field for enterprise in a young and fertile country; it has the same effect as it would have upon an Englishman if he were sent to Canada and settled on the Western prairies. But in the principal towns of Siberia one always comes across the other type of political exile, cultivated, academic men who are sent to live in places where there are none around them of the same social or intellectual standing as themselves. A student from a university, or a cultivated Moscow gentleman, is thus made to live in company with Siberian peasants, gold miners and fur traders. To such as these exile is indeed a hardship.
There is certainly no great hardship in banishment to Siberia, but suffering is frequently inflicted in the administration of exile law. The object of that law is to isolate agitators, and to achieve this result the exiles are placed in contact with persons with whom it is difficult and often impossible for them to associate. Of course the whole system, according to our ideas, seems foolish; but the system, originated in order to deal with a dangerous revolutionary movement, sometimes includes persons not wholly connected with this movement. It must be remembered that one cannot treat a young country, just emerging from a primitive state, where new ideas often take a dangerous form, in the same way that one would treat a more developed people. It is on much the same principle that the Government of British India has arrested and deported political agitators who are believed to be dangerous to the existence of its authority in that country. In fact, in all countries which are in an early stage of political development, certain minds become obsessed with
