against federalist tendencies, and to call upon all the Germans in the monarchy to unite in opposing the policy of the Government. None of the chiefs of the party, however, were present, and the meeting seemed rather a demonstration of the Germans in Bohemia and Moravia than of those in the empire generally. This view was to some extent confirmed by the fact that an equally large meeting of German Conservatives was held a week after (November 22) at Linz, to express entire confidence in the Government policy. At the beginning of December further demonstrations were made by the constitutionalists on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the accession of the Emperor Joseph, and in the Reichsrath they violently attacked the Government for having placed the German and Czech languages in Bohemia on an equal footing; but they were too weak in numbers to bring the question to a division with any prospect of success. In the debate on the budget, however, they brought forward a motion adverse to the Government (December 14): some of their ablest financiers spoke on this occasion, but their passionate denunciation of the Ministerial policy was skilfully replied to by the Minister of Finance, and the motion was rejected by a majority of thirty-seven. The conflict was renewed on the Bosnian railway question on the day that the Reichsrath separated for the Christmas holidays (December 19), when a scene of obstruction occurred similar to those which have taken place in our own Parliament of late years. The House sat for sixteen hours, and broke up at four o'clock in the morning, after a heated debate in which the constitutionalists were once more signally defeated, though they made every effort to tire out the House by long and irrelevant speeches. Altogether, the state of affairs at the close of the year was not promising for the Taaffe Ministry. Count Taaffe can disregard the hostility of the Left, bitter as it is, so long as he is sure of his majority; but his supporters represent many different interests in the State, which cannot always be reconciled with each other, and the Czechs already complain that he has not gone nearly so far in the way of concession to their demands as they were led to expect that he would when he formed his Cabinet.

II. RUSSIA.

The Nihilist Programme-Attempt on the Winter Palace-Dictatorship of Count Melikoff--Negotiations with China-Compromise with the Vatican.

The beginning of the year was signalised in Russia by some incidents which were looked upon as the precursors of a more Liberal régime. Count Valuyeff, a polished courtier, with a leaning towards the civilisation of Western Europe, was appointed President of the Committee of Ministers, and there was some talk

of intended concessions to the Poles, which, however, could hardly be reconciled with the publication of a decree on January 16 prohibiting the use of the Polish language in girls' schools at Warsaw. Numerous arrests and prosecutions of Nihilists, too, continued to take place in all parts of the empire, and a considerable number of officers of the army were imprisoned on account of their connection with the Nihilist organisation. On January 29 a number of Nihilists and others concerned in the great robbery of 2,000,000 roubles from the Imperial Treasury chest at Kherson for revolutionary purposes, were convicted by the military tribunal at Odessa. Among them were three ladies, who took the chief part in the robbery; one, the Baroness Vitten, was sentenced to penal servitude for life; another was a sister of the Red Cross Society who had greatly distinguished herself in nursing the sick and wounded during the war, and a third was the daughter of a lieutenant-general. The following day (January 30) the secret printing-press of the revolutionary organ, Narodnaya Vola, was discovered by the police, who broke into the house where it was worked after a desperate struggle, in which one of the occupants was killed and the police superintendent wounded. Nearly the whole of the third issue of the paper, containing the programme of the Executive Committee, was captured by the police. This document stated that the only way to obtain reforms was to overthrow the Government by revolution or conspiracy; that power should then be transferred to an Assembly of Organisation, elected by all Russians without distinction of class or property; and that the following reforms should be submitted to that assembly: 1. Permanent popular representation, with full power over all general questions of State. 2. Extensive local self-government, with officials elected by the people. 3. Each rural commune to have independent powers of administration over its own affairs, including all financial matters. 4. Adoption of the principle that the land is the property of the people. 5. Transfer of all works and factories to working men. 6. Complete liberty of conscience, speech, the press, association, and electoral agitation. 7. Universal suffrage. 8. Replacement of the standing army by a territorial army. A few days after (February 5) another attempt was made on the life of the Czar, this time in his own palace. About seven o'clock in the evening, just as the Czar was proceeding with the Duchess of Edinburgh and other members of his family to the dining-room in the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg, an explosion, supposed to have been produced by dynamite, took place in a cellar below a guard-room which was situated on the next floor to that of the dining-room. Ten soldiers of the Finland regiment, who were at that time in the guard-room, were killed by the explosion, and about fifty wounded, but the dining-room was only slightly damaged. The boldness of this attempt, and the evidence which it afforded of the inefficiency of the police, produced great consternation in St. Petersburg, and induced the Emperor to take

