the action of the Russian Government in the Grand Duchy of Finland. The
manifesto of February 3-15, 1899, is not a negation of such a peaceful
cooperation, but a confirmation of the aforesaid leading principle of
our Government in its full development. It decides that the issue of
imperial laws, common both to Russia and Finland, must not depend
altogether on the consent of the members of the Finland Diet, but is
the prerogative of the Imperial Council of State, with the
participation on such occasions of members of the Finland Senate. There
is nothing in this manifesto to shake the belief of Russia's friends in
the compatibility of the principles of autocracy with a large measure
of local self-government and civic liberty. The development of the
spiritual and material powers of the population by its gradual
introduction to participation in the conscious public life of
the state, as a healthy, conservative principle of government,
has always entered into the plans of the sovereign leaders of the life
of Russia as a state. These intentions were announced afresh from the
throne by the manifesto of February 26, 1903. In our country this
process takes place in accordance with the historical basis of the
empire, with the national peculiarities of its population.

The result is that in Russia we have the organization of local
institutions which give self-government in the narrow sense of the
word--_i.e.,_ the right of the people to see to the satisfaction of
their local economic needs. In Finland the idea of local autonomy was
developed far earlier and in a far wider manner. Its present scope,
which has grown and developed under Russian rule, embraces all sides,
not only of the economic, but of the civil, life of the land. Russian
autocracy has thus given irrefragable proof of its constructive powers
in the sphere of civic development. The historian of the future will
have to note its ethical importance in a far wider sphere as well: the