Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/114

88 Speranskii's constitution was a plan for a political elementary school, finished in all its details. His reward, like that of his predecessor Radiščev, was banishment to Siberia. After two years he was permitted to return, and subsequently held various ofﬁces in the state service. From 1819 to 1821 he was governor-general of Siberia. In the reign of Nicholas I he was in charge of the work of legal codification. During these later years Speranskii's views underwent modification, so that he drew nearer to his sometime opponents.

Karamzin, in opposition to Speranskii's broadly conceived scheme for representative government, recommended the appointment of fifty benevolent governors with despotic powers. Karamzin went so far as to contend that the tsar had no right to restrict the absolutist privileges inherited from his ancestors. Speranskii, however, was in harmony with Karamzin on one point, for he too had grasped how the institution of serfdom contributes to the strength of absolutism.

In the year 1815, Alexander granted a constitution to Poland, and his regime there as constitutionalist absolutist gave him continued occasion to consider the question of constitutional government for Russia. At the opening of the Polish diet in 1818, the tsar even gave a half promise to establish constitutional government throughout Russia, saying: "You have provided me with an opportunity of announcing to my fatherland what I have been preparing for it for many years, and what it will make a good use of, as soon as the preliminaries for so important a change shall have sufficiently matured." This speech aroused high hopes in Russia, for the Russians had no wish to be less privileged than the Poles; and the tsar commissioned Novosilcev to draft a new scheme. It was commented on and approved by Alexander, presumably in the year 1821, but was still-born like that of Speranskii, which it closely resembled. The tsar's reluctance to initiate these reforms was probably stimulated by the discovery of plots, aiming in 1817 at his assassination, and in 1818 at his imprisonment.

Notwithstanding the example set by European states, the majority of the aristocracy, like the tsar, had no faith in constitutionalism. Typical of these doubts was the previously mentioned Karazin. In an address delivered in 1816, and again later, after Alexander's Warsaw speech, he energetically opposed the introduction of a constitution. His contention was that