"Certainly not. Exceptions, however, do not alter the rule."

"And yet the officers in the government service with us are for the
most part elected by the nobility and gentry."

"That is just where the great evil lies," continued Ivan
Vassilievitsch. "What in other countries is an object of public
competition, is with us left to ourselves. What right have we to
complain against our government, who has left it in our discretion
to elect officers to regulate our internal affairs? Is it not our own
fault that, instead of paying due attention to a subject of so much
importance, we make game of it? We have in every province many a
civilized man, who backed by the laws, could give a salutary direction
to public affairs; but they all fly the elections like a plague,
leaving them in the hands of intriguing schemers. The most wealthy
land-owners lounge on the Nevsky-perspective, or travel abroad, and
but seldom visit their estates. For them elections are--a caricature:
they amuse themselves over the bald head of the sheriff or the thick
belly of the president of the court of assizes, and they forget that
to them is intrusted not only their own actual welfare and that of
their peasantry, but their entire future destiny. Yes, thus it is! Had
we not taken such a mischievous course, were we not so unpardonably
thoughtless, how grand would have been the vocation of the Russian
noble, to lead the whole nation forward on the path of genuine
civilization! I repeat again, it is our own fault. Instead of being
useful to their country, what has become of the Russian nobility?"

"They have ruined themselves," emphatically interrupted Vassily
Ivanovitsch.--_The Tarantas: or Impressions of Young Russia._