Page:Leo Tolstoy - The Russian Revolution (1907).djvu/93

 76 Governments. Governments were instituted when the nations were savage, cruel and coarse. The Governments set up were equally cruel and coarse. Nearly all the Governments took their laws from the heathen Romans; and to the present day the Governments remain as coarse as they were in the days before Christianity, with their forcible requisitions, soldiers, prisons and executions. But the people, becoming enlightened, have less and less need of such Governments, and in out day most of the Christian nations have arrived at the stage when Government merely hinders them.

The shell is necessary for the egg until the bird is hatched. But when the bird is ready, the shell is but a hindrance. So it is with Governments; most Christian nations feel this, and particularly Russian agricultural people now feel this acutely.

"Government is necessary, we cannot live without a Government," men say, and they are especially convinced of this now, when there are disturbances among the people. But who are these men, so concerned for the preservation of the Government? They are the very men who live on the labour of the people, and, conscious of their sin, fear its exposure, and hope that a Government (being bound to them by unity of interest) will protect their wrong-doing by force. For these men, the Government is very necessary, but not for you—the peasantry. For you the Government has always been simply a burden; and now, that it has by its evil rule provoked riots, and brought it to pass that there are two rival Governments, it has become an evident misfortune and a great sin, which you must repudiate for your bodily and spiritual warfare.

Whether you, labouring Russian people, free yourselves at on from obedience to any Government, or whether you will yet have to suffer and endure at the hands of members of the old or of the new Government (or possibly at the hands of foreign Governments) you Russian labouring men have now no other course but to cease to obey the Government, and to begin to live without it.