Page:Labour - The Divine Command, 1890.djvu/122

118 whole world in my hands, I would control all men, and behold in one glance the whole universe! Whichever way I look, nothing is mine!"

144. But, I will answer him; you must for that live a thousand years, because, whatever may be your powers, you could never, in an ordinary life, absorb everything. You would be suffocated.

But bread is a thing absolutely opposed to money; they are two enemies, even as the laborer is the enemy of the idle man.

145. They say that henceforth taxes will be levied on the land; that is, the amount will be proportioned to the area of the land we possess. Why do you say, on the land? Admit frankly that it is the laborers alone who pay the taxes. Here is some land that is not cultivated; go and take thence the money and bread you need. "According to the decree of Him who created me, it will answer, I await some one's coming to cultivate me; if you come for any other purpose, depart, O parasite."

Permit me to ask why you exact taxes from those who nourish you with their bread, while from those who never labor for bread you do not take a single kopeck. If the land were but free! But the State has taken it to give to the pomestchiks, and they exact from us ten times its value. Whether the wheat ripens or not, give us the money: and where shall we get i?