Through such various stages passed the Anglo-Saxons and the English people, in their transition from chattelhood and various forms of personal servitude, to freedom. The present inhabitants of English towns, as well as the free yeomanry and tenants--in brief, all the English commercial, trading, farming and working classes--have emerged from slavery, serfdom or servility. In the course of centuries the oppressed have achieved the liberty of their persons and labor, and the freedom of the soil: they have conquered political status and political rights; and their descendants peopled the American colonies, and here finally conquered the paramount right of national independence. The genuine freemen of the great Western Republic are not ashamed but proud of such a lineage of toil and victory. These freemen now and here again boldly and nobly enter the lists to combat with human bondage in every shape; and thus they remain true to the holy traditions which they have inherited from their fathers. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 19: Certain pro-slavery organs and small yelpers (see "Southern Wealth," etc., New York, 1860) defame the memory of the Henries and Elizabeths for their generous action toward the serfs, forgetting that such royal decrees, in many cases, _liberated their own direct ancestors_.] XX. SLAVI, SLAVONIANS, SLAVES, RUSSIANS. AUTHORITIES: _Schaffarick, Corpus Scriptorum Historiæ Byzantinæ, Nestor, Fischer, Karamzin, Gerebtzoff, etc._ At what epoch the Slavic race left the common home of the Aryans and immigrated into Europe, will forever remain an insoluble mystery. Some ethnologists suppose the Slavi to have preceded the Gauls, and think they find their traces all over central Europe, on the Po, and around the Adriatic Gulf. At all events, the Slavi are very ancient occupants of European soil, and without doubt took possession of it long before the Germans. The region between the Danube, the Vistula and the Volga, was from time immemorial, as it still is, distinctly a Slavic region, although at some previous time, it was probably occupied by the Yellow or Finnic races. Subsequently the Slavi covered the lands between the Vistula and the Elba (now again lost), and colonized the southern shores of the Danube. From immemorial time, the Slavi were an agricultural people; and perhaps they were the first who cultivated the virgin soil of Central and Northern Europe. The Slavi lived in villages, and were organized in rural communes, electing their chiefs, (_joupan_) or ancients (_starschina_). As early as the time of Herodotus, the commerce in grain was very active at the mouth of the Dnieper, and then, as at the present day, the Slavi imported their wheat to Byzantium (Constantinople), Greece, and Asia Minor.