A SPECIMEN OF RUSSIAN JUSTICE.

Among the French prisoners taken at the battle of Vitebsk, during Napoleon's disastrous retreat in Prussia, was a French general, who was accompanied by: his wife and daughter. Being badly wounded, he was removed to the military hospital, but the ladies were received into the private house of Madame Strognof, whose husband held, at that time, a subordinate appointment under the Russian Government.

A certain Botwinko was then procureur at Vitebsk. Without the procureur's sanction nothing can be done in his department; for he represents the emperor himself, and is usually called "the eye of His Majesty." His salary is only about twenty-five pounds a year; but he makes, usually, a good income by receiving bribes. Among other duties, he had to visit the hospitals daily, and to report upon the condition of the prisoner patients. He paid great attention to the unhappy general, who required every consolation; for, despite his own deplorable condition, it was decreed that he should outlive his wife. That lady caught a contagious fever, which was raging at that time at Vitebsk, and died in a few hours. This event so distressed the general that he soon departed this world, with the only consolation, that Procureur Botwinko, a married but childless man, would adopt his daughter. This promise was actually fulfilled, and the little orphan was taken from Madame Strognof, and established under the procureur's roof. Her parents' property, consisting of a carriage, horses, jewelry, and no small sum of ready money, was also taken possession of by Botwinko in quality of guardian to the little orphan.

As the girl, whom they called "Sophie," grew up, she became very engaging, and was kindly treated by Mr. and Madame Botwinko. She never lost an opportunity, when any visitors were in the procureur's house, of praising her protectors for their kindness to her; and this, connected with other circumstances, contributed to the promotion of Mr. Botwinko, who obtained the more profitable situation of procureur-general at Vilna, the capital of Lithuania.

Removal from their old connections, and from those who knew all the circumstances of little Sophie's history, produced a change in the treatment of the new procureur-general and his wife toward the child. Their kindness rapidly diminished. Sophie was not allowed to appear in the drawing-rooms, in their new residence at Vilna. They incessantly found fault with her; and, ultimately, she was not only sent to the kitchen under the control of the cook, but, on the census of the population being taken, in 1816, her name was inscribed on the books as that of a serf.

As the poor girl grew up she became used to the duties imposed upon her. Associating constantly with the servants, they considered her their equal, and taunted her when, relying on her infantine recollections, she laid claim to noble descent, by calling her in derision "Mademoiselle French General." She knew full well that she was entitled to better treatment, and that, in the absence of paternal authority, she had the right of disposing of herself according to her own will. A strong inducement to alter her condition was presented in the person of a young clerk in a government office, whose duty sometimes brought him with papers to the procureur for signature. While Botwinko was engaged with his breakfast and the perusal of the papers, this clerk was sometimes kept dangling for hours in the ante-chamber. After a time, these hours were agreeably spent in the society of Sophie, to whom he eventually made a proposal of marriage. She consented, but, unwilling to leave her guardian like a fugitive, she apprised him of her determination, and humbly requested an account of the property which she had been informed he had taken charge of at her parents' death.

The procureur-general at first excused himself from giving her an immediate answer. The next day he presented himself at the police office, the whole of whose functionaries were under his control. What he said or did is not known, but the result was that Sophie was taken into custody by the police, and committed to jail.

Many months elapsed before her fate was known at home. It was stated that she absconded. The clerk, banished the procureur's house, could not discover the cause of the girl's disappearance; and as all Russian criminal proceedings are conducted with great secrecy, he only ascertained by a mere accident that the girl had been sentenced, by a superior court, to receive a certain number of lashes by the knout, and to be sent to Siberia. The crime of which they accused her was that of attempting to poison her master and mistress.

Alarmed at this information, the young man, without waiting for more particulars, addressed a petition to the war governor of Vilna—the old General Korsakof—whose power in that province was almost omnipotent, and, if not misdirected, was very often beneficial to the inhabitants. The petitioner requested the general's interference, and an investigation of the case, assuring him that the girl was innocent, and that the legal authorities who condemned her had been corrupted.

The general was accustomed to decide every case en militaire. He had received from the police court an unfavorable opinion of the petitioner's character, which was described as "restless;" and was, moreover, rather offended at his authority having been appealed to by a subordinate. He therefore settled the business summarily, by sending the young petitioner to the military service for life, in virtue of the vagrant act.

