upon them; the claims which had been allowed amounted to 1,707,000 silver roubles, those disallowed reached 3,572,414. Thus half of the incumbrances were swept off for the benefit of His Imperial Majesty’s treasury.
With confiscation came utter destitution for the family of the victim; the wife’s jewels or the simplest little heirlooms, though they might fetch but a few kopeks from a Jew broker, were relentlessly seized. The widowed wife, the orphaned children (for a Russian subject involved in treasonable acts forfeits alike all family ties and civil rights), all those dependent on the victim, were turned forth to live or die as best they might—the matter was no concern of Russian justice. The same penalties fell on those who were self-exiled, as on those who had committed overt acts of rebellion. Here is an ukase of 1832:
Property, real and personal, in the Western Guberniums, of rebels who have left the dominions of the Czar, and have given no account of their proceedings, shall be confiscated for the benefit of the Crown.
Another ukase of 1834 declared in addition,
All inhabitants of the Western Guberniums who have left the empire for complicity in the revolt, and who, up to this date, have made no application for pardon, can never return to Russia, whatever be their rank, degree of culpability, or actual place of residence, and all their property shall be confiscated.
I use the word confiscated, though it is inaccurate, “resumed” being the more euphonious term affected by Russian legislature. The number of emigrants from the Western Guberniums thus pillaged amounted to upwards of 2500.
Yet all these measures were not only in direct contravention of the ancient Polish law, and the constitution of Alexander I., which declared: “The penalty of general confiscation is for ever abolished—it can never be re-enacted,” but they were in direct defiance of former Russian ukases. I would instance here one passed in 1785, providing that the property of all state offenders among the Dvoramin (nobles) should immediately pass to the natural heirs; and another of 1802, which extended the privilege to the other classes of the community. To Poland a very different justice was meted out than that with which the Russian subjects of the Czar were blessed.
By an act of Imperial grace in May, 1837, Nicholas removed the sequestration from the property of innocent persons whose relations only had been involved in the Revolution, but at the same time prohibited them from disposing of it by will, fearing they might thus contrive that some part should pass to a disinherited rebel. Though an offender should subsequently have been fully pardoned, still no bequest in his favour effected during the period of his civil non-existence, could be held good in law. Lawsuits commenced previously to his offence and concluded in his favour, after his restoration to rank and country by the Emperor’s grace were null and void for him; they had been carried on during his “death,” and therefore the benefits accruing lapsed to his only heir, the Czar.
In February, 1832, Nicholas published an ukase especially with reference to emigrants from the kingdom of Poland, of whom more than 25,000 had left the country. It promised that those sentenced in default should not be deprived of their property, which would be administered as in the case of persons legally absent. Fortunately this bait did not induce the return of those it was the Czar’s object to secure, and shortly afterwards the property was confiscated in due form. Another ukase, without any false gloss of benignity, followed in June, 1833, which summarily escheated all the possessions of all persons who on any pretence had quitted the kingdom of Poland since the first of January of that year, for other than the Russian territory, and who had not returned up to the date of the decree. Thus persons who had left the country to avoid being compromised, were by a retrospective act involved in all the penalties of actual rebellion. Curiously enough, among the 1315 persons in the Gubernium of Wilna who thus suffered, there were five (or rather the heirs of five) individuals who had been put to death by the insurrectional government for treasonable practices in connection with Russia. Their sentiments might have been loyally Russian, but as they were Poles, and their descendants possibly less “well-disposed,” the government made good the booty. We cannot better conclude this sketch of the Imperial Ukases than by a brief enumeration of the number of victims supplied to the vengeance of Nicholas, and severally condemned to hard labour, the mines, hanging, or decapitation, and forfeiture of all civil rights. Many of these victims escaped, but their worldly possessions in no instance were saved. In the Western Guberniums no less than 2889 landed proprietors have thus suffered, under sentences dated between 1832 and 1856; but all these cases bore reference to the Revolution of 1830. Many have since been added, but I cannot give the actual number. Of these domains only 355 were officially valued; yet the male serfs alone on these numbered 180,734, who with 13,098 drawn away from the church lands, amounted to 193,832 male serfs. These unfortunates were either drafted into the army or placed at the disposal of the local administration, and their fate was not less pitiable than their masters’. The amount of money seized, of which any official account was given, though that was perhaps but a moiety of the actual sum, reached 33,920,600 silver roubles; yet there were 2534 proprietors whose forfeitures are not included in these returns.
In the kingdom of Poland serfage had ceased since 1807; and in the reports published by the government the names of the proprietors who suffered escheature are given without any indication of the actual money value of that wholesale forfeiture. We therefore can give only the bare enumeration of the number of the victims.
In 1834, 287 were thus condemned to forfeiture, with various penal sentences, though happily these latter could not always take effect, as the persons concerned had escaped. Between June and July, in 1835, 2338 were condemned; between 1835 and 1856, 551 were added to the list; thus making a total of 3176 proprietors, who, with their families, were reduced to penury, even if they escaped Siberia.
