nations; Turkey, Persia, India, China, that moment has not yet arrived. For the Russian people, it has now come.
The Russian people are to-day confronted by the dreadful choice of either, like the Eastern nations, continuing to submit to their unreasonable and depraved Government in spite of all the misery it has inflicted upon them; or, as all the Western nations have done, realising the evil of the existing Government, upsetting it by force, and establishing a new one.
Such a choice seems quite natural to the non-labouring classes of Russia, who are in touch with the upper and prosperous classes of the Western nations and consider the military might, the industrial, commercial and technical improvements, and that external glitter to which the Western nations have attained under their altered Governments, to be a great good.
IV.
The majority of the Russian non-labouring classes are quite convinced that the Russian people at this crisis can do nothing better than follow the path the Western nations have trodden and are still treading: that is to say, fight the power, limit it, and place it more and more in the hands of the whole people.
Is this opinion right, and is such action good?
Have the Western nations, travelling for centuries along that path, attained what they strove for? Have they freed themselves from the evils they wished to be rid of?
The Western nations, like all others, began by submitting to the power which demanded their submission: choosing to submit rather than to fight. But that power in the persons of the Charleses (the Great and the Fifth) the Philips, Louis, and Henry the Eights, becoming more and more depraved, reached such a condition that the Western nations could no longer endure it. The Western nations, at different times, revolted against their rulers and fought them. This struggle took place in different
