he had acquired in the mountains to the south from peasant communes. It seemed a little remarkable that an important official should be able to obtain gold concessions from the subjects he administers and then sell them to foreigners. I could hardly imagine the mayor of an English town or the chairman of a county council or a deputy chief constable of a county embarking upon a similar speculation and hawking it about the public streets. Undoubtedly there is corruption in the remoter parts of Siberia, but the opinion of everyone I conversed with was that in this respect improvement has taken place of late. Corruption is a social disease, and is not confined to Russia alone. In Siberia the officials are the victims of the environment which is created there by nature. Low pay and isolation from effective control are great incentives to the mischief. The rising scale of officials' salaries and greater centralization of government is having the effect of diminishing it, although the latter tendency will also bring evils of another kind in its train, if carried too far. Public opinion is the only thing which in the long run will put a stop to it, and although growing in European Russia, it is at present too little developed in the remoter parts of Siberia to have any effect. The day will come when public opinion will be sufficiently strong to ostracize officials who hawk gold concessions in the public streets.
Another official at Minusinsk, whose acquaintance we made, was the inspector of mines and mining concessions for the southern part of the Yenisei Government. This post exists in every district of every Government, but it does not seem important
