If the Chinese, who know nothing of natural science, have succeeded by purely empirical methods in perfecting agriculture to such an extent that a whole family can support itself on a few square yards of land, what may not the European do with the help of chemistry, botanical physiology, and the other natural sciences ?" Coming back from the possibilities of the future to the actualities of the present, these ingenious and eloquent writers pointed out that in the rural Commune, Russia possessed a sure preventive against the greatest evil of West-European social organisation, the Proletariat.
Here the Slavophils could strike in with their favourite refrain about the rotten social condition of Western Europe; and their temporary allies, though they habitually scoffed at the Slavophil jeremiads, had no reason for the moment to contradict them.

Very soon the Proletariat became, for the educated classes, a species of bugbear, and the reading public were converted to the doctrine that the Communal institutions should be preserved as a means of excluding the monster from Russia.
This fear of what is vaguely termed the Proletariat is still frequently to be met with in Russia, and I have often taken pains to discover precisely what is meant by the term.

I cannot, however, say that my efforts have been completely successful.

The monster seems to be as vague and shadowy as the awful forms which Milton placed at the gate of the infernal regions.

At one moment he seems to be simply our old enemy Pauperism, but when we approach a little nearer we find that he expands to colossal dimensions, so as to include all who do not possess inalienable landed property.