Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/178

 162 ESSAYS AND LETfEIlS

class), but only those who have not passed all the classes

of the National Scliools.

Evidently a ^^reat cliang-e has taken place in wliat we call the educated upper classes. The men of the 'twenties, who considered the infliction of corporal punishment disgraceful to themselves, were able to g-et rid of it even in the military service, where it was deemed indis|)ensahle ; but the men of our day calmly apply it, not to soldiers only, but to any man of one >pecial class of the Russian people, afid cautiously, diplomatically, in their committees an<l assemblies, draw up addresses and petitions to the CJovernment, with all sorts of reservations and circumlocutions, say- ing that there are hygienic ohjections to punishment by flogtring, and therefore its use should be limited ; or that it would be desirable only to flog those peasants who have not gone through a certain school course, or not to flog peasants referred to in the Manifesto issued on the occasion of the Tsar's marriage.

P^vidently a terrible change has taken place among the so-called upjier classes of Russian society. And what is most astonishing is that it has come about just while (during these same seventy-five years ; and especi- ally during the last thirty-five, since the emancipation of the serfs), in the very class which it is considered necessary to expose to this revolting, coarse, and stupid torture by flogging, an equally important change has taken place in the contrary direction.

'hile the upper, governing classes have sunk to a

fdane so coarse and morally degraded that they have egalized flogging and can calmly discuss it, the mental and moral plane of the peasant class has so risen that corporal punishment has become for them not only a physical, but also a moral, torture.

1 have heard and read of cases of suicide committed by peasants sentenced to be flogged, and I cannot doubt that such cases occur, for 1 have myself seen a most ordinary young peasant turn white as a sheet and lose control of his voice at the mere mention, in the District Court, of the possibility of it being inflicted on him.