The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-01-25
CRUEL CZAR CRUSHING FINLAND.
PoIand's Fearful Fate Impending-The
Nation without Penal Code.

ST. PETERSBURG, Jan. 2f.-TSpecial. ]-Eu-
rope is to have another Poland. Such now
seems to be the fate of the grand duchy
Of Finland, which is no longer called a
grand duchy here, but province For the
past year the car has piled that pa
tient and loyal land with every
sort of indignity and tyranny. Faith has
been broken and justice outraged, and to-
day sees the whole country in state Of
anarchy. Places of amusement are closed,
newspapers printed with mourning rules,
and the Russian army is massing on the
frontier. Any day may provoke des-
perate revolt against the intolerable
tyranny, and then order will reign in
Warsaw
There is now absolutely no criminal law
in Finland. The penal code has been
suspended by the ear, although
he himself approved and promulgated
il year ago, and none has
been put in its place. The
administration of justice is therefore at a
standstill, and the country is saved from a
perfect saturnalia of crime only by the
fact that the Firms are the most moral
and law-ablding people on the face of the
globe.
The troubles in Finland first as
sumcd serious aspect early last
summer. 1t then became evident that the
wave OF intolerance and tyranny that was
sweeping over the empire was not to spare
the land of the thousand lakes. The first
step towards the Russianization of the
grand duchy was the resignation of Sena-
tor Mechlin, the foremost liberal states
man of Finland.
Soon after the car and czarina went on
their usual summer holiday to Finland
and were received with coldness. A Fin
ish singing society went to serenade them
and sang some of the national airs of Fin
land The imperial visitors sent out word
to them to sing Russian songs. A dead
silence was the answer, and the serenaders
marched away without another note.
Several similar incidents occurred, which
apparently only deepened the cars de-
termination to crush the spirit of the peo-
pie.
The most serious phase of the whole
matter is the penal code. For several
years the ablest men in Finland have
worked on this code. and when completed
it was a masterpiece. No country ever
had better. The car examined it and
cordially approved it, and it was decreed
that it should go into force at the
beginning of the present year. Without
warning few days ago, just before Christ
mas, in fact, the car sent forward de-
cree annulling the new code. The news of
this produced the preatest imaginable
CONSERVATION, and theaters and other pub
lie places were closed, flags were raised TO
half-mast, the more daring newspapers
put on mourning and many ministers
preached patriotic sermons on the SUBJ
ject. The Russian press, of course, was
quick to size upon these things as
manifestations of disloyalty on the part
of Finland, and compared 1t to the
anarchical condition of the kingdom of
Poland before the outbreak of the insur-
rection in 1868. The abusive language to
which the Russian press gives utterance
in charging on events in the grand duchy
will indeed only tend to render still more
antagonistic the antipathy between the
two nations, and now Finland presents
the unique spectacle of great nation
without penal code.