better, more just, practical, and peaceful solution.
“To beat down and cover up the truth that I have tried to-night to make clear to you,” said Henry George, “selfishness will call on ignorance. But it has in it the germinative force of truth, and the times are ripe for it. . . .”
“The ground is ploughed; the seed is set; the good tree will grow. So little now; only the eye of faith can see it.”[1]
And I think that Henry George is right, that the removal of the sin of landed property is near, that the movement called forth by Henry George was the last birth-throe, and that the birth is on the point of taking place; the liberation of men from the sufferings they have so long borne must now be realised. Besides this I think (and I would like to contribute to this, in however small a measure) that the removal of this great universal sin—a removal which will form an epoch in the history of mankind—is to be effected precisely by the Russian Slavonian people, who are, by their spiritual and economic character, predestined for this great universal task—that the Russian people should not become proletarians in imitation of the peoples of Europe and America, but, on the contrary, that they should solve the land question at home by the abolition of landed property, and show other nations the way to a rational, free, and happy life, outside industrial, factory, or capitalistic
- ↑ The Works of Henry George, Vol. X., p. 296.
these words italicised by the author himself. Tolstoy here emphasises a reservation, that he recommends Henry George’s scheme only under conditions of State organisation and compulsory taxation. It goes without saying, that if the Christian teaching as Tolstoy understands it were to be thoroughly applied to life, then there would be neither coercive government nor compulsory taxation, and in the distribution of the land there would be practised amongst men a voluntary agreement of a yet freer and more just kind than the single tax system of Henry George. (Trans).
