Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/295

Rh Assembly of Nobles, at the suggestion of Mr. U. F. Samárin, one of its members, sent a respectful but urgent memorial to the Crown, recommending that every political exile who had been dealt with by administrative process should be given the right to demand a judicial investigation of his case. The memorial went unheeded, and the Government, I believe, did not even make a reply to it.

Before the year 1882 the rights, privileges, and obligations of political offenders exiled to Siberia by administrative process were set forth only in secret circular-letters, sent from time to time by the Minister of the Interior to the governors of the different Siberian provinces. Owing to changes in the ministry, changes in circumstances, and changes of ministerial policy, these circular-letters of instruction ultimately became so contradictory, or so inconsistent one with another, and led to so many "misunderstandings," "irregularities," and collisions between the exiles and the local authorities in the Siberian towns and villages, that on the 12th of March, 1882, the Minister of the Interior drew up, and the Tsar approved, a set of rules for the better regulation of police surveillance and administrative exile. An official copy of this paper, which I brought back with me from Siberia, lies before me as I write. It is entitled: "Rules Relating to Police Surveillance" [Polozhénie o Politséiskom Nadzóre]. The first thing that strikes the reader in a perusal of this document is the fact that it declares exile and police surveillance to be, not punishments for crimes already committed, but measures of precaution to prevent the commission of crimes that evil-minded men may contemplate. The first section reads as follows: "Police surveillance [which includes administrative exile] is a means of preventing crimes against the existing imperial order [the present form of government]; and it is applicable to all persons who are prejudicial to public tranquillity."