barriers and to obtain for Russia independence and freedom. The means for the attainment of these objects depend directly upon the Government. We do not adhere obstinately to terrorism. The hand that is raised to strike will instantly fall if the Government will change the political conditions of life. Our party has patriotic self-control enough not to take revenge for its bleeding wounds; but, unless it prove false to the Russian people, it cannot lay down its arms until it has conquered for that people freedom and well-being. As a proof that the aims of our party are wholly peaceful, I beg you to read the letter written to Alexander III. soon after the 1st of March.[1] You will see from it that we desire only reforms, but reforms that shall be sincere, complete, and vital."
Madam Korbá's last words did not soften towards her the hearts of her judges, and of course she did not expect that they would. She was found guilty, and was sentenced to twenty years of penal servitude with deprivation of all civil rights, and forced colonization in Siberia for life at the expiration of her penal term.[2] At the date of my last advices from the mines of Kará she was still living, but she was greatly broken, and there was little probability that she would long endure the hardships and privations of penal servitude.
Among the male political convicts at the mines of Kará whose careers most interested me was Hypolyte Muíshkin, whose portrait was engraved from a police photograph taken while he was in the fortress of Petropávlovsk. In the year 1864 a well-known author and political economist named Chernishéfski, whose famous novel, "What is to be Done?" has recently been translated into English, was tried in St. Petersburg as a revolutionist and banished to Siberia. He was at first sent to the Alexandrófski central prison,
