Traveller and Peasant

Go or stay, he wouldn’t let us have it. If the land were to lie idle, he’d not part with it! Like the dog in the manger, that doesn’t eat the hay himself and won’t let others eat it!

But how can he keep his land? I suppose it stretches over some three or four miles? How can he watch it all?

How queer you talk! He himself lies on his back, and fattens his paunch; but he keeps watchmen!

And those watchmen, I dare say, are also peasants?

What else could they be? Of course they are!

So that the peasants work the rich man’s land for him, and guard it for him from themselves?

But how can one help it?

Simply by not going to work for him, and not being his watchmen! Then the land would be free. The land is God’s, and the people are God’s; let him who needs it, plough and sow and gather in the harvest!

That is to say, you think we ought to strike? To meet that, my friend, they have the soldiers. They’d send their soldiers⁠ ⁠… one, two, fire!⁠ ⁠… some would get shot, and others taken up. Soldiers give short shrift!