Page:Tolstoy - A Great Iniquity.djvu/45

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is undoubtedly the case that in Great Britain the land question is at present much obscured by difficulties which really have their origin in it. If one removed these difficulties either by governmental or social action, the clearance could be but perfunctory and temporary until the land question itself is settled. Therefore this question should be always put in the forefront when any British electorate is selecting its representative. It should take precedence of all suggestions as to the “unemployed” or “housing,” or “old age pensions,” or the “nationalisation of the railways”—mere corner stones which cannot be securely fixed in the social edifice until its foundation is made right.

In Great Britain the position is further complicated by the fact that the majority of the people have been so long alienated from the land, that many of them have ceased to understand that it is the one source of sound prosperity, and have become unfit and unwilling to return to agricultural life. They have themselves become parasites living by forcing intoxicants, arms, or useless trinkets on primitive agricultural peoples whose subjugation and domination by violence further affords sustenance to the extra members of the British landowning class, thereby adding to its power to oppress at home. This process is known popularly as “opening new markets for British commerce,” and it is carried forward with maxim guns. The British working class, itself enslaved to the landowners, thus becomes in its turn a slave holder, and its first step towards obtaining its own freedom must lie in the direction of its recognition of the falseness and evil of its position as such slave holder.

At present, British politicians, nearly all belonging to the landowning or manufacturing class, do not hesitate openly to condemn and to endeavour to alter the economic conditions of any British colony or dependency where the labouring aborigines, having sufficient means of independent livelihood on their own land, are unwilling