cruelty of their masters! "These feudal lords," says Mr. Thompson,[1] "are of extravagant and profligate habits, and occasionally harass their serfs with the most grinding oppression and extortion, while their neglect or inability to provide the stores and magazines directed by the government, reduce their serfs, in unpropitious seasons, to want and the most horrible sufferings from famine. This occurred to a frightful extent in 1840, in the governments of Toula, Riazan, and Kalouga, when the people were driven for subsistence to the bark of trees. The summer of 1839 was so excessively hot, that the parched land yielded no produce, and that of 1840 was so cold and wet, that the crops entirely failed. The consequence was, that the most dreadful distress prevailed, and thousands perished from starvation." Insurrections, also, have occasionally occurred, rivaling the horrors of St. Domingo. "Intoxicated with the belief," says the same writer, "that they might emancipate themselves, they organized a powerful conspiracy; and arming themselves, desolated the country around them with fire and sword, perpetrating horrors not to be exceeded by the sanguinary scenes of St. Domingo, or the worst days of the French Revolution. It is stated that they cut off the legs and arms of their victims, beating them to death with the mutilated members, and stifling their dreadful cries by thrusting the mangled feet into their mouths."[2] Such is the terrible retaliation that sometimes follows a long course of Oppression and wrong.
To Show the summary and arbitrary manner in
