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it drew its labour had to be replaced after a time by
another four. The local agent of the Alexander Nevski
Convent in St. Petersburg even refused to give the
peasants receipts for work and other dues paid to him,
and this proceeding was quite a common one. Accustomed
as such overseers were in Russia to demand
work at their pleasure, they could not understand why
they should not claim the same rights in Finland, and
increase rents, and make what demands they pleased
from the peasants. In a famous lawsuit between
Baron Freedericksz of Taubila and his peasants, in the
reign of the Empress Catherine, a decision was given
by the Imperial Senate by which the landlord might
increase the rent of his peasants notwithstanding the
decision of 1728. When rent could be arbitrarily
increased, the peasants themselves no longer profited
by their own improvements. The Empress Catherine,
in whose reign, notwithstanding her liberal professions,
serfdom developed into such complete slavery that the
serfs could be sold off the estates, gave donations in
Old Finland of “souls with farms and habitations as
eternal and hereditary possession.” When the Russian
system of military conscription was introduced, and
young men were carried off to Poland and Turkey,
while those who stayed at home had to build barracks
and provide everything which was used in them, many
of the young men fled the country, and the peasants
tried forcible resistance, no fewer than twenty-eight
peasant riots taking place in a few years. Furthermore,
even in the time of Alexander I., demands came
from the Russian nobles in Finland, especially from a
certain Major-General Kopyeff, that the government
should introduce into Finland a complete system of
Russian serfdom, and permit the nobles to locate the
peasants in big villages, where it would be easier to
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