Note 29 — PART XII

The Russian peasant was usually a member of a village commune, and had therefore a right to share in the land belonging to the village. Tolstoy disapproved of the order of society which allows less land for the support of a whole village full of people than was sometimes owned by a single landed proprietor. The Censor did not allow disapproval of this state of things to be expressed, but was prepared to admit that the laws and customs, say, of England—where a yet more extreme form of landed property existed and the men who actually labour on the land usually possessed none of it—deserved criticism.—A. M.