Page:Leo Tolstoy - The Russian Revolution (1907).djvu/26

 Rh But the only effect of all these measures was that the citizens of these States, participating more and more in power, and being more and more diverted from serious occupations, grew more and more depraved. The calamities from which the people suffered remain, however, exactly the same under Constitutional, Monarchical, or Republican Governments, with or without Referendums.

Nor could it be otherwise, for the idea of limiting power by the participation in power of all who are subject to it is unsound at its very core, and self-contradictory.

If one man with the aid of his helpers rules over all, it is unjust, and in all likelihood such rule will be harmful to the people.

The same will be the case when the minority rules over the majority. But the power of the majority over the minority also fails to secure a just rule; for we have no reason to believe that the majority participating in government is wiser than the minority that avoids participation.

To extend the participation in government to all, as might be done by still greater extension of the Referendum and the Initiative, would only mean that everybody would be fighting everybody else.

That man should have over his fellows a power founded on violence, is evil at its source; and no kind of arrangement that maintains the right of man to do violence to man, can cause evil to cease to be evil.

Therefore, among all nations, however they are ruled, whether by the most despotic or most democratic Governments, the chief and fundamental calamities from which the people suffer, remain the same: the same ever-increasing, enormous budgets, the same animosity towards their neighbours, necessitating military preparations and armies; the same taxes; the same State and private monopolies; the same depriving the people of the right to use the land (which is given to private owners); the same enslaving of subject races; the same constant threatenings of war;