Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/98

76 begging with a pretense of being in distress, and setting fire to property accidentally.

In the eighteenth century the great mineral and agricultural resources of Siberia began to attract to it the serious and earnest attention of the Russian government. The discovery of the Daúrski silver mines, and the rich mines of Nérchinsk in the Siberian territory of the Trans-Baikál, created a sudden demand for labor, which led the government to promulgate a new series of ukázes providing for the transportation thither of convicts from the Russian prisons. In 1762 permission was given to all individuals and corporations owning serfs, to hand the latter over to the local authorities for banishment to Siberia whenever they thought they had good reason for so doing. With the abolition of capital punishment in 1753, all criminals that, under the old law, would have been put to death, were condemned to perpetual exile in Siberia with hard labor.

In the reign of Catherine II. the demand for laborers in Siberia became more and more imperative, by reason of the discovery of the rich and important mines of Ekaterínburg, and the establishment of large manufactories in Irkútsk; and the list of crimes and offenses punishable by exile grew larger and larger. Jews were exiled for refusing or neglecting to pay their taxes for three successive years; serfs were exiled for cutting down trees without leave; non-commissioned officers of the army were exiled for second offenses of various kinds, and bad conduct of almost any sort became a sufficient warrant for deportation to Siberia.

Up to the close of the eighteenth century, very little attention was paid to the treatment of the exiles en route, and still less to the proper organization and control of the exile system. Kolódniks, as the exiles were then called, were