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134 etans," he proclaimed by ukase, "and even idolaters, are tolerated in the empire; now the Raskolniks (Dissenters) are Christians."

The great Catherine continued, in matters of conscience, the liberal policy of her husband Peter III., and exercised severity only against those who disturbed public order, and, like Pougatchev, revolted against her authority as sovereign. Her measures of repression were not dictated by motives of religious intolerance, and she assured all Dissenters, who were willing to be law-abiding and faithful subjects, of immunity from persecution and of her protection, in earnest of which she relieved them of the double tax imposed by Peter the Great.

She permitted the establishment of foreign religions, and, in order to people the fertile, but uninhabited, regions of the Volga and the Ukraine, she encouraged immigration, and offered in her realm an asylum to all persecuted religious sects, with unrestrained liberty of conscience. Many thousands answered her appeal, and nearly two hundred towns sprang into existence as a consequence of this wise and enlightened policy.

Animated by views similar to those of her great predecessor, Peter, and determined to make the Church subservient to the State, she resumed, and carried into effect, the secularization of ecclesiastical property. An "Economical Commission" was charged with its administration; the monasteries, converted from land-owning proprietors to crown pensioners, received allowances, each in proportion to its wants, and the surplus revenues were applied to schools, invalid homes, and hospitals. In her correspondence with Voltaire she dwells with complacency upon this important measure, and upon the liberal spirit in which it was carried into effect. "I think," she writes, "you would be pleased with this as-