In the days of Adam Smith it was estimated that there were in that country 220,000 owners of land, and as a necessary consequence of this extensive ownership of property, there was a very decided tendency toward an increase in the freedom of man, as shown in the efforts made but a few years later for obtaining a reform in various matters of government. The French Revolution came, however, and now the doctrine of "ships, colonies, and commerce" had much to do in bringing about a state of war, during the whole of which England enjoyed almost a monopoly of the trade of the world. Having all the woollen and cotton machinery, and almost all the machinery for the production of iron, she was enabled to buy produce and sell manufactures at her own prices; and thus were the already wealthy greatly enriched. The poor-houses were, however, everywhere filled with starving labourers, and so rapidly did their number increase that it became at length necessary to give to the statute of Elizabeth a new and enlarged construction; and here do we find another coincidence in the working of Roman and British centralization. A still further one will be found in the fact that precisely as the labourer was losing all power of self-government, the little proprietors of land disappeared, to be replaced by day-labourers. The peace, however came, and with it a desire on the part of other nations to supply themselves with cloth, iron, and other manufactured commodities; and to enable them to carry into effect their wishes, many of them imposed duties having for their object the bringing together of the plough and the loom, the hammer and the harrow. This produced, of course, a necessity for new exertions to underwork those nations, leading to constant improvements of machinery, each tending to enable the capitalist more and more to accumulate fortune and purchase land, the consolidation of which has been continued until at length it has resulted in the fact, that in place of the 220,000 English land-owners of the days of Adam Smith, there now exist but 30,000, while all the land of Scotland has, as is stated, accumulated in the hands of 6000 persons.