused into
these by abolishing serfdom, and by other
home appeals; but their fighting powers will
be very low indeed at the end of another
campaign. To urge on the war, therefore,
without giving time for a recovery of breath, is
to destroy the attacking power of the Russian
empire; and all the arts and all the diplomacy
at its command—and they are both
numerous and skilful—ever have been and
ever will be to gain time. Time is, with
Russia, nearly synonymous with victory.

Its defensive power nobody is disposed to
under-estimate. In this matter, its real weakness
gives it, in one sense, special strength.
Steppes, swamps, and vast regions almost
destitute of roads, a bad climate, a thin population
barely civilised that vanishes before
approaching hosts and leaves only a desert
for the enemy to traverse, are obstacles that
exist now as they existed in the days of
Pultawa and Moscow. Upon this the Czar
reposes his last trust. But every condition
of the empire is such as to cause its vital
parts to be rather upon its western and
southern borders than in its more central
parts. Drive the people into the inhospitable
interior, and their difficulties of subsistence
will be only a little less insurmountable than
those of an enemy. Indeed, of the prodigious
superficies over which the empire. extends—
including, as it does, nearly one-seventh part
of the terrestrial globe—by far the greatest
proportion is uninhabitable to friend or foe.
The enormous northern provinces, especially,
are destined to perpetual sterility, not only
on account of the extreme rigour of the
climate, but because nearly all the great