Now that we have considered the forcible creation
 of a class of outlawed proletarians, the bloody discipline that turned
 them into wage labourers, the disgraceful action of the State which employed
 the police to accelerate the accumulation of capital by increasing the
 degree of exploitation of labour, the question remains: whence came the
 capitalists originally? For the expropriation of the agricultural population
 creates, directly, none but the greatest landed proprietors. As far, however,
 as concerns the genesis of the farmer, we can, so to say, put our hand
 on it, because it is a slow process evolving through many centuries. The
 serfs, as well as the free small proprietors, held land under very different
 tenures, and were therefore emancipated under very different economic conditions.
 In England the first form of the farmer is the bailiff, himself a serf.
 His position is similar to that of the old Roman villicus, only
 in a more limited sphere of action. During the second half of the 14th
 century he is replaced by a farmer, whom the landlord provided with seed,
 cattle and implements. His condition is not very different from that of
 the peasant. Only he exploits more wage labour. Soon he becomes a metayer,
 a half-farmer. He advances one part of the agricultural stock, the landlord
 the other. The two divide the total product in proportions determined by
 contract. This form quickly disappears in England, to give the place to
 the farmer proper, who makes his own capital breed by employing wage labourers,
 and pays a part of the surplus-product, in money or in kind, to the landlord
 as rent. So long, during the 15th century, as the independent peasant and
 the farm-labourer working for himself as well as for wages, enriched themselves
 by their own labour, the circumstances of the farmer, and his field of production,
 were equally mediocre. The agricultural revolution which commenced in the
 last third of the 15th century, and continued during almost the whole of
 the 16th (excepting, however, its last decade), enriched him just as speedily
 as it impoverished the mass of the agricultural people. [1]