Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/181

 SPTAME ! 166

About such deeds one cannot 'most humbly pray,' nor May our petition at the foot of the tlirone/ etc. — such deeds must only, and can only, be denounced. And such deeds should be denounced, because when an a})pearance of leg-ality is given to them they disgrace us all who live in the country in which they are com- mitted. For if it is legal to flog a peasant, this has been enacted for my benefit also, to secure my tran- quillity and well-being. And that is intolerable.

I will not and 1 cannot acknowledge a law which infringes all law human and divine ; and I cannot imagine myself confederate with those wlio enact and confirm such legalized crimes.

If such abominations must be discussed, there is but one thing to say — viz., that no such law can exist ; that no ukaze, nor insignia, nor seals, nor Imperial com- mands, can make a law out of a crime ; but that, on the contrary, the dressing-up in legal form of such crimes (as that the grown men of one — only one — class, may, at the will of another, a worse, class — the nobles and the officials — be subjected to an indecent, savage, and revolting punishment), shows, better than anything else, that where such sham legalization of crime is pos- sible, no laws at all exist, but merely the savage licence of brute force.

If one has to speak of corporal punishment inflicted on the peasant class alone, the needful thing is — not to defend the rights of the Local Government, or appeal from a Governor (who has vetoed a petition to exempt literate peasants from flogging) to a Minister, and from the Minister to the Senate, and from the Senate to the Emperor (as was proposed by the Tambdf Local Assembly), but unceasingly to proclaim and cry aloud that such applications of a brutal punishment (already abandoned for children) to one — and that the best — class of Russians, is disgraceful to all who, directly or indirectly, participate in it.

Petrdvitch, who lay down to be beaten after crossing himself and saying : ' Christ suffered and told us to,' forgave his tormentors, and remained after the flogging