Leo Tolstoy. Sunday (№ 241797)

As gruesome as it was senseless suffering inflicted on so-called criminal, yet over them were made before and after his conviction, some semblance of the rule of law; but in matters political, was not even that semblance, as Nekhludoff saw on Chusovoi and then on many of his new acquaintances. These people acted like they do when catching fish with a Seine: pull ashore everything that comes, and then take those big fish that are needed, without worrying about the small fry that die zasyhaya on the shore. So, capturing hundreds of these, obviously are not only not guilty, but not likely to be harmful to the government of the people, kept them, sometimes for years in prisons where they were infected with tuberculosis, went crazy or killed themselves; and kept them only because there was no reason to release them, while being on hand in prison, they would need to clarify some issue in the investigation. The fate of all these, often even from the government point of view, of innocent people depended on the arbitrariness of the leisure, mood, gendarme, police officer, spy, Prosecutor, coroner, Governor, Minister. Bored of such official, or who wants to be different - and making the arrests, and, depending on mood or his superiors, keeps in prison or released. And the higher the head, too, depending on the fact whether it has to differ, or what he is dealing with the Minister, or refers to the edge of the world, or holds in solitary confinement, or sentenced to exile, to prison, to death, or produces, when asked to do so by any lady.