Page:Labour - The Divine Command, 1890.djvu/66

62 be increased to one hundred roubles a head, and the people will all be ruined.

And why? Because every one wishes to be elegantly attired, without working for it. On all sides you offend us in an insupportable manner. People have become tricky and given to intrigue; they love to deceive ; and thus, having no claim on the treasury for the least sum, they will assert that it owes them not five but ten thousand kopecks, and they will receive them.

In the last days of March 1883 I learned that capital punishment had been re-established. I trembled at this news. As one chops meat with a blunted axe, so strikes the executioner. It is better to kill outright than to torture in this fashion.

I asked myself often what was the best way for the executioner to accomplish his duty.

If there is no other way, if we cannot by any possibility constrain men to do right, then we must, against our will, consent to shed their blood.

But there is a means, a decisive remedy for crime, to be found in God's most ancient law. For it was not without intention that God has not imposed any command before this, nor that he has not ordered us to avoid any vice except neglect of labor.

We thus see that labor embraces all virtues, while idleness and luxury, on the contrary, produce all vices. If, then, a malefactor is found