Considerable ministerial changes have occurred in St. Peters- 
burg. The Minister of Finance, M. Cancrin, has fallen into 
disgrace, and the same is reported concerning the Police Minister, 
the well-known Count Benkendorff. Nicholas is evidently strug- 
gling to keep up a system which is rapidly ruining itself. The 
anti-Russian feeling in Germany and the other continental states is 
upon the increase, notwithstanding all the efforts of Nicholas’s 
paid literary army. The financial state of the government is one 
great difficulty; the pomp of the court, the innumerable army of 
policemen and spies, the expenses of diplomatists, spies, reporters, 
of secret intrigues, and bribery all over Europe, the army and 
navy, and the endless wars against the Circassians,”° have eaten 
up everything that taxes and loans could bring together. The 
restrictive commercial policy of M. Cancrin has made foreign 
trade in some parts of the empire almost impossible, and has 
failed to establish a system of national industry at home. Among 
the nobility, three parties are to be traced distinctly—the court, 
the old country nobility, and the officers of the army. They are 
intriguing constantly against each other, their object of course 
being nothing else but exclusive dominion over the person of the 
Emperor, who, as all despots, is, after all, only the tool of his 
favourites.