[9] See Appendix, p. 101.
[10] It is needless to say that our remarks do not apply to all the Russian engineers without exception, for we ourselves have known many upright and worthy men amongst them; and these men were the more deserving of esteem, as they always ended by being the victims of their own integrity.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER XIII.
"Count Cancrine was the only statesman in Russia who possessed some share of learning and general information, though somewhat deficient in the knowledge specially applicable to his own department. He was a very good bookkeeper; but chemistry, mechanics, and technology were quite unknown to him. His sense of duty overbore all feelings of German nationality; he really desired the good of Russia, while at the same time he did not neglect his own affairs, for the care of which his post afforded him peculiar facilities. Colbert's fortune was made matter of reproach to him; a similar reproach may be fairly made against M. Cancrine, even though he leaves to his children the care of expending his wealth. He has amassed a yearly income of 400,000 rubles. 'It will all go,' he says, 'my children will take care of that.'
"He was the most ardent partisan both of the prohibitive and of the industrial system; and the feverish development he gave to manufactures does not redeem the distress of agriculture to which he denied his solicitude. A true Russian would never have fallen into this error, but would have comprehended that Russia is pre-eminently an agricultural country. The question of serfdom found this minister's knowledge at fault. His monetary measures were but gropings in the dark, with many an awkward fall, and sometimes a lucky hit. He deserves credit, however, for having opposed the emperor's wasteful profusion, with a perseverance which the tsar called wrongheadedness, though he did not venture to break with him. It was Mazarine's merit that he gave Colbert to Louis XIV. In appointing M. Vrontshenko as his successor, Count Cancrine has rendered a very ill service to Russia."—Ivan Golovine, Russia under Nicholas I.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE DIFFERENT CONDITIONS OF MEN IN RUSSIA—THE NOBLES—DISCONTENT OF THE OLD ARISTOCRACY—THE MERCHANT CLASS—SERFDOM.