England, as we have said, once groaned under the evils of positive slavery. The Anglo-Saxons had what they called "live money," such as sheep and slaves. To this cause may be doubtless attributed the easy conquest of the country by the Norman invaders, and the oppression that succeeded that conquest. If the people had been free, no king could have swept away the entire population of a hundred thousand souls that dwelt in the country between the Humber and the Tees, and converted a district of sixty miles in length into a dreary desert, which remained for years without houses and without inhabitants. This the Conqueror did. In the reign of Henry II. the slaves of England were exported in large numbers to Ireland. These slaves, or villeins, as is the case in Russia and Poland at the present day, differed in the degree of the oppression which was exercised towards them. Some, called "villeins in gross," were at the absolute disposal of the lord--transferable from one owner to another, like a horse or a cow. Others, called "villeins regardant," were annexed to particular estates, and were called upon to perform whatever agricultural offices the lord should demand from them, not having the power of acquiring any property, and their only privilege being that they were irremoveable except with their own consent. These distinctions are not of much consequence, for, by a happy combination of circumstances, the bondmen of every kind, in the course of a century or two after the Conquest, were rapidly passing into the condition of free labourers. But still capital was accumulated so slowly, and labour was so unproductive, that the land did not produce the tenth part of a modern crop; and the country was constantly exposed to the severest inflictions of famine, whenever a worse than usual harvest occurred.