The Sun.
London, England, 1866-06-06 00:00:00

The Emperor of Russia's Fescript.

The Debats of yesterday says :—" Apropos of the
attempt against his person, the Emperor of Russia
has just addressed a rescript to Prince Gagarine,
the President of the Committee of Ministers, in
which much attention is given to the false and
perverse doctrines which, if not opposed in their
development, will seriously imperil social order.
According to the Czar, Providence permitted the
attempt of the 16th April only to show what may
be expected from these doctrines which audaciously
attack everything which centuries have rendered
venerable, namely, religious faith, domestic order,
and property. These, adds the Emperor, are the
fundamental principles of public order that should
be engravers upon the mind of the peoples. Nothing
could be better said ; but who can teach the Rus-
sian people the respect of those principles if the Go-
vernment itself only respects them as far as they
serve its interests ; if too often by its laws and
its acts it seems to have at heart to inspire
contempt for them and promote their overthrow ?
No one, in fact, is ignorant how religion, domestic
order, and property are honoured and protected in
a part at least of the States subjected to Russia. Is
the veneration due to religious faith encouraged and
strengthened by the sight-of those conversions to
orthodoxy obtained, now by seduction, now by vio-
lence, among the Catholics of the old Polish pro-
vinces? Can a power which teaches children to de-
nounce and give up their parents or their brothers
decently and usefully preach up the doctrines of do-
mestic order? Finally, how should the inviolability
of the right of property take possession of people's
minds when that same power is seen to dispose of
property arbitrarily and by wholesale throughout
a portion of the empire ? lam not unaware,' says
the Emperor in his rescript, that some Russian
functionaries have not remained strangers to the
propagation of those subversive
principles, the
development of which ought to be prohi-
bited.' The admission is frank, and is of good
augury, but it is far from being complete. In
the kingdom of Poland, for instance, it is not
merely some isolated functionaries who have fa-
voured by their doctrines and example the propaga-
tion of the ideas justly stigmatised by the rescript ;
it is an entire aluinistration, invested with a dicta-
torial power, side by side with the military admini-
stration, which, under the direction of persons
known to profess a sort of Asiatic communism,
seems to have set its heart upon destroying among
the population all notion of property, and proclaims
openly that there are no property holders except
through the Czar ; those to whom he gives and
those to whom he condescends to leave a part of
what they possessed. Such is in substance the
doctrines of Milutine, Tcherskoskoi, Kochelef, and
Solowief, the principal members of the so-called
constituent committee. The empire has been flooded
by them with agents for putting
in practice those
doctrines which, if we may believe them, can alone
ensure the Russification of the .country Can the
Government which authorises their acts, which
makes the result enter into the calculations of its
policy, blame anybody but itself for the effects
which such doctrines and such examples must neces-
sarily produce ?"