Does not your conduct clearly show the hatred you feel towards God and your neighbor? Well, what answer have you to make to that? You cannot justify yourself before the peasant nor have you any excuse to offer.
72. Here are further facts to show that you debase and trample everything under your feet. If some one of you makes a discovery, you honor him with a medal bearing this inscription: "Honor to Labor and to Art." Has any one ever been rewarded for labor and art in gaining bread? No. And if one were offered, it would be given to the proprietors who cultivate a thousand acres of ground by the hands of others, but who would not themselves come near this shameful labor nor those who perform it. Behold, then, those who have always received all such recompense, and always will.
73. What occurs in the homes of the poor? The husband and wife must support not only themselves, but perhaps a dozen children, besides their aged parents. And yet they sell you part of their bread, or rather they give it to you. But, though they have numbered several millions in each century, has even one of them had any reward whatever? Never! Far from being recompensed, they have instead received the name of "moujiks," which signifies a "beast."[1]
- ↑ According to Fr. Michel, this meaning of the word moujik was given to the French word mouchique about 1815, forming a souvenir of the Russian peasants.
