WITH COUNT TOLSTOI. 105 



acres of arable land and forest. Part of it is the old 

 family estate, given to the Count's grandfather, General 

 Tolstoi', by Catherine II., as a reward for military ser- 

 vices. The remainder has been acquired chiefly from 

 the literary earnings of the Count. All economic 

 affairs he leaves entirely in the hands of his wife. He 

 seems scarcely a member of his own family. By re- 

 siding in a good house and retaining land and property 

 more than sufficient for his bare support, Tolstoi lives 

 in perpetual violation of his own conscience. This 

 state of affairs he submits to for the sake of his family, 

 who are only partially in sympathy with his creed. 



He believes not only that he has no right to the 

 estate, but that it would be an act of pride and pre- 

 sumption to take upon himself even the right to divide 

 it up and give it away. " How can one have the pre- 

 sumption to give away what doesn't belong to him?" 



In the matter of land-ownership, Tolstoi declared him- 

 self a great admirer of the theories of Henry George. 

 He declared George the greatest American citizen of 

 the present time. He believed, however, in a system of 

 communal, rather than a national, ownership of the 

 land. The ideal state of society would be, to him, the 

 simple, rural communes, in which every family would 

 have the right to till soil enough for its own support. 

 There would be no taxes and no government. The 

 Count believed that all forms of government are hum- 

 bugs, and that the whole machinery of law and law- 

 yers, courts and judges, is a barbarity, and an excuse 

 for setting one man above another, and enabling the 

 privileged few to rob the many. 



Governments he regards as the root of nearly all evils. 



