Page:Tolstoy - Pamphlets.djvu/265

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36
SOME SOCIAL REMEDIES

property, bnt will have to pay for the land they occupy, according to its valuation, into the common treasury.

The advantage of such a system will be—

1. That no one will be deprived of the possibility of using land.

2. That idle men, possessing land, and forcing others to work for them in return for the use of the land, will cease to exist.

3. That the land will be in the hands of those who work it and not of those who do not.

4. That the people being able to work on the land will cease to enslave themselves as labourers in mills and factories, and as servants in towns; and will disperse themselves about the country.

5. That there will be no longer any overseers and tax collectors in factories, mills, stores, and custom houses, but only collectors of payment for the land, which it is impossible to steal, and from which taxes may be most easily collected.

6. and chiefly. That those who do not labour will be freed from the sin of profiting by the labours of others (in doing which they are often not to blame, being from childhood educated in idleness, and not knowing how to work); and from the still greater sin of every kind of falsehood and excuse to shift the blame from themselves; and that those who do labour will be delivered from the temptation and sin of envy, condemnation of others, and exasperation against those who do not