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to increase the infection, to sharpen his faculties, and to change him from a theoretical to a practical—that is, an extremely dangerous—man. If, on the contrary, he has not been guilty of taking part in a revolutionary movement, exile, by force of the same circumstances, develops in his mind the idea of revolution, or, in other words, produces a result directly opposite to that which it was intended to produce. No matter how exile by administrative process may be regulated and restricted, it will always suggest to the mind of the exiled person the idea of uncontrolled official license, and this alone is sufficient to prevent any reformation whatever.

Truer words than these were never written by a high Russian official, and so far as the practical expediency of exile by administrative process is concerned, I should be content to rest the case against it upon this frank report of the governor of Archangel. The subject, however, may be regarded from a point of view other than that of expediency—namely, from the point of view of morals, justice, and humanity. That side of the question I shall reserve for further discussion in later chapters.