reëxamines the cases of all political offenders who are dealt with by administrative process;[1] but practically he does nothing of the kind, and it is impossible that he should do anything of the kind for the very simple reason that he has not the time.
In the years 1886 and 1887 there came before the Department of Justice 1883 political cases, involving no less than 2972 persons.[2] A very large proportion of these cases were dealt with by administrative process, and if the Minister of the Interior had given to each one of them a half, or one-quarter, of the study which was absolutely essential to a clear comprehension of it, he would have had no time to attend to anything else. As a matter of fact he did not give the cases such study, but, as a rule, simply signed the papers that came up to him from below. Of course he would not have signed the order for the exile of Mr. Korolénko to the province of Yakútsk if he had known that the whole charge against the young novelist was based on a mistake; nor would he have signed the order for the exile of Mr. Boródin if he had been aware that the magazine article for which the author was banished had been approved by the St. Petersburg Committee of Censorship. He accepted the statements passed up to him by a long line of subordinate officials, and signed his name merely as a formality and as a matter of course. How easy it is in Russia to get a high official's signature to any sort of a document may be illustrated by an anecdote that I have every reason to believe is absolutely true. A stóla-nachálnik, or head of a bureau, in the provincial administration of Tobólsk, while boasting one day about his power to shape and direct governmental action, made a wager with another chinóvnik that he could get the governor of the province—the late Governor Lisogórski—to sign a manuscript copy of the
