79,909. It can hardly be contended, I think, that the nihilists or the terrorists are responsible for a system that had sent eighty thousand persons to Siberia without judicial trial, long before such a thing as a nihilist or a terrorist was known, and before most of the modern Russian revolutionists were born. The "Russian Resident of Eastern Siberia" has simply put the cart before the horse. It was administrative exile, administrative caprice, and the absence of orderly and legal methods in political cases generally, that caused terrorism, and not terrorism that necessitated official lawlessness. The wolf always contends, with a show of virtuous indignation, that while he was peacefully drinking as usual, the lamb muddied the brook, and thus compelled him to "take exceptional measures for the reëstablishment of public tranquillity"; but his statement is very properly discredited when it appears that he was above the lamb on the brook, and that, for years, he had been taking "exceptional measures" of the same kind with other lambs that had not been near the brook. To defend or to justify the crimes of the terrorists is not the object of my work; but when the history of the nineteenth century in Russia shall have been written by some one having access to the secret archives of the Ministry of the Interior and the Third Section of the Tsar's Chancellery, it will appear, I think, to the satisfaction of all men, that most of the so-called terroristic crimes in Russia were committed, not, as the "Russian Resident" asserts, by "bloodthirsty tigers in human form at the prompting of
for 1869. The book was intended to comprise two volumes, but the second volume, containing statistics of the exile system since 1846, has never appeared, owing to "circumstances over which the author has no control." The censor has even mutilated the first volume by striking out Anúchin's condemnation of exile by administrative process—the very subject now under consideration. The author's expressions of disapproval are contained in the copy sent to the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, but they are not to be found in my copy, nor in any other of later date than the first edition. The fact is not without interest as a significant proof that the Russian Government itself is ashamed of this atrociously unjust form of exile, although not yet willing to abandon it.
