Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/451

Rh From the point of view of the Government there might be some propriety, perhaps, in the application of the term nihilist to a conspirator like Necháief, or to a regicide like Rissákof, — although in point of fact neither of them was a nihilist, — but there can be no possible reason or excuse for calling by that name a professor who opposes the inquisitorial provisions of the new university laws, an editor who questions the right of the Minister of the Interior to banish a man to Siberia without trial, or a member of a provincial assembly who persuades his fellow-delegates to join in a petition to the Crown asking for a constitution. These people are not nihilists; they are not even revolutionists; they are peaceable, law-abiding citizens, who are striving, by reasonable methods, to secure a better form of government; and yet, after having been removed from their official places, silenced by ministerial prohibition, and exiled without trial, they are misrepresented to the world as nihilists and enemies of all social order. It seems to me extremely desirable that the use of the word nihilist to characterize a Russian political offender be discontinued. It is not accurately descriptive of any branch or fraction of the anti-Government party in Russia; it does great injustice to the liberals and the non-terroristic revolutionists, who constitute an overwhelming majority of that party; it is misleading to public opinion in Europe and America; and it deprives a large class of reasonable, temperate, and patriotic men and women of the sympathy to which they are justly entitled, by making it appear that they are opposed to all things, human and divine, except bomb-throwing and assassination. If an American journalist, in a discussion of Irish affairs, should class together such men as Patrick Ford, Justin McCarthy, ex-Representative Finerty, Patrick Egan, Charles Parnell, O'Donovan Rossa, John Morley, and the Phœnix Park assassins, and call them all "Fenians," he would probably furnish more amusement than