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The Circassian peasantry are picturesque in bright colors, and the thin veneering of Western civilization spread over the semi-barbarity of the Russian officials and first-class passengers is an interesting study in itself.
That the peasantry injure their material welfare by drunkenness and improvidence there can be no reasonable doubt, as is shown by the comparatively flourishing state of certain villages of Old Ritualists and Molokanye in which there is no drunkenness, and in which the community exercises a strong moral control over the individual members.
But these are points of light amidst the feudal darkness of the rural districts. In France, for example, the peasantry are cattle; in time of peace crushed with forced labour, feudal burdens, and imposts of all kinds; in time of war driven, in unwilling masses, half-armed and helpless, to the shambles. Aristocratic luxury, gambling, profligate wars Jacques Bonhomme pays for them all.
Their opponents, joining under compulsion, had the means as well as the will of doing them injury. For the clergy there was a brief season of popular favour. The country priests, sprung from the peasantry, and poorly off, shared many of their feelings.
And that spark was shortly afterwards supplied by the archpriest Chayla, director of missions at Pont-de-Montvert. Although it was known that many of the peasantry attended the meetings armed, there had as yet been no open outbreak against the royal authority in the Cevennes.
Therefore, did the kind young landlord, who had come to live among his own peasantry, resolve, not more nobly than wisely, to seize an opportunity so good as this, for restoring, by a stroke of generous policy, peace and content on his domain.
She seems to have won in every instance the hearts of the good simple peasantry, the poorer classes in general, called by a saintly King of France the 'common people of our Lord, who believed in her long before others of the higher classes and the patricians were persuaded to put any faith in her.
This reform is characteristic of much of the legislation of Cuza: despotically pursuing the realization of some ideal reform, without adequate study of and adaptation to social circumstances, his laws provided no practical solution of the problem with which they dealt. In this case, for example, the reform benefited the upper class solely, although generally considered a boon to the peasantry.
At first he despised a peasantry ungrateful enough to pillage a general of the Empire, an essentially kind and generous man; presently, however, he added hatred to contempt. But multiply himself as he would, he could not be everywhere, and the enemy pillaged everywhere that he was not.
As we strolled beyond the village, and were engaged in earnest converse on this subject, we suddenly came on a group of holiday-makers. A number of the peasantry were assembled in a field, engaged in dances, games, and athletic sports. We mingled with the crowd and looked on. They were engaged at the time in a wrestling match.
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