a step almost unprecedented in history. By an ukase dated February 12 (24), he announced that, being "firmly decided to put an end to the repeated attempts of audacious malefactors to disturb the State and social order in Russia," he had appointed a Supreme Executive Commission, with Count Loris Melikoff as its chief, and members to be nominated by him personally, "for the preservation of State order and social tranquillity." The Count was to enjoy supreme authority in St. Petersburg and its suburbs, and supreme jurisdiction as regards State offences in all other parts of the empire; and all demands made by him were to be at once complied with "by the local authorities, governors-general, governors, and prefects, as also by all branches of the service, not excepting the military." His orders and instructions, "when he deemed it necessary," were to be received immediately from the Emperor; in other cases he was himself to "promulgate all orders, and adopt all measures which he shall consider necessary for the preservation of State order and social tranquillity,” and “define and exact the penalties to be inflicted for non-compliance with and non-execution of such orders and measures." This appointment produced a very reassuring effect on the Russians, Count Melikoff having established a great reputation for ability and tact by his administration of the government of Kharkoff; and for a time nothing more was heard of the Nihilists. A dreaded anniversary-March 2, the date of the Emperor Alexander's accession to the throne-passed away, the Nihilists making no sign; but on the afternoon of the day following, a man fired at Count Melikoff with a revolver as he was alighting from his carriage at the entrance of his official residence. The assassin, Mlodetzky, was at once captured, and hanged March 5. A Nihilist proclamation was at the same time circulated, expressing regret at the escape of the Czar, and a determination not to desist from the struggle until the Emperor should deposit his power in the hands of the people. More Nihilist trials followed, the most important of which was that (May 18) of Dr. Weimar, an eminent physician of St. Petersburg, and ten of his accomplices, most of whom were well known among the aristocracy of the capital. Dr. Weimar, who was decorated with five orders, one of which was conferred upon him for his efforts on behalf of the wounded in the Russo-Turkish war, was found guilty of having furnished the assassin Solovieff with the pistol fired by the latter at the Czar, and also of having provided the carriages in which the assassins of General Mezentzeff made their escape; and the others all proved to have been more or less connected with the revolutionary organisation. This trial showed, what had been suspected before, that the Nihilists had accomplices in the highest ranks of society; but the horror produced throughout the nation by the attempt in the Winter Palace, and the vigilance and skill with which Count Melikoff pursued the revolutionists, seem for the time to have paralysed them. Nor did he confine his efforts to the preservation of order; he also,

without treading the dangerous path of radical reform, introduced a new system of rule which made him very popular in the country. He first directed his attention to the universities, which had been the hotbeds of Nihilism, and he relaxed in many respects those draconic laws fettering the liberty of the students, which had driven so many of them to the desperate alternative of suicide or sedition. This important change was followed by the resignation of Count Tolstoï, author of the laws in question, on May 3, and the appointment in his place of M. Sabouroff. Count Tolstoi was called "the promoter of Nihilism in spite of himself," on account of his practice of expelling students from the universities for trifling offences, thereby ruining their career and driving them into Nihilism; while M. Sabouroff, who as curator of the university of Dorpat had acquired a great reputation for tact in the management of youth, strove on the other hand to render cases of expulsion as rare as possible by giving the students greater liberty, and thereby diminishing the provocatives to rebellion. The same system was adopted by Count Melikoff with regard to the nation generally; several political offenders were pardoned, others had their sentences commuted, others again were let off with a reprimand after an interview with the Count, in which the latter endeavoured by argument and persuasion to convince them of the folly of their conduct. Pacification and conciliation were the leading ideas of the new policy.

