As the tree is known by its fruit, so may we judge of the relative merits of the system which facilitates and encourages marriages amongst chattel-slaves, and of that which prescribes Malthusianism to our free and independent proletarians. The result of the latter system in this metropolis alone is 100,000 women obliged to subsist themselves, wholly or in part, by prostitution! The result of the former system is prostitution reduced within very narrow limits amongst the slave-class, and what there is of it is directly chargeable to the masters’ own account, and not to that of their male slaves. But enough has been said to establish our position that chattel-slavery, with all its abominations, is less destructive of life, liberty, and happiness than the wages-slavery of modern proletarianism. Were other facts and arguments necessary, we could supply them to redundancy. We therefore dismiss the subject, and shall proceed to show how Christianity unconsciously caused the greater evil in attempting to rescue humanity from the lesser. [Illustration: Decoration] CHAPTER IX. HISTORY OF EARLY SOCIAL REFORMERS. Intention of foregoing Contrast--Difficulties of Christian Revolution, and comparative Facility of Coming Ones--Essenes as Early Reformers--Difficulties in the way of Christian Innovations on Pagan Slavery. Before proceeding to show how Christianity, on the one hand, and worldly selfishness on the other, concurred in superimposing the evil of proletarianism upon that of chattel-slavery, and in gradually supplanting chattel-slavery itself, to make place for the wages-slavery of modern civilization, let us guard ourselves by a word or two against a misconception that might possibly arise in the minds of some from the perusal of the two last chapters. Let no one suppose that it was any part of our intention to extenuate the abomination of serfdom or chattel-slavery under any condition, or to mitigate that just abhorrence of it, in all its forms, which we feel assured the reader, in common with ourselves, feels towards it. Far be from us any such purpose. The object of this part of our inquiry was simply to show that wages-slavery with proletarianism may be the worse evil of the two, and is positively at this moment a greater curse to the human race than any form of chattel-slavery or of serfdom known in ancient, mediæval, or even in modern times. The inference, therefore, that should be drawn from the last two chapters is, not that we regret the social revolution which has taken place, but that it did not take place in the right way, and that, in consequence, another and greater revolution is still indispensable and inevitable for the major part of the human race.