Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/39

Rh nothing to read,—neither books nor newspapers,—and I know nothing of what is going on in the world.

Beyond this [says Mr. Priklónski in commenting upon the letter] severity cannot go. Beyond this there remains nothing to do but to tie a man to the tail of a wild horse, and drive him into the steppe, or chain him to a corpse and leave him to his fate. One does not wish to believe that a human being can be subjected, without trial and by a mere executive order, to such grievous torment—to a punishment which European civilization has banished from its penal code even for the most desperate class of villains whose inhuman crimes have been proved by trial in a criminal court. And yet we are assured by the correspondent of the Russian Gazette that up to this time none of the exiles in the province of Yakútsk have been granted any alleviating privileges; ten newly arrived administratives have been distributed, — most of them among the ulúses, — and more are expected in the near future.

The statements made in Mr. Priklónski's article are supported by private letters, now in my possession, from ulús exiles, by the concurrent testimony of a large number of politicals who have lived through this experience, and by