The Emperor, who appeared completely broken down, both mentally and physically, since the attempt in the Winter Palace, did not interfere in the slightest degree with the dictator's proceedings; and the government, being now in the hands of a man of resolute will, became, while far more autocratic than it had been under the weak and vacillating Alexander II., also a much more effective machine for the eradication of the evils from which the State had been suffering so long.

It was too great an anomaly, however, to retain Count Melikoff as dictator while the Emperor remained the nominal sovereign of Russia. The arrangement was necessarily a temporary one, and on August 20 an ukase was issued placing the administration of the country on a more normal footing. The object, according to this document, of the appointment of Count Melikoff with extraordinary powers as chief of a supreme executive commission was to put an end to the attempts of evil-doers to subvert the Government and social order in Russia. This object had, by the concentration of all the powers of the State in combating the spirit of sedition, been so far attained that the maintenance of social order could now be effected by ordinary legal means, with some extension of the jurisdiction of the Minister of the Interior. The Czar had, therefore, decided as follows: First, that the supreme executive commission be abolished, and its functions transferred to the Ministry of the Interior. Second, that the third section of the Imperial Chancellery (the department of the secret police) be also

abolished, and a special department formed in the Ministry of the Interior to conduct the affairs hitherto dealt with by the third section, pending the fusion of all the police offices of the empire in one department of the above Ministry. Third, that the corps of gendarmes be placed under the direction of the Minister of the Interior as its chief. Fourth, that the governor-general and other authorities, in cases where under the ukase of February 24 they had to refer to the chief of the supreme commission, shall in future address themselves to the Minister of the Interior, to whom is given the supreme direction in the treatment of all offences against the State. It will be seen from the terms of this ukase that although the post of chief of the supreme executive commission had been nominally abolished, most of its functions were transferred to the Minister of the Interior; and the latter appointment was conferred upon Count Melikoff on the same date as that of the ukase, so that in fact he was retained as the chief adviser of the Emperor under another name. The Russian Liberals, always on the alert for some indication of approaching reforms, attached a further significance to the ukase which it did not really possess. They inferred from the abolition of the detested "third section "the arbitrary tool of the caprices of emperors and high officials in Russia-that the system of secret imprisonment and banishment without trial would cease, and they looked upon this as the first step towards the grant of a constitution. Their rejoicings, however, were premature. The secret police, though placed under the Minister of the Interior, retained all its former functions, and was maintained at its former strength; banishments to Siberia were as frequent as ever, and no sign was given by the Government of any desire to grant free institutions to its subjects. Even the press, though it was allowed to discuss public questions with somewhat more freedom than before, was warned by Count Melikoff to take care not to publish anything that might be displeasing to the Government; and a new journal, the Rosya, which, on the faith of the expected reforms, was started as a Liberal organ, was speedily punished for criticism of the Ministry by the prohibition of its sale in the streets. Count Melikoff,

in a word, had been appointed to put down Nihilism, not to make reforms; and like a true soldier he punctually executed his task. He not only succeeded in putting an end to Nihilist outrages, but captured the principal agents of the Nihilist conspiracy. Sixteen persons, including three women, were tried in November for complicity in the murder of Prince Krapotkin, and the three attempts to assassinate the Czar. This trial showed that most of the Nihilist outrages had been committed by a band composed of a few persons who seemed to have but little connection with the general body of Nihilists. Two of the accused were hanged on November 16; the rest were sentenced to hard labour for life. It is remarkable that although during the autumn and winter there was terrible distress in Russia, owing to the bad