He has the full, uninterrupted, absolute possession of his property. He is upon a perfect legal equality with the capitalist. He may labour cheerfully with the well-founded assurance that his labour will be profitably exchanged for the goods which he desires for the satisfaction of his wants, as far as laws and institutions can so provide. In a word, he may assure himself that, if he possesses anything valuable to offer in exchange for capital, the capital will not be fenced round with any artificial barriers, or invested with any unnatural preponderance, to prevent the exchange being one of perfect equality, and therefore a real benefit to both exchangers. We are approaching this desirable state in England. Indeed, there is scarcely any legal restriction acted upon which prevents the exchange of labour with capital being completely unembarrassed. Yet it is only within a few centuries that the working-men of this country have emerged from the condition of actual slaves into that of free labourers; it is only a few hundred years ago since the cultivator of the ground, the domestic servant, and sometimes even the artisan, was the absolute property of another man--bought, sold, let, without any will of his own, like an ox or a horse--producing nothing for himself--and transmitting the miseries of his lot to his children. The progress of civilization destroyed this monstrous system, in the same way that at the present day it is destroying it in Russia and other countries where slavery still exists. But it was by a very slow process that the English slave went forward to the complete enjoyment of the legal rights of a free exchanger. The transition exhibits very many years of gross injustice, of bitter suffering, of absurd and ineffectual violations of the natural rights of man; and of struggles between the capitalist and the labourer, for exclusive advantages, perpetuated by ignorant lawgivers, who could not see that the interest of all classes of producers is one and the same. We may not improperly devote a little space to the description of this dark and evil period. We shall see that while such a struggle goes forward--that is, while security of property and freedom of industry are not held as the interchangeable rights of the capitalist and the labourer--there can be little production and less accumulation. Wherever positive slavery exists--wherever the labourers are utterly deprived of their property in their labour, and are compelled to dispose of it without retaining any part of the character of voluntary exchangers--there are found idleness, ignorance, and unskilfulness; industry is enfeebled--the oppressor and the oppressed are both poor--there is no national accumulation. The existence of slavery amongst the nations of antiquity was a great impediment to their progress in the arts of life. The community, in such nations, was divided into a caste of nobles called citizens, and a caste of labourers called slaves.