Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1878-05-17
VERA sAssULITCH.
PartIcfpated in It-Nihilfsm i'm It's
Most Forbidding and Repulsive
Forms.
of the New York Timesl

Correspondence of the New York Times.l
PARIS, April 2S.-The excitement caused,
not only at st. Petersburg but all over the
continent, by the Vera Sassulitch trial has
not yet abated. New details appear every
day. and the affair has assumed the proper
tions of formidable event. The Jury which
acquitted this young woman, accused OF
shooting the chief of the Russian police, was
composed of government ofic'a'si OF mer-
chants and artists. The audience belonged
TO the highest classes of society, among
whom were seen senators, ministers, mem
bers of the council of state-even Prince
Gortschakotf in PERSONAL In uniform and
blazing with decorations. Yet it was amid
the frantic applause of this audience that
the Jury, in order to save the culprlt, simply
denied the existence of the fact, although
the attempt at assassination was committed
in broad daylight, In the presence OF numer-
GUS witnesses, and was avowed and explained
by the author of the crime herself. The her
ONE received an ovation az she left the
courtroom; there was riot; plstol-shots
were exchanged between the crowd
and the police, several persons were
wounded. and one was killed. Vera
disappeared, and she was supposed to nave
been carried off by the police and to be on
her way to the mines of Oural. Conjecture
was rife, and the continental press wed In
strange revelations, or in equally strange re-
empire, where a negative verdict In the teeth
of affirmative evidence, apparently without
efed nnTesa enthusiasm 6stsh9p u nave
voking universal reprobation. Then came
the awakening from this dream of morbid
admiration for woman who was compared
to Charlotte Corday, ready, like her proto-
type, to sacrifice her life tor a principle; TO
die, if her death would rid the world of ty-
rant. A careful inquiry into the disorders
consequent upon her acquittal shows them to
have been the work of her political coreli-
gionists, the Nihilists, one of whom, her
brother-in-law, Sidoratsky, has since COM
mitted suicide, through fear of being arrest
ed for the ASSASSINATION of a police agent.
Vera has not been sequestrated at all by tine
authorities, as was alleged, and although no
one knows her whereabouts, she has pub
hshed letter In several of the foreign news
papers announcing that she is in safety. To-
which, while it is terribly romantic, gives to
the crime an entirely different aspect. She is
no longer the angel of purity who, for
a girlish imprudence, had been SEN
fenced to seven years OF imprisonment
in Russian casemate, whence she issued with
hatred for all who prosecuted her fellow
beings, and a desire to avenge their wrongs.
She declared upon oath that she had no ac-
quaintance with Bogulobow, although she
shot his tormentor; but now it appears that
she was his mistress, and that their iaisOn
was of long standing. In few words this
is the story: In the year 1875, Mile. Vera
Sassulitch, daughter of an ex-officer Of the
Russian army, who had been exiled for par
ticipation in plot to assassinate the car,
was employed as governess in the family of a
Moscow merchant named Gazbajoff, where
she was seen and courted by General Trepoff,
who was the inspector general of the prov
ince. Abandoned by him after relations of
some months, she returned to her former adj
mirer, the student Bogulobow, communicated
to him the story of her pretended wrongs,
and so worked upon his inhammable nature
that he followed Trepoff to Warsaw, and
horsewhipped him in the public promenade
of the Milodowa Utica. Consequent rage of
the general and arrest of the student in fac
tory near st. Petersburg, where, in the dis
guise of a workman, he was busy with Mill
ist propaganda. The trial of the young gen.
tleman was short. He avowed his opinions,
stated that he and his "brothers" were de-
termined to overthrow the throne and the
altar, because they were the instruments of
tyranny;" refused to divulge the names of his
accomplices, and, after preliminary ap-
plication of the knout, was condemned to
hard labor for life in the fortress of Merit
schinck. Upon this Vera applied for an
audience with Trepoff, who wished to take
advantage again of her unprotected condi-
ton. Therefore" and here quote literally,
''the accused was In the case of legitimate
defense, as has been publicly proved to the
satisfaction of this tribunal, and is declared
to be not guilty of the crime with which she
has been charged. Trepoff, whose role in the
p p6gh a been hE00qghEpt WH gddngf once
made his will leaving three million rubles to
bis family. The car had up to this time be-
lieVed in the poverty, that is to say, in the
honesty, of his lieutenant of police, and was
greatly shocked at the discovery that his con-
hdence had been misplaced. The general
was removed from Office, and when his VIC
tim appeared before the jury his majesty
expressed the hope that the verdict would be
an acquittal. So ends this affair, which
caused all st. Petersburg to forget for mo-
ment the graver questions of foreign politics,
but the effect produced was painful, as with
similar incidents at Kew and Moscow, in
which students and butchers were the chief
actors. 1t shows that there is an anarchy
and chaos of ideas throughout this vast
upon by secret societies, oscillating be-
tween the most arbitrary abselutism
which has ever existed and a revolution
airy movement whose explosion will per-
haps sink into nothingness the horrors of 1898
in France. The doctrines of Nihilism are
nothing more nor less than variety of the
frightful principles of the Skoptenl. Just as
these mutilate themselves physically in order
to exclude themselves from the conditions es-
sentially necessary to existence, in search af-
ter an ideal which is nau3ht but grotesque
counterfeit of humanity, so the Nihilists SUBJ
NIT to moral mutilation IN order to CRAFTY
a savage instinct for destruction. Possibly,
with the hatred of all principles of law and
order is mingled leaven of sincere indigna-
ton against tyranny; but it is not by these
monstrous theories that society can be re-
formed and existing abuses corrected. The
both social and political, In Russia
will never improve until a sentiment of duty
begins to prevail in every class. Possibly, the
principles of liberalism may become an ineyi-
table experiment, but this experiment may
affect the vital organization of the State, if,
instead of furnishing new elements of order,
it opens the field to ambitions and interests
which no scruple will arrest.