BY ORDER OF THE CZAR. 365
mendous growth of the revolutionary strength in Russia which had taken place under the new Czar Alexander III.
While admitting the numerically small numbers of the organizing and executive forces, Ferrari had shown Anna, by documentary and other evidence, the vast extension of the movement towards which they occupied the van : and while receiving in secret conclave the reports of the advance which was being made right through the military services, they both chiefly rejoiced in the prospects of the propaganda among the peasants, who had in many districts and under more or less authoritative encourage- ment, worked their will upon the Je\vs. but had of late entered into secret agrarian alliances with their Semitic fellow-citizens against the nobles and landed proprietors.
Jews throughout the provinces most in sympathy with the holy cause had been welcomed into secret societies ; and it was set forth in a recent important work by Tikhomirov that one of the great significant facts of the moment was a definite transition of anti-Semitic into agra- rian troubles.
The people, finding it -difficult to form peasant parties, had organized secret societies, one of which, having wide and powerful ramifications, had contributed a new brother to the Ferrari organization.
Everything looked well and promising for the first signal of revolt, which, being made in St. Petersburg, was to act as a beacon-fire over a wide and extensive district of out- pjsts, military, civil, and agrarian, in which many classes, official and otherwise, were engaged.
The train was laid. It was the patriotic duty of Ferrari and his confederates to light the match which should bring about that great popular rising which is the hope and purpose of the great popular movement throughout the Empire.
