The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-07-20
RUSSIAN PARLIAMENT
 ADDRESSES THE COUNTRY
EXPLAINS ITS ATTITUDE AND DELAY ON AGRARIAN
 QUESTION:

Lower House Makes Changes Designed to Minimize the Revolutionary Fea-
 tures-LOndon Times St. Petersburg Correspondent Hears the Temper of
 the Court and Government is Marked
 Iy Reactfonury--Favor Dictatorship. St. Petersburg, July 20.--3 a, m,-An address to the country setting forth the attitude of parliament on the agrarian question and the reasons for the delay in the adoption of solution of the problem was adopted by the lower house at ? o'clock this morning, but in an emasculated form, with changes de- signed to minimize the revolutionary | features of the document as an appeal to the people against the government and to shift the emphasis to note of pacification in which the peasantry are exhorted to refrain from excesses and violence and to await parliament's de- cision in the matter.
 The vote was taken at the close of a sitting that lasted continuously for twelve hours in which it seemed prob able that the address would be rejected entirely by the combined votes of the right and left wings of the house against the resolute center party. The address was only saved from this fate Iby the abstenition from voting of 101 members of the group of toll and sym pathizers with that faction, who fav- ored a more radical measure. There were 124 vote, all constitutional demo- crats, for the address and 53 against it. The minority comprised Count Hay den and Michael Strakovich, marshal of the nobility, and other members of the right, with ia wextremists from the socialist camp.
 The session, which was a stormy one, was marked at one time by the with drawal of the entire group of toll as a protest against the reactionary attitude of the majority, Afterwards the eau GUS of the group determined to return to the chamber but not to vote either for or against the address, on the ground that they would be playing into the governments hands whichever way they voted and instead to draft an in- dependent adress to the people.
 The rejection of the address probably would have been a source of gratifica- tion to the constitutional democratic leaders, who at the last moment awoke to the fact that an appeal, which at first they had hailed as deathblow to the bureaucracy, would be apt to be equally fatal to the party, as not only has the court canarilla long sought for | a justification for the dissolution of 1 parliament, but also to evoke an ele- mental rising of the people in which 1 the constitutional democratic party would be swallowed and its power ob- liberated in the ascendancy either of a reaction or of revolution. The day was devoted to desperate efforts to re- trieve a dangerous strategic blunder. 1 Finding from a caucus of their own fol- lowers that it was too late to sidetrack the address entirely, the leaders turned their endeavors to modifying it enough so that the government would not be forced to regard it as a casus belli, per- haps with the secret nope that this would lead to the defeat of the address in the house.
 The speeches of Ivan Petrunkevitch, IWho introduced the substitute draft; Deputy Kutliarevski and other moder- ates emphasized the necessity for the pacihoation of the tumultuous peasant rv M EutlioreUsly; ro,,,dI1, IaoIort,,.. that the all-important question at the present crisis of affairs was not useless polemics regarding the ministry, but the cessation of the elemental move- ment of class against class which would solve Russia's problem, not in the way of peaceful action, but by methods of
 desperation and horror.
 M. Patrunkevitch, an implacable en-
 emy of the government, shifted his
 ground to combat revolution, declaring
 that parliament must not yield to rev. olution nor join in flaming unarmed
 peasantry to oppose themselves to bay
 onets and machine guns, but fight to the last for legality and loyalty.
 His draft contained a sop to the land tO"ISA9f C4LlpllA1lAillS LlS pOillL TeRdEU- ing the payment for appropriated lands; but this was eliminated in the 1 discussion. The conservatives en-
 deavored also to have stricken out a
 reference in the draft of lack of con-
 fidence in the ministry, but they were
 defeated by the bare mention of the
 Rossias report of the Austro- German plan for intervention, M. Petrunke-
 witch being wildly applauded when he
 declared that 1t was impossible to show
 consideration to a ministry which was
 negotiating to introduce foreign
 troops on the sacred soil of Russia, London, July 2O.-The Times St, Pe- tersburg correspondent says the tenn
 per of the court and government is
 markedly reactionary, and the dismiss-
 al of parliament and the decoration of
 a dictatorship are being seriously dis
 cussed.