Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/165

 Rh it. But while he was finding thousands of Alexis Adachevs, he had to live; and for that purpose it would be better, instead of modifying the political status of the 'men who served' to their detriment, to think of insuring them a livelihood. Though no reform had shaken their legal position as yet, the privileges of the sloojilyié, now so bitterly attacked, had been severely damaged already. To the more or less just complaints brought against them they could reply with others, quite as legitimate. If they applied excessive pressure to the peasants who tilled the soil, the peasants themselves, by forsaking the cultivated areas, were ruining their masters. The Government, having begun by welcoming and favouring the agricultural exodus, which had so powerfully aided the process of colonization, now perceived this exodus to be a source of immediate peril, far more to be dreaded than the abuse of power, or even the insubordination, rife amongst its kormlénchtchiki. The executioner could always deal with insubordination. But supposing the material to fill the ranks of the 'service' were to fail? Supposing the holders of the pomiéstia, already so poorly supported by their scanty allotments, came short of food? The State would find itself disabled at once.

Further, Ivacha Peresviétov, when he brought all the landholders, small and great, the owners of stingily-proportioned life allotments, and the holders of huge hereditary domains, under his anathemas and his plans for dispossession, went astray, and missed the only mark then attainable, because he went beyond the facts as they existed at that date. Seeing that the land in Russia was still the only capital at the State's command, it was perfectly natural that it should be used to remunerate the State's servants, there being no other form of payment at the State's disposal. But the servants of the State were of various kinds. The land tenure of the ordinary pomiéchichiki, precarious in its nature and extremely restricted in its proportions, was not an abuse from the social point of view, nor any peril from that of politics. The people who were really privileged and really dangerous were the holders of the ancient appanages, who alone, amidst the gradual ruin of their weaker neighbours, continued to enjoy a certain amount of wealth, and, thanks to the social and economic crisis which was swallowing up the fortunes of their feebler rivals, even increased their possessions; for they attracted all the available labour by offering hope of better pay, if not by sheer force, and on the freehold lands thus populated and enlarged they kept or created a following, and maintained or strengthened their independence. These, too, were servants of the State, but often only as their pleasure, their leisure, or their con-