Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/64

 40 its rights and profits, and who represented it in the guise of lieutenants (namiéstniki), bailies (volostniéli), and governors. To govern a town or province was to live on that town or province by means of charges levied on the dispensation of justice. This was called kormlénié, from kormit, to feed, and the governors were the kormlenchtchiki, par excellence. When, at a later period, the economic life of the country called for administrative agents in the true sense of the word, the thought of using the governors for this purpose never occurred to anybody. New needs brought new organs into being, and the old ones stayed on to be fed, and with no other raison d'être.

The kormlénié, which was in perfect harmony with the territorial rights of the vottchiny, and much more a privilege than a function, was connected with civil rather than with political rights. A boïar's widow might claim it, or his other heirs if there was no widow—any of the deceased man's family, in fact. In the same way, while the governor turned his province to account, the bailie, within his own bailiwick, was not the governor's subordinate, but his competitor. He kept certain classes of business and people in his own jurisdiction—he had legal power over the 'black' lands, for instance, whereas the 'white' lands were ruled by his neighbour.

The abuses to which this system lent itself may be imagined. In theory, indeed, the expenses of judicial proceedings were defined, and profits limited to what they ought to bring. But there were extras, bribes which must be paid, the result of the wholesale trickery rampant in an organization over which no effectual control existed. This was the plague-spot on the whole system.

There was no rule—no rule laid down, at all events—for the recruiting of this double set of State servants. The Sovereign chose whom he would. Yet, practically, his choice was limited by the difficulty of finding, outside a certain social class, men fit to do the work. The Moscow policy strove to widen these borders and take in fresh blood, drawn from every class of society, even the humblest. These democratic tendencies were checked by the lack of sufficient intellectual development. Dog-boys whose training permitted them to cut a decent figure in the guise of namiéstniki were not common. And thus it came about that the social element, the hereditary principle, and the aristocratic spirit all blended with the political element and the principle of co-optation, and produced in the result a phenomenon the like of which has never been seen in any other European country: the miéstnitchestvo. The very name is hardly known outside Russia. I will endeavour to explain the thing.