Constantine’s courtier-“Christians” and capitalists were not slow in availing themselves of this new form of slavery. They soon discovered that it was (to them) a _cheaper_ slavery than the old one. They discovered that an “independent labourer” might be made, by the fear of starvation, to do more work than a chattel-slave ever did under the fear of the lash; and with this advantage in their own favour, that he might be turned off and left to starve when there was no work for him; whereas they would have to _keep_ the chattel-slave, and _keep him well_ too, whether there was work for him or not. But as we have already, in a former chapter, so largely dwelt on the comparative merits of the two kinds of slavery, it is unnecessary to repeat here the signal advantages which landlords and capitalists derive from wages-slavery in comparison with the other. At any rate, the capitalists or proprietors, under Constantine and his successors, must have been well aware of them; for we find that, instead of compelling the manumitted slaves and their progeny to return to the condition of chattel-slavery, they greatly added to their numbers by still further manumissions, only accompanying them with very stringent laws and regulations to keep them, now “independent labourers,” as effectually under their thumb as when they had been nominal bondsmen. Had the primitive Christians foreseen the terrible abuse their benevolent labours were destined to give rise to, it may be questioned whether they would not have abandoned their mission, rather than risk the superinducing of proletarianism, with all its horrors, upon the system they sought to explode--the system of chattel-slavery. It was not in order to fill the world with famishing beggars, with necessitous thieves and prostitutes, and, above all, with myriads of honest producers starving in the midst of their own productions,--it was not for such unholy purposes that the early Christians divized the _régime_ of fraternity and equality; yet all the traditions that remain to us of Christian propagandism prove unmistakably that such were its effects, even before the downfall of the Roman empire, to which event it, in our opinion, in no small degree contributed.