Page:An Appeal to the Young by Kropotkin.djvu/6

 will take a new bound forward, in comparison with which the slow progress of to-day will appear the simple exercise of tyros.

Then you will enjoy science; that pleasure will be a pleasure for all.

If you have finished reading law and are about to be called to the Bar, perhaps, you, too, have some illusions, as to your future activity—I assume that you are one of the nobler spirits, that you know what altruism means. Perhaps you think, "To devote my life to an unceasing and vigorous struggle against all injustice. To apply my whole faculties to bringing about the triumph of law the public expression of supreme justice—can any career be nobler!" You begin the real work of life confident in yourself and the profession you have chosen.

Very well; let us turn to any page of the Law Reports and see what actual life will tell you.

Here we have a rich land-owner; he demands the eviction of a cotter tenant who has not paid his rent. From a legal point of view the case is beyond dispute, since the poor farmer can't pay out he must go. But if we look into the facts we shall learn something like this. The landlord has squandered his rents persistently in rollicking pleasure; the tenant has worked hard all day and every day. The landlord has done nothing to improve his estate. Nevertheless its value has trebled in fifty years owing to rise in price of land due to the construction of a railway, to the making of new highroads, to the draining of a marsh, to the enclosure and cultivation of waste lands. But the tenant who has contributed largely towards this increase has ruined himself; he fell into the hands of usurers, and head over ears in debt, he can no longer pay the landlord. The law, always on the side of property, is quite clear; the landlord is in the right. But you, whose feeling of justice has not yet been stifled by legal Fictions, what will you do? Will you contend that the farmer ought to be turned out upon the high road?—for that is what the law ordains—or will you urge that the landlord should pay back to the farmer the whole of the increase of value in his property which is due to the farmer's labour?—this is what equity decrees. Which side will you take? For the law and against justice, or for justice and against the law?

Or when workmen have gone out on strike against a master, without notice, which side will you take then? The side of the law, that is to say the part of the master, who, taking advantage of a period of crisis, has made outrageous profits? or against the law but on the side of the workers who received during the whole time only 2s. a day as wages, and saw their wives and children fade away before their eyes? Will you stand up for that piece of chicanery which consists in affirming "freedom of contract."? Or will you uphold equity, according to which a contract entered into between a man who has dined well and a man who sells his labour for a bare subsistence, between the strong and the weak is not a contract at all,

Take another case. Here in London a man was loitering near a butcher's shop. He stole a beefsteak and ran off with it. Arrested and questioned, it turns out that he is an artisan out of work, and that he and his family have had nothing to eat for four days: The butcher is asked to let the man off but he is all for the triumph of justice! He prosecutes and the man is sentenced to six months imprisonment.