Still the young man's petition produced a good effect: the poor girl was not flogged, lest that might have provoked some disturbance in the town. She was merely dressed in convict's apparel, and sent off to Siberia.

The transport of Russian convicts costs the government but very little. They go on foot, sleep in étapes or barracks, and the daily allowance for their subsistence amounts only to five kopecks—equal to a halfpenny in English money. This they, as well as the poor old soldiers who escort them, have to eke out by charity. For that purpose, the most attractive person among each party of exiles is delegated—box in hand, but with an armed soldier behind—to beg alms of the benevolent; and Sophie was appointed to be the suppliant for the rest of her wretched companions.

The road from Vilna to Siberia passes through Vitebsk. The convicts had not been long in the town before Sophie encountered Madame Strognof, who recognized the girl from her very great likeness to her mother, who had died in that lady's house. When she learned that Sophie had been living with the Botwinkos, she had no longer a doubt.

The girl asserted her innocence of the pretended crime for which she was on her way to Siberia, with tearful energy, and the good Madame S. believed her; but her husband, who was at that time the Vice-Governor of Vitebsk, to disabuse his wife's romantic dreams, as he called them, sent for the officer escorting the prisoners, and showed her the list of prisoners, which contained a full record, not only of the crime imputed to the orphan girl, but also of the punishment to which she had been condemned.

In the face of an official document which appeared to be regular, and which detailed the girl's presumed offense with circumstantial consistency, Madame Strognof began to waver in her belief of Sophie's protestations; but the unfortunate girl asserted her innocence so strongly and incessantly, that the vice-governor himself was at length induced to look into the facts. The first suspicion that entered his mind was derived from the circumstance of the document stating that the culprit had been punished with the knout, while it was evident from her appearance, that that dreadful torture had not been inflicted. He caused a medical man to examine her, who testified that not a scar appeared; yet the knout always leaves ineffaceable traces for life.

In consequence of this discrepancy, Sophie was allowed to remain for some time at Vitebsk under the plea of illness; which, at the request of the vice-governor, was readily certified by an official surgeon. After some delay, a memorial was forwarded by the unfortunate sufferer to the late Emperor Alexander, in consequence of which a court-messenger was sent immediately to Vilna. This gentleman brought back to St. Petersburgh an enormous volume, containing the so-called depositions, taken at the pseudo trial. After careful inspection of them, the emperor decided that they proved the legality of the proceedings. So artfully were these infamous depositions framed; that, among them, appeared the formula of a chemical analysis of the poison which the girl was accused of administering, and a full confession; to which the culprit's signature was forged.

The answer, therefore, from the throne was not only unfavorable; but the authorities of Vitebsk were reprimanded for allowing the girl to importune his majesty without sufficient grounds.

Notwithstanding, Madame Strognof was not discouraged; and, to the great alarm of her husband, had another petition drawn up and forwarded with a suitable memorial to the Princess Maria Fedorowna, the emperor's mother, who was known to all the country as a pious and charitable lady. This petition, presented to his majesty by his own mother, had so great an influence over him, that he ordered the girl to be brought to St. Petersburgh. He felt convinced that some unaccountable mystery was involved in the case.

In due time Sophie arrived at St. Petersburgh, and underwent a rigid examination. She asseverated with the most earnest truthfulness, that all the depositions were fictitious; that the chemical analysis was a wicked invention; and that the signature to her fabricated confession was a forgery. She also denied that any trial had taken place, or that she had been examined in any court whatever. Upon this, the emperor appointed Mr. Getzewicz, the Governor of Minsk—who was known as a most trust-worthy man—to go personally to Vilna; to investigate the case; and to report the result. For this purpose the papers and the girl were forwarded back to Vilna.

The mission of Mr. Getzewicz was by no means an easy or a pleasant one: he had to contend with a swarm of official insects; which, like Canadian musquitoes when disturbed, attack the new comer from every side. However, Mr. Getzewicz stood his ground firmly. He soon discovered that the secretary of the police court who had drawn up the depositions was a convict, sentenced for life to Siberia for having been associated with highway robbers. He had escaped and was retained in his situation by merely changing his Christian name, and by being reported "dead" by Mr. Botwinko. The components of the rest of the court were no less suspicious. In Russia, the police and sheriff's courts, and even the provincial senate itself, are the asylums for military veterans; who, during their long service, had never been trained up to the law. The secretaries draw documents for them, which they sign—very often without reading; that task being tiresome, and often incomprehensible to them.

