that he attributes to the Russian revolutionists. Exile by administrative process is not a new thing in Russia,[1] nor was it first resorted to by the Russian Government as an extraordinary and exceptional measure of self-defense in the struggle with the revolutionists. It is older than nihilism, it is older than the modern revolutionary movement, it is older than the imperial house of Románof. It has been practised for centuries as a short and easy method of dealing with people who happen to be obnoxious or in
- ↑ Administrative punishments generally, as distinguished from judicial punishments, have been inflicted in Russia from the very dawn of history. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the right to inflict punishment by administrative process was vested in more than twenty different classes of Russian officials, including governors, vice-governors, voevóds, commandants, chiefs of detective police, ecclesiastical authorities, chiefs of provincial bureaus, excise officers, landed proprietors, chief foresters, post-station masters, officers of the mints, and managers of Government salt works. Most of these officials were empowered not only to exile at their own discretion, but to confiscate property, to inflict torture, to brand, and to flog with the knut. For references to the laws that conferred such powers upon Russian officials see "Personal Detention as a Police Measure to Insure Public Safety," by I. Tarásof, Professor of Criminal Law and Jurisprudence in the Demídof Juridical Lyceum, part 2, p. 9. Yaroslavl, 1886. Exile by administrative process is also specifically authorized in the "Statutes Relating to the Anticipative Prevention and Frustration of Crime," articles 1, 300, 316, and 334-339; in the "Exile Statutes," article II, and in article 667, part 1, Vol. II, of the "Collection of Russian Laws." All of these legal enactments originated long prior to the existence in Russia of a revolutionary party.
of a band of profligates. . . . . . Are Kennan and Frost, perhaps, of opinion that the murders of Lincoln and Garfield are to be reckoned as benefactions to the race? Did it never occur to Kennan that for all the nameless miseries which he depicts in the first part of his book" [the first of my magazine articles republished in Germany in book form] "we are indebted to the heroes of the second part—that but for the nihilists of Kará there never would have been any administrative exile?" [Unsere Zeit, Leipzig, August, 1890. Translation in the Literary Digest of the same month and year.] I shall recur in a later chapter to the controverted question of the moral character of the Russian revolutionists, but, in the meantime, it may not be out of place to ask the "Russian Resident of Eastern Siberia" whether it never occurred to him that an unprejudiced investigator who, he admits, is perfectly right in his description of Siberian prisons, right "beyond question" in his account of common-criminal exile, and right "to a word" in his statements concerning administrative banishment, may, possibly, be right also in his estimate of the character of men with whom he lived for a whole year upon terms of the closest intimacy? Did it never occur to the "Russian Resident" that a man who tells the exact truth in ninety-nine consecutive instances is likely to tell the exact truth also in the one hundredth, unless there be, in that particular case, some good and previously non-existent reason for deception or error?
