From early days it was Speranskii's aim to adapt to Russian conditions the teachings of his French and English exemplars. His demands, far from being revolutionary, were extremely moderate. A gradual development can be noted. In the first plans, those expounded in the memorial of 1802, the effect of foreign influences is more conspicuous than in the later designs; we trace the hand of Rousseau, Montesquieu, and English writers. Rousseau's "general will" becomes the will of the aristocracy. After the English manner, aristocratic privilege is to be transmitted to the first-born son alone; the younger sons are to belong to the people. Speranskii had no thought of a complete liberation of the peasantry. No such liberation was recommended in the plan of 1809. Domestic servants, day-labourers, workmen, and handicraftsmen were to have civil rights; but political rights were to be the exclusive privilege of the two upper orders, of the aristocrats and of the middle class, the latter comprising merchants, burghers, peasant proprietors, and other property owners.
The most characteristic point of Speranskii's proposals, and the one most important to Russia, was his suggestion for the establishment of a "real monarchy," by which he meant a constitutional monarchy, to replace the existing despotism, this change being part of a radical reform of the machine of state. The changes in the administration made by Peter, Catherine, and other rulers, needed, according to Speranskii, to be unified and organically developed; above all, the functions of each office should, he contended, be clearly defined. Speranskii's leading principle was that political power proceeds from the people; but "the people," as he used the term, meant only the upper classes. The monarch was irresponsible, but, like the responsible ministers and all the citizens of the state, he was bound by the basic laws of the community. Speranskii laid great stress upon the maintenance of these fundamental laws which, in accordance with his Rousseauist outlook, seemed to him the essential bulwark of the constitution. A point of special importance was that Speranskii proposed the creation of a parliament which was to be organically associated with the other autonomous representative bodies. The volost (vide supra, p. 34) and its elected council, the volost duma, were to constitute, as it were, the elementary cell of constitutionalism. The electoral councils of the next grade, the circle dumas, were to be elected by the
