compelling those who were weak of body, or of mind, to expend their labor upon them, and giving in return such portion of the product as may seem required for preserving the slave in working order. This being the barbarous condition of society, wealth consists in movables- being reckoned by the number of beasts of burden, called men, women, and children, as is now the case in Carolina, Brazil, and Cuba. Land being held in vast tracts, it finds no circulation, and has little value. Man being then held as property, he has no right of circulation among his fellow-men. At times, he is tied by law to the land becoming adscriptus glebæ. Yet earlier, he is liable to purchase and sale, apart from the land-circulating then, only in virtue of special permission granted by his master; as was the case in Norman Englaud, and now is so, in Russia and Carolina.

Population and wealth further increasing, and employments becoming diversified, with increase in the power of association, and in the development of the various faculties of man, the blacksmith, the carpenter, the shoemaker, the miller, and the trader, come together to form the nucleus of the future town; and now it is, that land begins to be divided sometimes to be held in absolute ownership, and at others, on condition of the payment of yearly contributions to its owners, as compensation for its use.

The town increasing, land becomes more and more divided each new house carrying with it a right to the exclusive occupation of the soil on which it stands. Wealth and power growing, property and person become more secure, with constant increase in the value of land, and in the freedom of man; and as constant decline in the value of the material property that in earlier days was held as the only wealth. Mind now gradually acquiring power over matter— mental force is taking precedence of that which is purely physical — and man is becoming less the slave of nature and of his fellow-man. Towns now become places of refuge men who have been held as slaves, seeking, in association with their fellow-men, the free exercise of the faculties by which they are distinguished from the brute.

With every stage of progress, individuality becomes more and more developed men who have heretofore been limited to the single pursuit of tillage, now becoming carpenters and blacksmiths, masons or millers, and circulating among each other

freed from the obligation to ask permission of their masters. The various products of the earth becoming more and more utilized, the value of commodities declines, while that of land and man still further rises the slave becoming free, and his late master, the land-owner, becoming rich-and the beautiful harmony of natural laws being thus established.

§ 3. Circulation becomes more rapid as men become more free. Men become more free as land becomes more and more divided. Land becomes divided as wealth accumulates, and land, itself, acquires value. The rapidity of circulation is, therefore, in the direct ratio of the tendency in capital to become fixed and immovable.

Cedric

Seeking evidence of this, we may turn to England of the days of Cœur de Lion, when serfs were almost the only propertyGurth being then allowed the privilege of circulating among his fellow-men, only in consideration of wearing a collar testifying that he was "the born thrall of Cedric of Rotherwood." himself then ate from a table formed of rough-hewn planks - sitting, too, in a room half filled with smoke, protected against the weather only by a roof somewhat similar to those of the poorest of modern pig-styes - being composed of the rudest planks, covered with thatch.*

*Ivanhoe, vol. i. chap. iv.

That the facts of early England are being reproduced in the nineteenth century, is shown by the following picture of the cabin of a Red River plantation-yielding, annually, sixty bales of cotton, whose worth may be taken at $3000:

"The house was a small square log-cabin, with a broad, open shed or piazza in front, and a chimney, made of sticks and mud, leaning against one end. A smaller detached cabin, twenty feet in the rear, was used for a kitchen. A cistern under a roof, and collecting water from the three roofs, stood between. The water from the bayou was not fit to drink, nor is the water of the Red River, or of any springs in this region. The people depend entirely on cisterns for drinking water. It's very little white folks need, however-milk, claret, and whisky being the more common beverages. "About the house was a large yard, in which were two or three Chinatrees, and two splendid evergreen Cherokee roses; half a dozen hounds; several negro babies; turkeys and chickens; and a pet sow, teaching a fine litter of pigs how to root and wallow. Three hundred yards from the house was a gin-house and stable, and in the interval between were two rows of comfortable negro cabins. Between the house and the cabins was a large post, on which was a bell to call the negroes. A rack for fastening horses stood near it. On the bell-post, and on each of the rack-posts, were nailed the antlers of a buck, as well as on a large oak-tree near by. On the logs of the kitchen a fresh deer-skin was drying, On the railing of the piazza

How trivial was then the value of land, is shown by the conditions of early leases - all proving, that its use was obtainable in return for an annual contribution, that now appears to us entirely insignificant. As population increased, towns grew in number and in size - becoming strong to afford protection to those who sought it at their hands. Land steadily advanced in value wealth thus increasing with the diminished proportion borne by land to man. Division kept steady pace with wealththe number of actual proprietors having been, in the days of Adam Smith, no less than 200,000, and the average proprietorship but 150 acres. Adding to these, those persons who had acquired permanent rights in lots in towns and cities, we should obtain perhaps twice that number-giving an owner for every 75 acres, and more than one for every five of the adult males; whereas, in the days of the Plantagenets, descendants of Norman knights held manors that counted by hundreds, and the Church was chief proprietor.

