Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/310

288. As long, however, as a despotic administration at St. Petersburg can gag its newspapers for months at a time, keep its university closed, choose the teachers and prescribe the courses of study for its schools, prohibit the reading of the best books in its libraries, bind its population hand and foot by a rigid passport system, govern it through corrupt and wretchedly paid chinóvniks, and pour into it every year a flood of common criminals from European Russia, just so long will it remain what it now is—a naturally enterprising and promising colony strangled by oppressive and unnecessary guardianship. The Government, just at the present time, proposes to develop the resources of the province by building through it a railroad. It might much better loosen the grasp in which it holds the people by the throat, permit them to exercise some judgment with regard to the management of their own affairs, allow them freely to discuss their needs and plans in their own newspapers, abolish restrictions upon personal liberty of movement, stop the sending there of criminal exiles, and then let the province develop itself. It does not need "development" half as much as it needs to be let alone.

Our first step in Tomsk was to call upon the political exiles, and upon several army officers to whom we had letters of introduction, and ascertain from them the facts that were necessary for our guidance. We were received by everybody with the utmost courtesy and kindness, and Colonel Yágodkin, the chief military officer of the district, not only welcomed us to his house with cordial hospitality, but took a friendly interest in all of our prison investigations. Only a day or two after our arrival he called at our hotel to inform us that a convict barge from Tiumén had arrived that morning at the steamer-landing two or three miles from the city, and to say that if we would like to see the reception of a convict party, he would go to the landing with us and introduce us to the chief officer of the local exile bureau. I thanked him for his thoughtfulness, and in ten