The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-11-13
HOW THE GEAR
 KEEPS TIE FAITH Results of Freedom Manifesto
 Pointed Out A REIGN OF TERROR Condition of 'Extraordinary Defense, still Maintained Throughout Russ sin in Spite of Imperial Promise
A REIGN OF TERROR
'om the Century Magazine.

From the Century Magazine.
 How many of the personal rights. es- tablshed by statute and confirmed by the infiexible will" of the Czar, do the Russian civil authorities now recognize and respect? Not a single one. By the strong handed" policy of the present re- actionary administration, the liberties, privileges and immunities conferred upon the people by the Church of the Empire, and twice ratified by the monarch, have all been swept away ''But,' 1t may be asked, ''how Is 1t possible for mere ad- ministrative officials to abolish arbitrari- Iy the very laws by which it was in- tended that they themselves should be di- rected and controlled?" Under the Rus sian system of government it is quite simple, such as is the will of the auto crat, who is above all officials, all in- stitutions and all laws.
 When in the Freedom Manifesto of October 30, 1905, the Car solemnly de- clared that his subjects thenceforth should enjoy real inviolability of per sonal rights,' he probably meant, if he had any sincere meaning at all that the flultb TOT fNtlulOICcu d1Q I1AlIdOIQlHdIJ Defense' should no longer give such power to governors and gendarmes, and should no longer deprive Russian citizens of the protection of the law. But his promise proved to be as worthless as was his oath to respect and maintain the constitution of Finland. Five vars have elapse since the promulgation of the EraoInn1 ManffaSto fmn since the virtually complete suppression of the latest revolutionary movement, and yet all the more important parts of the em- pire are still in a state of "reinforced'' or Extraordinary defense tens of mill lions of Russians are still without the protection of law; searches and arrests are made by an irresponsible secret police without warrant or sanction; men and women are imprisoned or exiled without trial and often without a hearing; politi- cal offenders acquitted by the courts are banished by administrative process; pub lie meetings are broken up because they have tendency to "excite the mind ;'' lectures are forbidden for the same req son; libraries and book stores are closed by the police because they are found to contain half dozen books which the censor once approved but which he now condems; newspapers and magazines are fined, confiscated or suppressed, because some reactionary governor thinks that they have 'an injurious tendency"
 It seems likely that the police will shortly have to stop arresting men for offenses committed five years ago. be- cause 1t has become almost impossible to crowd any more prisoners into the prisons. The Russian peasants have a proverb which says, Prison and poverty none can escape" and in the course of the last four years the prison part of the popular saying has come within measure able distance of being true. For every three inhabitants of the Russian empire men, women and children-somebody now undergoes a days Imprisonment every year; or. In other words, the ''pris- on days" of the prison population amount, in the aggregate, to 50,SS7. 900 per annum.
 I have no official figures for the present year, but the minister of justice ad- raitted in the council of the empire, on the 24th of last April, that 1t was virtually impossible to put any more prisoners into the greatly overcrowded prison buildings. and that judges were acqutting minor first offense criminals simply because there were no suitable places in which they could be shut up.