of producing and distributing wealth on their own account_. And as this supposes a species of politico-economical knowledge infinitely beyond what might be expected from such a class in their day,--as it supposes such a knowledge of agrarian, monetary, fiscal, and other laws as are absolutely necessary to the preservation of even the semblance of liberty, and which knowledge was almost as dead a letter to their masters as to themselves,--we cannot but rejoice, for their own sakes, that the slaves of antiquity chose to remain as they were. When men have but a choice of two evils, it is desirable they should choose the lesser. The slaves of antiquity had but a choice between direct slavery and the miseries of proletarianism: in our opinion, they chose the lesser of the two. Had they been wise enough to understand their true political and social rights, they might have escaped both. Christianity came to teach them; but man’s perversity stepped in between them and the light of the Gospel. Even to this day, after eighteen centuries of gospel-propagandism, not one in a thousand of the slave-class--whether they be chattel-slaves or wages-slaves--whether they be proletarians or the property of their masters--understands his political and social rights. The consequence is, the two kinds of slavery prevail still all over the world; and, of the two, direct or chattel-slavery is now, as formerly, the lesser evil of the two. In no part of the East, that we know of, would an Oriental slave of modern times exchange conditions with one of our Wigan handloom weavers, nor with a Dorsetshire labourer. But, to bring this question to a test that will make the difference at once obvious to every one, let us just compare the condition of a modern American slave (so-called) with that of “a free and independent labourer” in England. We choose these two countries because they are inhabited by the same Anglo-Saxon race; because they are at the head of modern civilization; and because, from the commercial intercourse between them, we know more of their positive and relative condition than of any other two known countries.