Page:Labour - The Divine Command, 1890.djvu/143

Rh part of mankind will not submit to the command that they should till the earth; they put this painful labor on the defenceless poor man, whilst they walk to and fro whistling and with their arms folded. If, at least, they had only given to the poor the labor for bread, it might be borne; but they have heaped upon him all sorts of painful labors, and he even pays for the privileges of doing them! I do not speak of taxes, but of rents, and the services of all sorts with which they overwhelm him. This is done in the name of the law. Not content with making him submit to these wrongs, they take from him the fertile earth. They have given that forever into the hands of those who evade labor, and they call that for which they have never labored, their property.

This is the love for our neighbor which you preach but never practise!

Many times I have resolved to speak to you more affectionately; but when I behold your treachery, I forget all my resolves.

We see clearly that between the primitive law of labor and the civil and religious laws which exist there comes the eternal enmity that separated the serpent and the woman. But between these two classes of men, the laborers on the one side and those who evade labor on the other, there exists an enmity created by God himself and not by man. They say there is this difference between the primitive law and later laws, that the first was given to man by God as a penance for his sins, and we know that God has not ordered us to atone for our crimes by any other virtue or merit. But if