Himself threw his despotism
into this formula: "Know, Sir Ambassador, that in Russia there is no one
noble or powerful except the man to whom I speak, and while I speak."
And yet within that hideous mass glowed sparks of reverence for right.
When the nobles tried to get Paul's assent to more open arrangements for
selling serfs apart from the soil, he utterly refused; and when they
overtasked their human chattels Paul made a law that no serf should be
required to give more than three days in the week to the tillage of his
master's domain. But, within five years after his accession, Paul had
developed into such a ravenous wild beast that it became necessary to
murder him. This duty done, there came a change in the spirit of Russian
sovereignty as from March to May; but, sadly for humanity, there came at
the same time a change in the spirit of European politics, as from May
to March.
For, although the new Czar, Alexander I, was mild and liberal, the storm
of French ideas and armies had generally destroyed in monarchs' minds
any poor germs of philanthropy which had ever found lodgement there.
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