Page 1739 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

part of Russia, and directly and clearly express their
thought and aim. They bring their halfpence or go
themselves and say directly what for. What does it mean?’
‘It means, to my thinking,’ said Levin, who was

beginning to get warm, ‘that among eighty millions of
people there can always be found not hundreds, as now,
but tens of thousands of people who have lost caste, ne’er-
do-wells, who are always ready to go anywhere—to
Pogatchev’s bands, to Khiva, to Serbia..’
‘I tell you that it’s not a case of hundreds or of ne’er-
do-wells, but the best representatives of the people!’ said
Sergey Ivanovitch, with as much irritation as if he were
defending the last penny of his fortune. ‘And what of the
subscriptions? In this case it is a whole people directly
expressing their will.’
‘That word ‘people’ is so vague,’ said Levin. ‘Parish
clerks, teachers, and one in a thousand of the peasants,
maybe, know what it’s all about. The rest of the eighty
millions, like Mihalitch, far from expressing their will,
haven’t the faintest idea what there is for them to express
their will about. What right have we to say that this is the
people’s will?’

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