196 ESSAYS AND LEriERS
and yet the state of things grows worse and worse. Even such signs of improvement as do show themselves have come, not from either of these kinds of activity, but from causes of which I will speak later on, and in spite of the harm done by these two kinds of activity. Meanwhile, the power against which we struggle grows ever greater, stronger, and more insolent. Tlie last gleams of self-government — Local Government, public trial, your Literature Committee, etc., etc. — are all being done away with.
Now that both methods have been tried without effect for so long a time, we may, it seems to me, see clearly that neither the one nor the other will do, and see also why this is so. To me, at least, who have always dis- liked our Government, but have never adopted either of the above methods of resisting it, the defects of both methods are apparent.
The first method is unsatisfactory, because even could an attempt to alter the existing re'gime by violent means succeed, there would be no guarantee that the new organization would be durable, and that the enemies of that new order would not, at some convenient oppor- tunity, triumph by using violence such as had been used against them, as has happened over and over again in France and wherever else there have been revolu- tions. And so the new order of things, established by violence, would have continually to be supported by violence — i.e., by wrong-doing. And, consequently, it would inevitably, and very quickly, be vitiated, like the order it replaced. And in case of failure the violence of the Revolutionists only strengthens the order of things they strive against (as has always been the case, in our Russian experience, from PougatcheT s rebellion to the attempt of March 1), for it drives the whole crowd of undecided people — who stand wavering between the two parties — into the camp of the conserva- tive and retrograde party. So I think that, guided both by reason and experience, we may boldly say that this means, besides being immoral, is irrational and ineffectual.