The court which had promoted and confirmed Sophie's prosecution, consisted of illiterate, worn-out officers, who had no scruple in committing the procureur-general's victim for trial to the First Criminal Court (Sond Grodoski).

But how was the deception carried on before the higher tribunals? This would puzzle the most ingenious rascality to guess. But Botwinko was a genius in his way: he actually brought before that court, as well as before the highest criminal tribunal, another young woman; who represented herself to be the girl in question, and confessed her supposed guilt with all the desired particulars. The extraordinary intrigue was the more easily accomplished from the secrecy with which criminal investigations in Russia are conducted. Whenever the culprit acknowledges his crime, the sentence follows without further inquiry; and, the jail being under the control of the police-office, and the judges of the criminal courts not knowing the prisoners personally, they were obliged to receive in this instance the confessions of any girl whom the police thought proper to send to them.

When the trial was over, the procureur paid his hireling well, dismissed her, and drew forth his victim from her cell; substituted her for the wretch who had stood at the bar, and sent her to Siberia. Villainy, however, be it ever so cunning, seldom half does its work of deception. If Botwinko had had the whole sentence carried into effect, and poor Sophie knouted, he would not, perhaps, have been discovered by his colleague at Vitebsk; and he might have lived a respected public officer to this day; for of such characters does the Russian system admit the prosperous existence. As it was, however, on the report of Mr. Getzewicz, Botwinko, the secretary of police, and many of his superiors, were thrown into prison.

The end of this dreadful story is melancholy; for in the end guilt triumphed. The procureur-general, having several partners in his guilty practices, had, if one may so abuse the expression, many friends. At first they tried most ingeniously to bribe Mr. Getzewicz, and to induce him to give up further proceedings; but, finding him inflexible, they put a stop to all that business by administering poison to the unfortunate Sophie. They even threatened the Governor of Minsk himself, in an anonymous letter, to do the same for him.

That threat, it seems, produced the desired effect on the honest but weak-minded man. Seeing with what desperate people he had to contend—so much so, that his own life was in danger—he sent his final report to the (at that time) lingering Emperor Alexander, with request for further instructions. In the mean time he retired to his own residence at Minsk, leaving the illustrious Vilna officials in their own prison.

Shortly afterward, the emperor died at Taganrog. His second brother, the present emperor, Nicholas I.—greeted, on his accession to the throne, with a formidable insurrection at St Petersburgh, and with alarming conspiracies and political intrigues in the army—had no time to direct his attention to so trifling an affair as that of our heroine. Political prisoners were to be punished first, in order to spread terror among those who were not discovered as yet. The stability of the throne would not allow him to alarm the administrative servants and other criminals who never thought of subverting Romanoff's dynasty. Hence, with the exception of the political offenders, all others, whose actions were pending in different courts of justice, but not yet adjudicated, were amnestied by the emperor, on the occasion of his coronation, in 1826, at Moscow.

Thus, the procureur and his associates were released from prison, losing nothing but their former situations. The procureur, having scraped together a fortune by his bribes and graspings, did not care much at becoming an independent gentleman.

What became of Sophie's lover—the unfortunate clerk, who was sent to the army, for his honest but untimely application—could not be learned. He may now think that his punishment was deserved, and that the girl was really guilty; but it is more than probable that he will never again interfere to restrain the grossest injustice.

And here ends our melancholy tale, which the censorship of the press in Russia prevented from ever before being publicly related. Corroboration can, however, be derived from the inhabitants of Vilna, who lived there from 1816 to 1826; from the archives of criminal courts of that place, where M. Getzewicz's correspondence is preserved; from the list of all the crown servants of Russia, sent every year to the State Secretary of the Home Department at St. Petersburgh; in which, for 1825 and 1826, Procureur Botwinko was reported to be imprisoned at Vilna for the above case, and that the Strapchy of Oszmiana was acting in his stead as procureur pro tem.