the presumption that "one man's gain is another man's loss," instead of vanishing before the truth, that, in proportion as the industry of all men is free, so will it be productive; and that production on all sides ensures a state of things in which every exchanger is a gainer, and no one a loser. It is not to be wondered at that, while such opinions existed, the union of capital and labour should have been very imperfect; and that, while the capitalists oppressed the labourers, in the same way that they oppressed each other, the labourers should have thought it not unreasonable to plunder the capitalists. It is stated by Harrison, an old writer of credit,[13] that during the single reign of Henry VIII. seventy-two thousand thieves were hanged in England. No fact can exhibit in a stronger light the universal misery that must have existed in those days. The whole kingdom did not contain half a million grown-up males, so that, considering that the reign of Henry VIII. extended over two generations, about one man in ten must have been, to use the words of the same historian, "devoured and eaten up by the gallows." In the same reign the first statute against Egyptians (gipsies) was passed. These people went from place to place in great companies--spoke a cant language, which Harrison calls Pedler's French--and were subdivided into fifty-two different classes of thieves. The same race of people prevailed throughout Europe. Cervantes, the author of 'Don Quixote,' says of the Egyptians or Bohemians, that they seem to have been born for no other purpose than that of pillaging. While this universal plunder went forward, it is evident that the insecurity of property must have been so great that there could have been little accumulation, and therefore little production. Capital was destroyed on every side; and because profitable labour had become so scarce by the destruction of capital, one-half of the community sought to possess themselves of the few goods of the other half, not as exchangers but as robbers. As the robbers diminished the capital, the diminution of capital increased the number of robbers; and if the unconquerable energy of human industry had not gone on producing, slowly and painfully indeed, but still producing, the country would have soon fallen back to the state in which it was a thousand years before, when wolves abounded more than men. One great cause of all this plunder and misery was the oppression of the labourers. [12] Ruffhead's Pope. [13] Preface to the Chronicles of Holinshed. [Illustration: Adam Smith.] CHAPTER VII. Rights of labour--Effects of slavery on production-- Condition of the Anglo-Saxons--Progress of freedom in England--Laws regulating labour--Wages and prices--Poor-law--Law of settlement.