domain hereditarily entrusted to him." Karazin remained animated by a kindly spirit. His "governor-general in miniature" was likewise to be the father of the serfs. It was his aim to discover a middle course between the behaviour of the capitalists with their "ubi bene ibi patria," and the maltreatment of the serfs as slaves.
Be it noted, the tsar is the representative of God, and the landlord is the vice-gerent of the tsar. The landlord, therefore is co-representative of God, and the holder of this aristocratic doctrine is, consequently, perfectly logical when he defends serfdom. Men whose views were in other respects extremely liberal, were to be found on the side of Karazin. I may mention Mordvinov, friend and pupil of Speranskii, a cultured statesman who as minister and official in various departments exercised for a time considerable influence upon the tsar. An enthusiastic adherent of Adam Smith, he was a warm advocate of political reforms after the English model. In social matters, however, he was ever the Old Russian reactionary, willing only to enfranchise his peasants at a high price and without granting them any rights in the soil.
Deržavin wrote an inflated Ode to God which is to be found in all the reading books put into the hands of young people in Russia. Here we are told that in poesy we are to be for God, and in politics for serfdom.
Karazin expressed the views of the hardshelled agrarian aristocrat, the man who exploited European constitutionalist doctrines for the benefit of feudalism. In essence his views were shared by many others, liberals not excepted, although these might employ different arguments. Karamzin, for example, maintained the natural necessity of serfdom. "Serfs," he wrote, "can be liberated as soon as it is possible for wolves to be full fed while sheep remain uninjured." In the memorial previously mentioned, the adulator of Russian monarchical absolutism took it upon himself to say that it was less dangerous to the state that men should be enslaved than that they should be granted freedom at an inappropriate time. If enlranchisement should prove necessary, it should be effected without the partition of the soil.
Karamzin is typical, and represents an entire school. In youth he was an enthusiastic admirer of Europe and of European ideas of progress, as we may see in his Letters of a Russian Traveller. He had an ardent appreciation of Robespierre, and
