Page:Sarolea - Great Russia.djvu/229

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THE REVOLUTION
213

physical theories, and to their personal feelings of hatred and revenge.

(2) The second conclusion which forces itself upon us is, that Russia cannot be saved mainly by a centralized parliament superimposed upon a centralized bureaucracy. If a centralized parliamentary régimé without any root or support in local self-government was premature in France and doomed to failure, how much more certain must such failure be in Russia! Russia does not possess as yet, though she may acquire in future, one of the essential conditions which make a parliamentary government of the approved British pattern possible. She has no independent aristocracy rooted in the soil, no independent Church, no middle class, no independent judicature. There is no united nation behind the parliament, there is no organized body of public opinion to check and control it, there are no free institutions to support it. It hangs in the air. No eloquent speeches can alter that fundamental fact.

(3) If there is one other lesson which the French Revolution teaches with irresistible persuasiveness, it is this: that a country confronted