sive, must be taken into account, as the ultimate success of any scheme of reform necessarily depends upon them. It may not be true that the people have generally the Government they deserve, and that they deserve the Government they have; or to use the language of Carlyle, that the rights of a people are equivalent to its mights, its needs and aspirations. But in a country like Russia, the needs and the mights of the people cannot be ignored, and those needs and mights are largely determined by the conditions under which they live, and those conditions largely resolve themselves into facts of climate and distance, of soil and of race.
III
One single illustration applicable to the present situation will explain better than any argument the interdependence between climate, economics and politics. All reformers are agreed that the most urgent need of the Russian people, after the introduction of religious freedom, is the establishment of universal popular education. So vital is that need, so strongly is it felt that, as far back as the sixties, Tolstoy for several years relinquished his literary activities
