Page:A general history for colleges and high schools (Myers, 1890).djvu/773

Rh have been made upon the life of the reigning Czar. On March 13, 1881, Alexander II. was killed by means of a bomb filled with dynamite.

The son of the murdered Czar who now came to the throne as Alexander III., immediately instituted a still more sternly repressive system than that pursued by his father, whom he seemed to regard as the victim of the over-liberal policy of the earlier years of his reign. It appears to be his determination to close his empire against the entrance of all liberal or progressive ideas, political, religious, and scientific, of Western Europe. A rigid censorship of the press is being maintained (1889), and the writings of such authors as Huxley, Spencer, Agassiz, Lyell, and Adam Smith, are forbidden circulation.

There can be but one outcome to this contest between the " Autocrat of all the Russias " and his subjects. Either through wise concessions on the part of its rulers, or through the throes of a terrible revolution, like that of 1789 in France, the Russian empire will sooner or later come to possess a constitutional representative government. The Czar of Russia is simply fighting the hopeless battle that has been fought and lost by the despotic sovereigns of every other European country—a battle which has the same invariable issue, the triumph of liberal principles and the admission of the people to a participation in the government.