The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

GOVERNMENT AND ADMINISTRATION. 475municipalities has restored his power. Even since the judicial reforms of 1864he has not heen deprived of an exorbitant privilege analogous to that of thelettres de cachet under the old French regime.Except in Poland and inthe Baltic Provinces, already possessing their feudalDiets, an instalment of representative government was everywhere introduced in186-1 by the creation of the Zemstvo, or provincial Parliaments, analogous to theGerman Landtag.In these Zemstvo (from Zemlia land) the deputies belong to allclasses—nobles, citizens, traders, peasants—and hold their sittings in three distinctchambers, or curiae. The first, or assembly of landed proprietors, consists of ownersof estates averaging from 550 to 1,780 acres according to the provinces, of delegatesof proprietors with at least 55 acres, and of representatives of the clergy as holdersof ecclesiastical lands.The second, or assembly of burgesses, comprises merchants,traders, and manufacturers doing a trade of at least 6,000 roubles, house owners,and representatives of industrial associations disposing of a fixed capital. Lastly,the third curia, that of the rural communes, includes the delegates of the peasantry,elected at second hand—that is, by the members of the bailiwicks, who are themselvesnamed by thepeasantry at the rate of one for every group of ten families.The presidency of the first curia belongs to the marshal of the nobles, of thesecond to the mayors of the towns, of the third to the officials employed in theadministration of rural affairs, the president in chief of the Zemstvo being alwaysthe marshal of the nobles, except where specially appointed by the Czar. Thefirst two bodies are chosen from their respective classes, but the peasantry mayelect nobles or priests to represent them, and the number of deputies is everywherecalculated in such a way as to leave the rural classes in a minority.The sessions are very short, the district Zemstvo sitting only for ten days inthe year, while the delegates chosen by it for the provincial Zemstvo meet annuallyin the chief town for twenty days only. But every three years the assembliesname anuprava, or administrative committee, whose president must be approvedby the governor or minister, who has also the power of suspending all decisionsof the Zemstvo which he may consider contrary to the laws or the good of thestate. The range of subjects of which these bodies can take cognisance is,moreover, very limited, and becomes yearly more restricted by ministerial injunctions.The municipal institutions have passed through an evolution analogous to thatof the Zemstvo. Under the old regime the interests of the boroughs were lookedafter by a duma, or council, chosen bj- the traders and burgesses(mieshchane), andin certain grave contingencies the general electoral body decided. Now theGovernment has attempted to fuse all classes in the urban, as it has in theprovincial administration. St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa, first received a newmunicipal organization resembling that of the Zemstvo, and in 1870 the municipalitieswere reconstituted in nearly all the towns of the empire. The urbanelectors are divided into three curias, according to the amount of their taxes, eachgroup appointing for four years an equal number of deputies {glasniye, fromglas, " vote ").These, constituting the duma, name in their turn, also for four years,