to its realization every generation comes a step nearer. Through oppression reduce the race to beggary, through beggary to despair, and through despair to death; such, and no other, is the motto of our nobility. To the most cruel ends they carry out their aims. You demand an example? And yet you know as well as I do that when crops are light, as they have been for several years in succession, the peasants are under obligation to take their whole year’s harvest to the nobility. The peasant is not allowed to sell his crop in the market, but is obliged to give it to his lord at his own price. What the lord thus buys for a little sum from his vassal, he takes to his storehouse, and when food becomes scarce he sells it back—again at his own price—to the poor man from whom he bought it. Oh, do not try to make me believe you do not know that during years of plenty just the opposite takes place—that the peasant must buy the grain that his master has left over and sell it with as little loss as he can. How could it be unknown to you that it is compul-
