THE CORONATION OF THE CZAR.
After long delay and months of seclusion from his subjects, Alexander III. has been crowned Czar of all the Russias. The coronation ceremonies took place at Moscow, in the Church of the Assumption, in the Kremlin, within whose walls all the Romanoffs have been crowned. Vast concourses of people thronged the streets and crowded the thoroughfares of the city, the Kremlin was packed with a dense mass of humanity, intent on witnessing the imposing ceremonies of the coronation. Princes of every rank and government officials of all degrees were present from all parts of his broad domains to do homage to their master. The crowned heads of Europe sent their representatives to grace the august occasion and to convey their greetings and good wishes to the new-made monarch.
The pageant of the coronation is said to have been the most magnificent spectacle witnessed in Europe in modern times. It is estimated that not less than ten millions of dollars were expended in its preparation. The czar was everywhere received by his subjects with the greatest enthusiasm, seeming to betoken the utmost loyalty and reverence toward their rightful monarch. Nothing occurred to mar the pomp and splendor of the occasion. No bombs were thrown, no mines were exploded, no hostile demonstrations of any kind were made; everything seemed to indicate the return of an era of peace and security in the lately perturbed realm of Russia.
The crown with which the czar was invested is said to be worth not less than three millions of roubles, but it is as heavily ladened with cares as with jewels. No other ruler in Europe to-day has so unenviable a throne or rests under such heavy burdens and responsibilities. His vast domains have no bond of integral unity, save the military power, while in whole provinces the inhabitants are but one remove from barbarism. In addition to this the Nihilistic organization, which pervades all Europe, is strongly intrenched in his kingdom, and may, like a sleeping volcano, burst out in the future, as it has in the recent past, with terrible fury and disastrous results. Its representatives are everywhere; in the towns, cities and country; in the army and palace; among peasants and princes of the realm. Their threats of violence forced the czar into involuntary seclusion, and were the cause of his long delay in assuming the crown.
While the deeds of violence which have characterized the Nihilistic movement can not but be deprecated, they find some palliation in the fact that Russia has been the worst governed country in all Europe. Its czar is an absolute despot, and inasmuch as princes are not usually slow to use all the power placed at their disposal, Russian subjects have for centuries experienced all the ills coincident with an absolute despotism. It is true that serfdom has been abolished, but the tardy justice which accomplished this great work but whetted the appetite of the Russian people for larger liberty, and for the rightful privileges conceded by other European governments to their subjects. Their demands in this direction have been hitherto sternly denied. Every effort for their attainment has been met with the most determined opposition on the part of the government. For even slight political offenses, men are seized, and, with a mere apology of a trial, are condemned, and sentenced to penal servitude in the mines of Siberia. They are compelled to labor there from twelve to eighteen hours per day, at the hardest kind of toil and under the surveillance of brutal overseers. They are furnished but a meager supply of food, and that of an inferior kind. They are exposed to the stern severities of the Siberian winters, with but a scant supply of clothing and little shelter. Within five or six years death usually kindly puts a terminus to the sufferings of the miserable exiles.
It is barbarities like these on the part of the government that has put the sword and the bomb in the hand of the Russian Nihilist. Goaded by opposition and aggravated by the denial of the rights of citizenship, its subjects have resorted to the worst of revolutionary measures to secure the redress of their wrongs and the possession of the rights conceded to the subjects of other European states. It is to be hoped that the new czar may learn from the lessons of the past that the days of despots and autocrats are numbered, and that the nineteenth century of the Christian era is an age when the rights of subjects can not be disregarded, even by crowned heads, with impunity. The only possible way in which Alexander III. can secure the prolonged peace and perpetuity of his kingdom is to adopt a liberal policy toward his subjects, institute measures to redress their many and grievous wrongs, and surrender to the people or their representatives a portion of the power now lodged in his hands, which is by far too great for any monarch to possess, and which renders him alike dangerous to the state and to his subjects.
