Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/287

Rh that you could remove these sufferings but have failed to do so—we appeal to you to act so that the existing state of things may cease.

It seems to you, or to most of you, that it has all happened because, amid the regular current of life, some troublesome, dissatisfied men have arisen, who disturb the people and interrupt this regular current; and that what is wrong is all the fault of these people. So that these troublesome, dissatisfied people should be subdued and repressed, and then everything will again go all right, and nothing will need to be altered.

But if, really, it were all due to troublesome and wicked men, it would be only necessary to catch them and shut them up in prison and execute them, and all disturbances would be at end. But, in fact, during more than thirty years, these people have been caught, imprisoned and executed, or banished by thousands—yet their number is ever increasing, and discontent with the present conditions of life not only grows, but spreads so that it has now reached millions of the working classes—the great majority of the whole nation. Evidently this dissatisfaction is not caused by troublesome and wicked men, but by something else. And you of the Government need only turn your attention for a moment from the acute strife in which you are now absorbed, and cease to credit naively the statement made by the Minister of the Interior in a recent circular, namely, that 'it is only necessary for the police to disperse the crowd promptly, and to fire at it if it does not disperse, for all to be tranquil and quiet,' and you will clearly see the cause that produces discontent among the people, and finds expression in disturbances which are assuming ever greater and wider and deeper dimensions.

Those causes are, that because, unfortunately, a Tsar who had freed the serfs happened to be murdered by a small group of people who mistakenly imagined that they would thereby serve the nation, the Government has not only decided not to advance in the direction of gradually discarding despotic methods (at variance with