Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/547

9, 1863.] pillaged, but those also who were totally ignorant of their intentions—peaceable traders, minors whose money had been lent on mortgages, or even the very faithful subjects of his Imperial Majesty who had any business transactions with his victims even before the rebellion, whose approach had been so totally unforeseen. Article 28 of the same ukase directs, that in estimating the value of confiscated lands, the usual rate granted by the Bank of Credit in its loans, should be taken, and fifty roubles added per head, for each male serf when the said land was under cultivation.

This clause was ingeniously contrived so as to defraud the creditors on heavily-encumbered estates. In Russia, the value of cultivated land was always estimated by the number of male serfs occupied on it—on an average, 175 silver roubles for each male serf. The Bank of Credit lent at the rate of sixty roubles per serf; for of course, in mortgages, it took care not to exceed a third of the actual value represented. Thus the June ukase in adding an additional fifty roubles per serf, making in all 110 silver roubles, deducted just sixty-five roubles on each, from the real value of the property confiscated. Estates were thus registered at less than two-thirds of their worth, all debts on them exceeding this, of course, refused liquidation, and the Government having effected a fraudulent insolvency, the defrauded creditors were left to divide the amount abandoned to them as they best could, whilst the Czar quietly absorbed the remainder. For the most part, the claimants were Poles, and thus the spoliation became not only profitable, but politic.

The ukases of April, 1831, and June, 1832, opened a brilliant perspective for the legions of Muscovite officials, who were ready to swoop down on the sequestrated and confiscated property. The green-coated Tchinowniks found a veritable Eldorado, and contrived that the rich yield of the placers should give them a liberal per-centage before passing to their master. Proprietors whose possessions had escaped complete escheatment, but were involved in temporary sequestration, were obliged to content themselves with a miserable dole from the hands of the Commission of Liquidation, and this was still further reduced before it reached their hands.

Sequestration was no mere temporary measure; the system was too profitable to be soon abandoned. Where the children of a proprietor had been implicated in the revolt, it was maintained during the lifetime of both parents. Nor was it employed merely to prevent the guilty son from inheriting the ancestral property; for, by the civil law of Russia, all political criminals become necessarily dead in law, and are incapable of either inheriting or transmitting any property whatever: whether exiled to Siberia, or living as an emigrant in Western Europe, the very existence of the offender is ignored by Russian law, except when punishment can be inflicted on him.

Sequestration became actual forfeiture under all the abuses entailed by it, in the falsification, theft, and trickery of those charged with carrying out the law. The proprietor, while suffering for the acts of his relations, though nominally allowed the revenue of his lands, could not sell or mortgage any part of them. He lived under the constant supervision of those whose enmity would involve him in irretrievable ruin; he was subject to a thousand petty irritations and annoyances; his peasants might be cruelly overworked; the Imperial Commissioner in charge of the estate could order any one of them to be beaten to death, but the master must look on powerless to help the victim; if he interfered, he would be at once denounced as disaffected, and have to expiate the crime in a Russian dungeon. If he remonstrated with his petty tyrants, he made them at once his sworn enemies; and, then, a few days would suffice to consign him in chains to the kibitka, which would bear him from wife and home, to the snows of Berezof, or the mines of Nertchinsk.

Perhaps the Tchinowniks made their best harvest from the ukase of June, 1832; for, however just and equitable might be the claims on sequestered estates, the Commission could always find sufficient demurrers, unless its members were furnished with solid persuasions for a favourable verdict. Nicholas was obliged to wink at, or at least discreetly ignore, the various peccadilloes of his underlings. Their complete demoralisation was a necessary part of his “system,” for honest men would have been unfitted for the work required. Of course, this necessity frequently had its disadvantages, both for his Majesty and his Majesty’s subjects who had claims on the confiscated estates. These claims were often enough returned to the Central Administration as valid; but the money never passed beyond the hands of the Commissioners.

Then came the ukase of April, 1834, to complete that of June, 1832. The latter had not been found sufficiently stringent. We quote its contents as briefly as possible:

All contracts, wills, bequests, and endowments were thus annulled, no matter in what part of the empire they had been made, and the property was escheated to the Crown, if any of the persons concerned had but set foot over the Polish frontier during the rebellion.

To give some indication of the wide-spread ruin which must have resulted, we need but cite an official report published in 1843, which refers to certain escheated domains, 459 in number, 228 of which were declared liquidated from all claims