The circulation of landed property had, of course, much increased. While it remained in the hands of the Church, or of great barons, there could be none. So soon, however, as it passed from their hands, either by permanent division among heirs or purchasers, or by the grant of leases of long duration, it became a thing that could readily be bought and sold.

The circulation of services, too, became more rapid. So long as the land continued thus locked up, but few exchanges could be made without the intervention of its proprietors, as rent-receivers, or as owners of the land, and of the serf by whom it was occupied. The land becoming divided, the class of free proprietors increased in number and in power gradually freeing themselves from the necessity for paying rent for the use of land employed in raising

lay a Mexican saddle with immense wooden stirrups. The house had but one door, and no window, nor was there a pane of glass on the plantation.

Entering the house, we found it to contain but a single room, about twenty feet by sixteen. Of this space, one-quarter was occupied by a beda great four-poster, with the curtains open, made up in the French style, with a strong furniture-calico day-coverlid. A smaller camp-bed stood beside it. These two articles of furniture nearly filled the house on one side the door. At the other end was a great log fire-place, with a fine fire. The outer door was left constantly open to admit the light. On one side the fire, next the door, was a table; a kind of dresser, with crockery, and a bureau stood on the other side, and there were two deer-skin-seated chairs, and one (Connecticut-made) rocking-chair."- OLMSTED: Texas Journey, p. 47.

corn, as well as from the limitation to the use of the master's mill and oven, when desiring to convert the corn into meal, or the meal into bread. The workman within the towns, too, exchanged services directly with his brother-workmen, like himself now free. The restraints upon the circulation of land, labor, and its products thus steadily diminishing, the motion of society became from year to year more rapid with growing tendency to the development of the hidden treasures of the earth, and to the creation of local centres of activity, by means of which the centralizing effects of great landed estates, and of great trading cities, were to be further neutralized.

From age to age, we mark a growing tendency towards increasing the divisibility, and thus quickening the circulation, of fixed property. The stockholders of the East India Company are, in effect, proprietors of all the land of Hindostan, the right to a share in which is transferred by a simple entry on the books, and the delivery of a new certificate. The turnpikes and railroads of England are as fixed property as is the land on which they are laid; yet are they divisible into the smallest shares, the ownership of which is as readily transferred as is a bag of meal. Mines are opened at vast expense, the property in which is held in transferable shares. Till now, the English circulation has been everywhere retarded by the maintenance of a system of barbarous liabilities, handed down from olden time; but the general sentiment has recently found expression, in the passage of an act of Parliament, in virtue of which mills, factories, and furnaces may be built, and other descriptions of fixed property created, the ownership of which may be divided among thousands of persons — circulating through society with a facility equal to that which attends the bag of cotton, and the circulating note. Each and every such step in the course of progress, is attended, necessarily, with an increase in the proportion of fixed property, and an augmentation of the facilities of commerce.

$4. The conclusions at which we now arrive may be briefly stated in the following propositions:

That, in the early period of society, all property is movable — land being wholly destitute of value:

That, of what is then regarded as property, the larger portion

consists of men, women, and children, who are denied the power to determine for themselves for whom they will work, or what shall be their reward:

That, as wealth augments and numbers increase, employments become diversified, with constant increase in the power to subject to cultivation the richer soils:

That, land now acquiring value, it becomes divided-its power of circulation increasing geometrically, as the work of division proceeds arithmetically:

That man acquires value, as the ruder products of the earth lose it increase in the proportion of fixed to movable property thus keeping steady pace with the growing freedom of man, and with the increase in the rapidity of the societary circulation :

That, thus, the more capital becomes fixed, the more rapid is the circulation of property of every description, whether consisting of land or of its products; the greater is the power of association; the more rapid is the development of individuality; and the greater is the power of further progress:

That, with every increase in the rapidity of circulation, local attraction becomes more and more complete; with increase in the individuality of families, towns, townships, and cities, and steady diminution in the centralizing forces by which societary action had previously been disturbed and

That, with every such increase, the community tends more and more to take upon itself that natural form in which strength and beauty are most combined, with constant increase in its own individuality, and in its power to associate with other communities on terms of strict equality.

§ 5. The course of things above described, being the natural one, the accuracy of the views thus presented, is proved by the records of every community of the world in which wealth and population have steadily advanced; and for the reason, that in all of them, the power of association has as steadily grown. The reverse effects are found in those in which population has diminished, as will now be shown.

*Value is obtained by a comparison with labor: Price, by a comparison with money. The value of the rude products declines as the price rises man then increasing in value as compared with silver, gold, and corn.

VOL. III.-6