“Neither arson nor robbery is considered a crime nowadays. The immorality of our people is terrible: they have all become thieves!” said someone.

And in answer to those words, that man, combined of two, spoke as follows:

“The peasants have stolen oaks and hay, and are thieves, and the most immoral class,” he began, addressing no one in particular. “Now, in the Caucasus, a chieftain used to raid the aouls and carry off all the horses of the inhabitants. But one of them found means to get back from the chieftain’s herds at least one of the horses that had been stolen from him. Was that man a thief, because he got back one of the many horses stolen from him? And is it not the same with the trees, the grass, the hay, and all the rest of the things you say the peasants have stolen from you? The earth is the Lord’s, and common to all; and if the peasants have taken what was grown on the common land of which they have been deprived, they have not stolen, but have only resumed possession of a small part of what has been stolen from them.