The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1892-08-14

q guarantee in some shape or other that
his share of the imperial taxes will be paid,
and drunken, good for-nothing is often
voted out Of the village entirely, and his
snare of the village lands gees back to the
village Each village elects two petty
Judges, who settle ali small suits relating
to sums of less than So and petty quarrels,
and larger suits are settled up TO a GER
tain amount by a higher court elected by q
fixed number of villages and formed into
an assembly called 1.-The volost.r Every
thousand people among the peasants have
one of these assemblies, and the different
villages making up the thousand elect del
egates to them, and all disputes among the
people of these villages are brought before
This assembly and tried. The power of the
voIost, however. is limited. 1t cannot try
casessof more than $50, nor can it imprison
for more than seven days. In addition to
these two petty courts there are trials by
Jury, and these are courts made up partly
by Judges appointed Dy the car and
partly by those elected by the people,
and an appeal can be taken from this TO
the higher courts at ST. Petersburg and
Moscow The village assembly is cal ed
the mir, the assembly made up OF enough
villages to comprise LOCO population is
'sthe volost,n aud above this there is in
each district a third assembly OF delegates,
elected by the nobility, the towns aud the
v
is called the zemstOo, and It's business is to
take care OF the roads OF the district, to
see that proper provisions are made against
famine to attend to educational matters
and to look alter matters in which all the
people of the district are interested. These
Russian districts are a good deal like our
counties aud there are q number of them in
each province, which last IS presided over
/ nv a governor and his council, appointed
- will no
people OF Russia have home rule system
! OF their own like ours, only more SO, IN
that the most minor matters are managed
/ by IT, A Russian peasant car buy
1 land if he has the money, but the
most of them have no property
outside of that they own in common with
their village, and the only estate the aver
age peasant has is the little matched hut
which covers an area about twenty feet
square They stick, however, very closely
TO the common property and will do any
thing rather than lose their interest in the
village TO which they belong. Strange to
saw. they are by no means anxious to mold
oftice and they consider an election as viii
lage policemen or elder rather a curse than
q blessing. Their village assent sies and
elections take place in the omen air in one
long street of the village and they discuss
matters relating to their crops aud their
government among themselves. They do
not realize, however, that they might go
any farther than they have now gotten in
the way OF government. and they look upon
the DEGREES of the car something as they
look upon the laws OF nature or those OF
God, which could not possibly be changed
NATION OF FREED SLAVES.
! The Russians resent the insinuation thai
I their serts were slaves, put the truth il
they were little more Inan that, and II /:
nor long since they were bought and sold
They were, perhaps, in little better con
dition tnan our negroes at the tune of tn,
beginning of the war, but not very muct
40. and in looking at the Russia OF Today i
must be remembered MODERN Russia ma
. not vet lived quite one generation. 1t wa
1 horn curing our late civil war. when tn
car of his own free will took the oondag
OF of AZ ,OO0, 900 OF people. We think !, oil
, a mig thing in freeing our 5000, 900, bu
, Russia ct the same time freed nearly ~, QUO,
: 600 aud organized system DHwhich the
J could pay for their lands and themselves
/ Thav were given q part CT the lands o
their masters, and this not in the shape O
I individuals, but az villages. making tn
villages and not the individuals responsible
/ for them. The time of payment for thes
4 lands was to be forty-nine years, an