conflicting Parties in the Russian Duma, and it will readily be conceded that even an ideal British Parliament could not work very smoothly under such conditions. If the Russian Reformers must be guided by British precedents, let them be inspired by the wonderful example of the British Empire, which is not a centralized Empire, but a world-wide federation of self-governing communities, and where the Crown is but the visible symbol of political unity, the arbiter of all nationalities, the rallying centre of Imperial loyalty. It is only through the Russian Empire being converted into such a federation of free communities, it is only through deliberately renouncing national and racial antagonism, through repudiating religious intolerance, that the Russian people will work out their own destinies.
The historical inquiry before us is not one of purely academic interest. It is one of supreme practical importance. The political condition of Russia to-day is very like the political condition of France in 1789. To the Russian Revolutionists, the French Revolution is not a dead and distant past, it is a living present; it continues, and it will continue for a generation to come, to exert a subtle and profound influ-
