Competition for the purchase of labour grows, therefore, with every increase in the diversification of employment, with constant tendency to increase in the reward of labour. It declines with every diminution in the modes of employing labour, with steady tendency to decline in wages. If the reader will now trace the course of man toward freedom, in the various nations of the world, he will see that his progress has been in the ratio of the growth of towns at which he and his neighbours could exchange the products of their labour, and that it has declined as the near towns have given way to the distant cities. The people of Attica did not need to go abroad to effect their exchanges, and therefore they became rich and free; whereas the Spartans, who tolerated nothing but agriculture, remained poor and surrounded by hosts of slaves. The towns and cities of Italy gave value to the land by which they were surrounded, and freedom to the people by whom that land was cultivated. So was it in Holland, and in Belgium, and so again in England. In each and all of these land increased in value with every increase in the facility of exchanging its products for clothing and machinery, and with each step in this direction men were enabled more readily to maintain and to increase the power of the land, and to permit larger numbers to obtain increased supplies from the same surfaces. Association thus increased the power of accumulating wealth, and wealth thus diminished in its power over labour, while with augmented numbers the people everywhere found an increase in their power to assert and to defend their rights. Having reflected on the facts presented to him in the pages of history, and having satisfied himself that they are in perfect accordance with the views here presented, the reader will perhaps find himself disposed to admit, the correctness of the following propositions:-- I. That the nearer the market the less must be the cost to the farmer for transporting his products to market and for bringing back the manure to maintain and improve his land. II. That the nearer the market the less must be the loss of labour in going to market, and the greater the quantity that can be given to the improvement of the land. III. That the more the labour and manure that can be given to land, the larger will be the product and the greater its value. IV. That the larger the quantity of commodities produced the greater will be the demand for labour to be employed in converting them into forms that fit them for consumption, and the larger the quantity to be divided among the labourers. V. That the greater the competition for the purchase of labour the greater must be the tendency toward the freedom of the labourer. VI. That the freedom of man in thought, speech, action, and trade, tends thus to keep pace with increase in the habit of association among men, and increase in the value of land;--and