The prison mirror. [volume] (Stillwater, Minn.) 1887-1894, 1892-01-21
The Car and Russia of To-Day.


The following is the first part of Editor
w. T. Steads character sketch of Alexan-
der Ill. in the Review of Reviews for jan
uary:
The two portly volumes in which Mr.
George Kennan has compressed the sum
total of his observations on Siberia natur
ally direct public attention of the Western
World to Russia and its ruler. Mr.. Kennan
is an American traveller who has done good
service both to Russia. and to- humanity by
turning upon Siberia and its eXileS the elec
trio search light of a first class American
Journalist. His pictures of life in Siberia.
and especially of life in the convict and
forwarding prisons in Siberia, have 'un
dOubtedly made deep and painful impress
sion upon the public mind; that impression
will be deepened by his collected letters, and
possibly the majority of those who read
these illustrated volumes will regard them
as conclusive condemnation of system
under which such horrors are possible. At
the same time, it is we'll to remember that
all things in this world are comparative.
and that it hardly does for us of the
English speaking race. with the memory OF
our Australian convict settlements and the
system of convict labor in mines which still
exists in some of the Southern States, to
uIdW tOO uooUy COuCtuolOuS COuCCI uiIlS q
political system merely because its prisons
are Overcrowded and it's convicts are ILL.,
treated. OF course to Westerns. even to
those Westerns who haughtily refuse to es-
tablish anything of representative system
in HinduStan, where we have twice as
many subjects as the Russian Gar, gov
.erned on a system which is as utterly Op-
posed to the democratic idea as the Govern
ment of Russia itself-the Russian system
stands condemned on first principles. In
Russia there is no Parliament, nor is there a
free press, nor has the nation as whole any
of the constitutional apparatus which, to
the English speaking man. seem the first
essential of civilized government.
Nevertheless. it would be very interesting
to know what Mr.. George Kennan would
do if he were to wake up one fine morning
and find that he had changed skins with
Alexander I'LL. autOcrat of all the Russias.
l venture to predict that, whatever else he
did, he would not do one thing which many
superficial observers consider to be the
great desideratum in Russia. Mr.. Kennan
would not introduce the American COnSti.
tuition. with its machinery of ballot boxes.
Senate. and House of Representatives. into
a country where not one man in ten can
read and not one man in a hundred would
have the remOtest idea as to what to do
with his vote if he had one.
If Mr.. Kennan would not do this, still
less would any intelligent Englishman who
is familiar with the shortcomings of the
parliamentary system. system which Mr..
Greenwood and M. de Laveleye tell us in
almost so many words is breaking down be-
fore our eyes. That is an exaggeratiOn, no
doubt, but constitutiOnalism is so far from
being universal specific and panacea for
all the evils of maladminiStratiOn that we
really ought to begin to look with little
sympathetic interest at the immensity of
the problems which confront the Emperor
of Russia. While admitting all that can be
fairly said against the abuses of the system