Page:Tolstoy - A Great Iniquity.djvu/41

Rh did themselves suffer (without making any one else suffer) in the name of loyalty to that which they recognised as the truth.

The same must take place in relation to the land.

I believe that there do now exist such men, and that they will fulfil that great work not only Russian, but universal, which is before the Russian people.

The land question has at the present time reached such a state of ripeness as fifty years ago was reached by the question of serfdom. Exactly the same is being repeated. As at that time men searched for the means of remedying the general uneasiness and dissatisfaction which were felt in society, and applied all kinds of external governmental means, but nothing helped nor could help whilst there remained the ripening and unsolved question of personal slavery, so also now no external measures will help or can help until the ripe question of landed property be solved. As now measures are proposed for adding slices to the peasants’ land, for the purchase of land by the aid of banks, etc., so then also palliative measures were proposed and enacted, material improvements, rules about three days’ labour, and so forth. Even as now the owners of land talk about the injustice of putting a stop to their criminal ownership, so then people talked about the unlawfulness of depriving owners of their serfs. As then the Church justified the serf right, so now that which occupies the place of the Church—Science—justifies landed property. Just as then slave-owners, realising their sin, more or less endeavoured in various ways without undoing it to mitigate it, and substituting the payment of a ransom by the serfs for direct compulsory work for their masters, moderated their exactions from the peasants, so also now the more sensitive