Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/139

 VI

AN AFrERWOIlD TO AN ACCOUNT RENDERKD OF RELIEF SUPPLIED TO THE FAMINE- STRKKEN, IN THE GOVERNMENT OF TOULA, IN 181)1 AND 1802

Ol'R two years' experience in distributing? amon;? a suffering population contributions tbat passed tbrougb our hands, nave quite confirmed our long-establislied conviction tliat most of the want and destitution — and the sufferinjr and grief that go with tliem — which we, almost in vain, have tried to counteract by external means in one small corner of Russia, has arisen, not from some exceptional, temporary cause indepeiulent of us, but from general permanent causes quite dependent on us, and consisting entirely in the antichri>tian, un- brotherly relations maintained by us educated people towards the poor, simple labourers who constantly endure distress and want and the accompanying bitter- ness and suffering — things that have merely been more conspicuous than usual during the past two years. If this year we do not hear of want, cold, and hunger — of the (lying-otf, by hundreds of thousands, of adults worn out with overwork and of underfed old people and children — this is not because these things will not occur, but only because we shall not see them — shall forget about them, shall assure ourselves that they do not exist, or that, if they do, they are inevitable and cannot be helped.

But such assurances are untrue : not only is it pos- sible for these things not to exist — but they ought not [ 123 ]