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182 between two irreconcilable hostile forces, between a powerless Executive and an all-powerful Revolutionary Convention. Rather will salvation come through the systematic co-operation between a strong Executive and an Assembly of wise, moderate, practical and patriotic representatives ready to meet the Government half-way in the path of necessary reforms. More firmly than ever do I believe that salvation will come not primarily through a centralized Parliament superimposed upon a centralized bureaucracy, but through the releasing of new political forces, through the establishment of Autonomous Provinces and Independent Nationalities, and especially through the releasing of the spiritual forces, through the creation of Independent Churches. More firmly than ever do I believe that an unconditional concession of religious liberty, an honest application of the Edict of Toleration of 1905, must be the antecedent of political liberty.

Russian reformers are too much inclined to believe in the servile imitation of the British Parliamentary régime, in the adoption of the British Party System. The trouble is that whereas there are only three Parties in the British House of Commons there are twenty