Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/49

 Rh fortified—the urban settlements performed a very different function. As a matter of fact, industrial life, as we have seen in the case of Moscow, escaped beyond their enclosures into the possady and slobody, in which most of the artisans, sharing their destinies and habits with the equal or larger number of husbandmen who likewise dwelt there, made their homes. It was only in the sixteenth century that the State was moved to draw a line, not even between the two classes of inhabitants, but between the places in which they lived. And this distinction was of a purely fiscal nature, inasmuch as the townsmen had to pay more than the rustics, the reform, of course, not going so far as to create any organic tie between the taxpayers. The only anxiety of the Government was to obtain the highest possible yield from the taxable body, and insure a fixed taxation. And its ideas of political economy being misty and generally false, it succeeded in paralyzing this source of revenue, instead of increasing it, by multiplying the taxes and the places where they were paid, setting a Custom-house officer at every cross-road and a collector at every street corner, and monopolizing for its own benefit every branch of industry and commerce, from the sale of rye, oats, and every cereal, to the making of beer, kvass, and every drink.

No resistance here, as in other countries—no trace of any struggle against this creeping system of monopoly. For the cases of Pskov and Novgorod are purely political. Yet elements of resistance are not lacking. From the very earliest times commerce had been honoured in the country, and held to be a noble occupation. The enterprises of the Varegians and of the ancient Slav Princes had been both military and commercial in their character, and the heroes of the national legends, Sadko, Soloviéï Boudomirovitch, Tchourila Plenkovitch, Vaska Bouslaiév, all personified this twofold type of adventurous activity and courage. What was lacking was esprit de corps. The retail trader (koupiéts) and the wholesale merchant (gost) were both of them in trade, indeed, but they were also capable of turning to other avocations, and very frequently did so turn. On the other hand, the professional speciality to which they owed their designations was by no means confined to their persons. Everybody was in trade: peasants, monks, soldiers, high functionaries, all dabbled in it as they chose, till the time came when the Empire, still spurred by the same anxiety, separated the functions, so as to be better able to apportion and settle the charges they were to bear. That was to be the work of the seventeenth century. But even then there was only to be one regiment more in the great army, more prisoners in the great cage,