Page:A general history for colleges and high schools (Myers, 1890).djvu/772

698 affairs of the Sublime Porte, and bolstered as well as was possible the "sick man." But he lost a good part of his estate. Out of those provinces of his dominions in Europe in which the Christian population was most numerous, there was created a group of wholly independent or half-independent states. The absolute independence of Roumania, Servia, and Montenegro was formally acknowledged; Bulgaria, north of the Balkans, was to enjoy self-government, but was to pay a tribute to the Porte; East Roumelia was to have a Christian governor, but was to remain under the dominion of the Sultan. The Balkans were thus made the northern boundary of the Turkish empire in Europe. Bosnia and Herzegovina were given to the Austro- Hungarian monarchy. Russia acquired some places in Armenia, and also received Bessarabia on the Lower Danube.

In a word, Russia regained everything she had lost in the Crimean struggle, while Turkey was shorn of half her European possessions. There were left in Europe under the direct authority of the Sultan barely 5,000,000 subjects, of which number about onehalf are Christians. England alone is responsible for the work of emancipation not having been made complete.

Nihilism and the Exile System.—Russian Nihilism is a smothered French Revolution. It is the form which Liberalism has taken under the repressions of a despotic autocracy; for the government of Russia is a perfect absolutism, the Czar alone being legislator, judge, and executive for the Russian nation of 85,000,000 souls. He makes laws, levies taxes, expends the revenue, and condemns his subjects to exile or death, according to his own will, without let or hindrance. The terrible character of the repressive measures of the government is revealed by the fact that during the years 1879 and 1880 sixty thousand persons were, without trial, sent into exile in Siberia.

It is a principle of the extreme Nihilists, that assassination is a righteous means of reform. Within the last few years many