Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/233

 LETTERS ON HENRY GEORGE 217

to the human soul ; but pseudo-religion and pseudo- science demonstrated that slavery was not wrong, that it was necessary, or at least that it was premature to abolish it. The same thing is now being repeated with reference to landed property. As before, pseudo- religion and pseudo-science demonstrate that there is nothing wrong in tlie private ownership of landed estates, and that there is no need to abolish the present system.

One would think it would be plain to every educated man of our time that an exclusive control of land by people who do not work on it, but who prevent hundreds and thousands of poor families from using it, is a thing as plainly bad and shameful as it was to own slaves ; yet we see educated, refined aristocrats — English, Austrian, Prussian, and Russian — making use of this cruel and shameful right, and not only not feeling ashamed, but feeling proud of it.

Religion blesses such possessions, and the science of political economy demonstrates that the present state of things is the one that should exist for the greatest benefit of mankind.

The service rendered by Henry George is, that he has not only mastered the sophistries with which religion and science try to justify private ownership of land, and simplified the question to the uttermost, so that it is impossible not to admit the wrongfulness of land-ownership — unless one simply stops one^s ears — but he was also the first to show how the question can be practically solved. He first gave a clear and direct reply to the excuses, used by the enemies of every reform, to the effect that the demands of progress are unpractical and inapplicable dreams.

Henry George^s plan destroys that excuse, by putting the question in such a form that a committee might be assembled to-morrow to discuss the project and to convert it into law. In Russia, for instance, the dis- cussion of land purchase, or of nationalizing the land without compensation, could begin to-morrow ; and the project might — after undergoing various vicissitudes —