The three forms under which labour was exercised--the serf, secure in his position, and burdened only with regular dues, which were but a fraction of his produce; the freeholder, a man independent save for money dues, which were more of a tax than a rent; the Guild, in which well-divided capital worked co-operatively for craft production, for transport and for commerce--all three between them were making for a society which should be based upon the principle of property. All, or most--the normal family--should own. And on ownership the freedom of the State should repose.... Slavery had gone and in its place had come that establishment of free possession which seemed so normal to men, and so consonant to a happy human life. No particular name was then found for it. To-day, and now that it has disappeared, we must construct an awkward one, and say that the Middle Ages had instinctively conceived and brought into existence the Distributive State.[20] By the mishandling of an artificial economic revolution which was so sudden as to be overwhelming, namely, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, an England which was economically free, was turned into the England we know to-day, "of which at least one-third is indigent, of which nineteen-twentieths are dispossessed of capital and of land, and of which the whole industry and national life is controlled upon its economic side by a few chance directors of millions, a few masters of unsocial and irresponsible monopolies." Thus Mr. Belloc traces the growth and development of our economic conditions. In _The Servile State_ he goes further and shows what new conditions are rapidly developing out of those now in existence. At the present time, we know, the economic freedom of nineteen-twentieths of the English people has disappeared. Will their political freedom also disappear? To this question Mr. Belloc's answer is as decided as it is startling. He does not argue that the political freedom of the proletariat may possibly disappear. He says that it has _already begun_ to disappear.