The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-01-25

| lchurch. and is repubIished from the weekly edition of The London Times of January 6, 1905, with an explana- tory note by the translator.
 This letter was written by Tolstoy labout three years ago, when he hfmselr and all around him thought that he was dying. At the present moment when, owing to a slight relaxation of
 the Russian censorship. questions of political reform are being from vari- ous standpoInts publicly discussed in
 Russia, it has been thought advisable to give publicity to this letter of Tol- stoy's in order that his opinion on the subject should not remain unknown to those interested in Russian social pro- | gress-V. T.
 1 Dear Brother-Such form of address ] ing you seems to me the most appro- | priate because in this letter appeal to you not so much as to Tsar as to mana brother; and also because l write to you as it were from the other world, expecting the approach of death | I do not wish to die without telling you what I think of your present activity and of what it might be. what great welfare it might bring to millions of lpeople and to yourself, and what great
 
 and to you. if 1t continues in the direc- | ton In which it Is now going
 l third of Rusisa lies in the state Of special control--i. G., outside the law. The army of police. visible and secret, goes on continually increasing. Pris- ons, places of exile and of penal servi- tude are overflowing. 'politicals' with whom working men are now classified being added to the hundreds of thous- 1riu ipu lS sorship of literature extends to such absurd prohibitions which it did not reach even during the worst period of the forties. Religious persecution has irever been sc frequent and cruel as It | is now, and becomes ever more cruel and frequent. Everywhere. both in the towns and industrial centres, troops are concentrated and sent out with | loaded cartridges against the people. In many places fratricidal conflicts have already taken place, and every where such are being prepared, and new and yet more cruel struggles will | inevitably occur.
 As the result of all this strenuous and cruel activity of the Government the agricultural population-those 100 millions upon whom rests the power of Russia--notwithstand the dispro- portionately increasing budget, or rath- I IL becoming poorer so that famine has become a normal occurrence. And the universal dissatisfaction of all classes with the Government, and their inim- | ical attitude towards 1t, has also in creased in proportion.
 The reason for all this, so palpably evident, is this: Your helpers assure you that, by the arrest of all progress of life in the nation, they will thereby l Nf ht | your own peace and safety.
 But one can sooner arrest the flow of a river than that lncessant progressive l movement of mankind which is estab- lished by God.
 l Follows Horrible Advice. | One understands how those to whom such a state of things Is advantageous. and who in the depths of their souls say "apres nous le deluge," can and
 must as sure yep of this; but it is aston fishing how you--a free man, needing nothing and rational and good man can believe them and, following their 1 horrible advice. commit or allow to be committed so much evil for the sake l of such an unattainable desire as the arrest of the eternal progress of man. | kind.
 You cannot but know that ever since
 the life of man is known to us, the forms of this life, economical and so- cial, as we'll as religious and political, have continually changed, passing from l forms more coarse, cruel and irrational to softer, more humane, and more ra- tional ones.A Your advisers tell you | that this Is not so; that as for the Rus sian people at some bygone time or 1 thodoxy and autocracy were suitable, so they are suitable now and so they will remain until the end of time, and that therefore, for the welfare of the Russian people, it is necessary at all costs to maintain these two combined forms of religious belief and political organization. But this is a double err TOT.
 First, 1t is impossible to assert that
 orthodoxy, which may once have been 1 natural to the Russian people, Is now
 natural to them. From the reports of the Procurator* of the synod you may see that the more developed amongst the people. notwithstanding all the dis
 advantages and dangers to which they are exposed when they secede from orthodoxy-every year join the so- called sects tn increasing numbers. Secondly, If it were true that orthodoxy
 is natural to the people, then there
 would be no reason for the use of
 coercion to support this form of belief
 nor for the cruel persecution of those who repudlate II.
 So, as to autocracy, if 1t were natural
 to the Russian people while this peo- pie still believed that the Tsar Is an infallible earthly deity who alone rules the people, 1t is far from natural to
 them now when they all know, or else
 find out as soon as they get a little
 education. first that a good Tsar Is only un heureux hasard, and that Tsars may
 be and have been monsters and maniacs like John W, and Paul; and secondly, that however good and wise d man a Tsar might be- he himself cannot pos
 sibly rule a nation of 136 millions, but
 that the people are ruled by those who l surround the Tsar. and who are more
 concerned with their own position than | with the peoples welfare.
 You will reply that the Tsar can elect as helpers for himself disin- | terested and good people. Unfortunate- l ly, the Tsar cannot do this, because he
 knows only few score of individuals
 who have approached him accidentally, | or through various intrigues, and who | carefully screen from him all those who
 might replace them. So that the Tsar
 chooses not from those thousands of ] active. energetic, truly enlightened and | honest men who are anxious for social
 work. but only from those concerning
 whom Beaumarchais used to say: | Mediocre ct rampant, ct on parvient | tout! And if many Russian people l might be ready to obey the Tsar, they
 cannot. without feeling insulted. obey
 those of their own circle whom they l yho 0O oFtay Y,4la tbo