Daily Los Angeles herald., 1882-05-26
A Modern Problem.

its boundaries was located the Scythia
which figures in ancient Roman his
tory. At time when Poland was a
bright, particular star in the European
armament 1t was a great outrage and
source of endless disturbance that it
was ever erased-the Dukes of Muscovy
were insignificant creatures, whose oc-
casional contests with the Sublime Porte
scarcely ruffled the surface of the
European annals. At all stages, in which
Christianity was menaced by a Moslem
invasion, Great and Little Russia
connted for nothing. The great victory
of Lepanto owed nothing to Russian CO.
operation, while it was John Sobiesky,
of Poland, who raised the siege of Vienna
aud reduced Islam to purely local
proposition.
Yet, Notwithstanding the early isola-
tion of Russia, the world has seen the
empire of the Tar multiplying with
wondrous rapidity until, with the excep-
tion Of his Celestial majesty, the Uncle
of the Sun and Cousin of the Moon,
that potentate numbers more subjects
than any sovereign or nationality on
earth, unless the Queen of England and
Empress of India be added. The mighty
Russian empire of to-day is mere
amorphous mass, with the centripetal
Sclavic impulse strongly developed, but
with so many centrifugal forces at work
for its destruction that war with Ger
many, for instance, would probably re-
suit in its destruction.
Russia has probably been the scene of
more infamies of misgovernment than
any other equal section of the worlds
surface. The singular succession Of
brutes and blackguards, and of Mesa
linas, when the rulers of the country
have been women, who have disgraced
Russian history, was not even paralleled
in the history of the last days of the
Roman nation. The Infamous chroni-
cles which could be given of the mines
Of Siberia are simply unique and SUI
generis as to all ages and nations.
Yet, in the worst days of Russia, it
could be said, with truth, that the auto
Gratis of that vast region were personally
valiant. From Ivan the Terrible to the
present Alexander the Third there has
been no poltroon in the long array of
tyrants, who have played with millions
of mankind as ministrant puppets to
their arrogance.
The telegraph, the other day, convey
ed the intelligence to the world that the
imperial poltroon, who shrouds his COW
ardly carcass in the supposed invulnera
BILE precincts of the Fortress of Cats
china, has postponed his coronation fol
q year, on account of his mortal dread
of the Nihilists who, he thinks, and per-
haps justly, will blow him up, at some
stage of the ostentatious programme.
No such humiliating concession of abject
fear was ever made, in the previous his
tory of the world, by sovereign, unless
the Roman Emperor Heliogabulus is the
exception. That infamous exemplar of
the decay of old Rome built himself a
palace surmounted by gallery inclosed
with mirrors, so that he might be warn
ed Of the first approach of an assassin.
He forgot, in so doing, that thereby he
multiplied his death a hundred fold,
and that the same poltroonery which
dictated these precautions left him with
out the manhood to encounter and repel
assailants.
Alexander III, of Russia, is substan-
tally in the same plight as Heliogabulus.
He endeavors to make artificial buttress-
es give him, as a sovereign, the sense of
security which rightfully only attaches
to ruler who is beloved of his people.
Dismissing this degenerate descendant
of Peter the Great or Count Orlotf, as
the case may be, his practical imprison-
ment, while nominally at the head of an
immense army, is suggestive of the ten
denotes of modern development.
That these are in the line of constitu.
tional government and freedom no man
can doubt, in view of existing facts.
Going back merely to the beginning OF
the curIent century, Alexander the First
was able to dominate his people abso-
lutely. His successor, Nicholas, was
even more autocratic, and even with less
of challenge from the Russian masses.
The late Alexander the Second was the
first of the Romanoffs to encounter the
opposition of his poorer subjects.
The cause of the rights of peoples has
undoubtedly progressed in Russia with a
tremendous momentum during the last
twenty years. The Russian peasant,
having been transformed from a chattel
into man, is beginning to have sense
of his rights as a human being; and,
from this class, as well as from the no
bility, have sprung up the most energetic
representatives of the modern idea.
Thus far, in Russia, the assertion oI
human rights, being encountered by &
repressive tyranny, has taken a crude
form, especially in the case of the late
Tar, when the illuminate of mercury
was used, as protest, by his down.
trodden subjects. An ounce package Of
this substance did the business II
needed no cap or other agent, except
simple percussion, in order to do its
deadly work; and yet this insignificant,
package dug up hole eight feet square