" He
declared that a law should be made against it. Yet it was by his
misguided hand that serfage was compacted into its final black mass of
foulness.
For Peter saw other nations spinning and weaving, and he determined that
Russia should at once spin and weave; he saw other nations forging iron,
and he determined that Russia should at once forge iron. He never
stopped to consider that what might cost little in other lands as a
natural growth, might cost far too much in Russia as a forced growth. In
lack, then, of quick brain and sturdy spine and strong arm of paid
workmen, he forced into his manufactories the flaccid muscle of serfs.
These, thus lifted from the earth, lost even the little force in the
State they had before; great bodies of serfs thus became slaves; worse
than that, the idea of a serf developed toward the idea of a slave.
And Peter, misguided, dealt one blow more. Cold-blooded officials were
set at taking the census. These adopted easy classifications; free
peasants, serfs, and slaves were often huddled into the lists under a
single denomination.
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