Page:Labour - The Divine Command, 1890.djvu/123

Rh Although the law says: "Turn thy cheek to him who smites thee," when I consider the crying injustice of which you are guilty towards us, I refuse (and I include all our class of laborers, the young, the old, and infants at their mothers' breasts), I refuse, I say, to grant you the right to wrangle over bread, and over the earth that produces it; be contented to speak of the stones, and the land that only produces bitter wormwood.

If you had an earnest desire to labor, and could not do so for any reason, you would be pardonable; but you evade it from idleness. In this case, what pardon can you hope for? I know you cannot answer these questions.

You will employ, you say, even violence to procure your food. But could you so live, could you swallow one mouthful of the bread that you had gained by violence? No, no! that mouthful would choke you, body and soul, no matter what rank you occupy.

Rich man, have pity on us! For how many thousand years have you, like a wild horse, galloped over our backs! Consider, for how long a time you have torn the flesh from our bones!

The bread you eat is our body, the wine you drink is our blood.

146. When I had learned the first commandment, notwithstanding my sixty-five years, my weakness and emaciation, I labored in the ground for a whole year (1881). I harrowed