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his honesty, and with his self-confidence had made his career, was his
contempt for red tape, his cutting down of correspondence, his direct
contact, wherever possible, with the living fact, and his economy. It
happened that the famous Commission of the 2nd of June had set on
foot an inquiry into the irrigation of lands in the Zaraisky province,
which fell under Alexey Alexandrovitch’s department, and was a glar-
ing example of fruitless expenditure and paper reforms. Alexey
Alexandrovitch was aware of the truth of this. The irrigation of these
lands in the Zaraisky province had been initiated by the predecessor
of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s predecessor. And vast sums of money had
actually been spent and were still being spent on this business, and
utterly unproductively, and the whole business could obviously lead to
nothing whatever. Alexey Alexandrovitch had perceived this at once
on entering office, and would have liked to lay hands on the Board of
Irrigation. But at first, when he did not yet feel secure in his position,
he knew it would affect too many interests, and would be injudicious.
Later on he had been engrossed in other questions, and had simply
forgotten the Board of Irrigation. It went of itself, like all such boards,
by the mere force of inertia. (Many people gained their livelihood by
the Board of Irrigation, especially one highly conscientious and musi-
cal family: all the daughters played on stringed instruments, and Alexey
Alexandrovitch knew the family and had stood godfather to one of the
elder daughters.) The raising of this question by a hostile department
was in Alexey Alexandrovitch’s opinion a dishonorable proceeding,
seeing that in every department there were things similar and worse,
which no one inquired into, for well-known reasons of official etiquette.
However, now that the glove had been thrown down to him, he had
boldly picked it up and demanded the appointment of a special com-
mission to investigate and verify the working of the Board of Irrigation
of the lands in the Zaraisky province. But in compensation he gave no
quarter to the enemy either. He demanded the appointment of an-
other special commission to inquire into the question of the Native
Tribes Organization Committee. The question of the Native Tribes
had been brought up incidentally in the Commission of the 2nd of
June, and had been pressed forward actively by Alexey Alexandrovitch
as one admitting of no delay on account of the deplorable condition bf
the native tribes. In the commission this question had been a ground
of contention between several departments. The department hostile
to Alexey Alexandrovitch proved that the condition of the native tribes
was exceedingly flourishing, that the proposed reconstruction might be
the ruin of their prosperity, and that if there were anything wrong, it
arose mainly from the failure on the part of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s
department to carry out the measures prescribed by law. Now Alexey
Alexandrovitch intended to demand: First, that a new commission
should be formed which should be empowered to investigate the con-
dition of the native tribes on the spot; secondly, if it should appear that
the condition of the native tribes actually was such as it appeared to be
from the official documents in the hands of the committee, that an-
other new scientific commission should be appointed to investigate the
deplorable condition of the native tribes from the—(1) political, (2)
administrative, (3) economic, (4) ethnographical, (5) material, and (6)
religious points of view; thirdly, that evidence should be required from
the rival department of the measures that had been taken during the
last ten years by that department for averting the disastrous conditions
in which the native tribes were now placed; and fourthly and finally,
that that department explain why it had, as appeared from the evi-
dence before the committee, from No. 17,015 and 18,038, from De-
cember 5, 1863, and June 7, 1864, acted in direct contravention of the