As history repeats itself, so are the laws of civilized development both general and inexorable. Even in the extreme case of Russia, it has been proved, in an article we published a few years ago,[24] that a heavy and ruinous price has been paid for the emancipation of the serfs on a Socialistic and partly Communistic basis, and on the erroneous assumption, that the continued existence of the 'Mir' (the ancient village community even of India) was an institution indigenous to the country itself, and therefore worthy of being perpetuated by legislation. Millions of a rural population, freed from personal servitude, were chained anew to the land by the indebtedness incurred in the expropriation of the lords of the soil. The allotments, averaging ten acres, parcelled out among them in 1861, were estimated to be sufficiently large and productive to provide not only for their support, but also, firstly, for the payment of the 'redemption dues' with which the allotted lands were charged for a limited period of years at an average rate of only 1s. 9d. per acre, and secondly, for the punctual payment of the moderate poll-tax, which the exigencies of the State required them to contribute. Those expectations began to vanish soon after they had been formed, and at the present time we see the previously rich agricultural plains of Russia, abandoned, as they almost wholly are, to the slovenly husbandry of a rude and greatly demoralized peasantry, deteriorating from year to year in the quality of their produce, and thereby opposing less and less impediment to the successful competition of other corn-growing countries.[25] The great fall that has taken place in the value of Russian cereals is apparent from the fact that, notwithstanding the depreciation of the paper currency of the country to the extent of about 25 per cent. since the serfs were emancipated (and nearly 37 per cent. from the par value of the standard rouble), the corn-grower in Russia actually receives for his produce, in paper money, some 40 per cent, less than he obtained for it when the currency was less debased.
Despair, and the absence of that restraint which education, and the moral elevation inseparable from it, are establishing in other European countries, have driven the rural inhabitants of entire districts, and even provinces, into habits of drunkenness stronger and more general than those which existed before the autocratic creation of 'peasant proprietors' in Russia.