Page:Tolstoy - A Great Iniquity.djvu/26

18 wrong road that the majority of their population is already torn from the land (in America it has never lived on the land), but lives either in factories or by hired agricultural labour, and desires and demands only one thing—the improvement of its position as hired labourers. It is therefore comprehensible that to the political workers of Europe and America—listening to the demands of the majority—it may seem that the chief means for the improvement of the position of the people consists in tariffs, trusts, and colonies, but to the Russian people in Russia, where the agricultural population composes 80 per cent. of the whole nation, where all this people request only one thing—that opportunity be given them to remain in this state—it would seem it should be clear that for the improvement of the position of the people something else is necessary.

The people of Europe and America are in the position of a man who has gone so far along a road which at first appeared the right one, but which the further he goes the more it removes him from his object, that he is afraid of confessing his mistake. But the Russians are yet standing before the turning of the path and can, according to the wise saying, “ask their way while yet on the road.”

And what are those Russian people doing who desire, or, at all events, say they desire, to organise a good life for the people? In everything they slavishly imitate whatever is being done in Europe and America.

For the arrangement of a good life for the people they are concerned with the freedom of the Press, religious tolerance, liberty of union, tariffs, conditional punishment, the separation of the Church from the State, co-operative associations, future communalisation of the implements of work, and, above all, with representative government—that