238 GOVERNING RUSSIA'S PROVINCESdown to 200,000, and when Speransky left Penza, the books had been
balanced. This he accomplished without any changes in the fiscal system
or in the methods of collection. His authority did not go that far. He
merely streamlined the fiscal administration, held all officials to strict
account, and he supervised carefully and constantly the tax collectors'
performance of their duties. The courts were in still worse state,
perhaps. The number of prescriptions of the Senate that were left
unfulfilled, the number of cases pending in the courts was staggering.
Speransky applied all his energy, his capacity for long sustained work,
and his ability to organize the work of others to break this logjam. He
made repeated inspection tours; and in each town or city he stayed as
long as was necessary for all cases to be settled and all regulations
put into application. Spurred on by the personal presence of the gov-
ernor, and helped by his experience and opinions in more difficult cases,
the judges brought their task to a speedy conclusion. Only then did
Speransky move to the next town.
His greatest difficulty - a difficulty that lay at the bottom of most
abuses and mismanagement - was the absence of adequately trained
and honest officials. Speransky soon became convinced that no matter
how good the laws or the administrative system, nothing would come of
them as long as the bureaucratic personnel remained unsatisfactory.
This applied both to the regular functionaries and to the elected of-
ficials. In Speransky's opinion, the importance of the officials elected
by the local nobles was directly proportional to the honesty and ef-
ficiency of the governor and the other officials appointed from St.
Petersburg. Under an honest and efficient governor, the marshal of the
nobility stuck to his duties and was prevented from using his position
for illicit purposes; the land captains were supervised effectively and
held to account for their actions. But in the absence of good governors
and officials, the elected officers were left to their own devices; and
as the majority was neither well educated nor very conscientious, the
administration deteriorated and led to abuses.
The first task, Speransky felt, was to educate the nobility to a
proper awareness of its social and political duties. This in turn would
contribute to the development of a "public opinion" which in due
course of time might provide a firm guarantee of legality and orderly
administration. As we see, Speransky's ideas had not changed since the
time he wrote his projects of reform; only now he was more cautious
and, wisened by his direct experience with provincial society, he paid
more attention to the human side of things. The difficulty of local ad-
ministration, he wrote to Count Kochubei, still is that "it is difficult to