We see the same vague aspiration after grand ideals, and the same despotic methods in dealing with things in the concrete.

No general amnesty attended his coronation, no act of clemency has been extended to political exiles.

Men and women whose hairs have whitened in Siberia have not been recalled--not one thing done to lighten the awful load of anguish in his empire.

It may have been unreasonable to have looked for reforms; but certainly it was not too much to expect mercy! What one man could reform Russia?
Who could reform a volcano?
There are frightful energies beneath that adamantine surface--energies which have been confined by a rude, imperfectly organized system of force; a chain-work of abuses roughly welded together as occasion required.

It is a system created by emergencies,--improvised, not grown,--in which to remove a single abuse endangers the whole.