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increasing their luxury. It is with the same object that merchants
compel the whole population to drink, and thus exploit it.
The people degenerate, the children die prematurely, and all
in order that the rich, the “gentlemen,” the merchants, may
be able to live to themselves with their palaces, their dinners,
their concerts, their horses, their carriages, their flirtations, &c.
“Why deceive ourselves? We have no need of the people
except as an instrument, and our interests (by whatever
argument to the contrary we comfort ourselves) are always
diametrically opposed to the interests of the people. ‘The
more they give me as salary or as pension, i.e., the more they
take from the people, the better for me,’ says the official.
‘The more the people have to pay for bread and other
necessary products, i.e., the worse off the people are, the better
for me,’ says the landlord. ‘The longer the war lasts the
more I shall make,’ says the manufacturer. ‘The less paid
for wages, i.e., the poorer the people are, the better it will be
for us,’ say all the upper classes. What sympathy can we
have, then, for the people? Between us and them there is no
link but animosity—the link between the master and the slave.
The better off I am, the worse for the people, and vice versâ.
“All life in Russia, all that is past, and is passing at present,
confirms what I say. At this moment, when, as they say,
people are dying of hunger, have the landlords, have the
merchants, or the rich folk in general, modified their lives?
Have they ceased to exact from the people, to satisfy their own
caprices, a work that is frequently false? Have the rich given
up ornamenting their palaces, eating luxurious dinners, riding
their thoroughbreds, following the hounds, dressing themselves
in the height of fashion? Do not the rich at this very time
hold stores of seed and flour, expecting a still greater rise in
the price? Are not manufacturers depressing the wages of
their workers? Are not officials receiving higher salaries? Do
not all the educated classes continue to live in the cities—for
some purpose they consider very elevated—and to eat in them
the means of living which are imported there, for lack of which
people are dying?
“It is under these circumstances that we all at once begin
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