As Englishmen may have some difficulty in imagining how laws can come into being without a Parliament or Legislative Chamber of some sort, I shall explain briefly how they are manufactured by the Russian bureaucratic machine without the assistance of representative institutions.
When a minister considers that some institution in his branch of the service requires to be reformed, he begins by submitting to the Emperor a formal report on the matter. If the Emperor agrees with his minister as to the necessity for reform, he orders a Commission to be appointed for the purpose of considering the subject and preparing a definite legislative project. The Commission meets and sets to work in what seems a very thorough way. It first studies the history of the institution in Russia from the earliest times downwards--or rather, it listens to an essay on the subject, especially prepared for the occasion by some official who has a taste for historical studies, and can write in a pleasant style.
The next step--to use a phrase which often occurs in the minutes of such commissions--consists in "shedding the light of science on the question" (prolit' na dyelo svet nauki). This important operation is performed by preparing a memorial containing the history of similar institutions in foreign countries, and an elaborate exposition of numerous theories held by French and German philosophical jurists. In these memorials it is often considered necessary to include every European country except Turkey, and sometimes the small German States and principal Swiss cantons are treated separately.
To illustrate the character of these wonderful productions, let me give an example. From a pile of such papers lying before me I take one almost at random. It is a memorial relating to a proposed reform of benevolent institutions. First I find a philosophical disquisition on benevolence in general; next, some remarks on the Talmud and the Koran; then a reference to the treatment of paupers in Athens after the Peloponnesian War, and in Rome under the emperors: then some vague observations on the Middle Ages, with a quotation that was evidently intended to be Latin; lastly, comes an account of the poor-laws of modern times, in which I meet with "the Anglo-Saxon domination," King Egbert, King Ethelred, "a remarkable book of Icelandic laws, called Hragas"; Sweden and Norway, France, Holland, Belgium, Prussia, and nearly all the minor German States.
The most wonderful thing is that all this mass of historical information, extending from the Talmud to the most recent legislation of Hesse-Darmstadt, is compressed into twenty-one octavo pages! The doctrinal part of the memorandum is not less rich. Many respected names from the literature of Germany, France, and England are forcibly dragged in; and the general conclusion drawn from this mass of raw, undigested materials is believed to be "the latest results of science."
Does the reader suspect that I have here chosen an extremely exceptional case? If so, let us take the next paper in the file.