Mill, in his treatise on _Political Economy_, gives us an account of this condition of things, as prevailing among the peasants in certain districts of Germany.

"They labour early and late," he says, quoting from a German eulogist.

"They plod on from day to day and from year to year, the most untirable of human animals." The German writer admires them as men who are their own masters.

Mill holds them up as a shining and instructive example of the magic effect of ownership in intensifying human labour.

In any case such men are examples of two things--of labour operating as the sole productive agency, and also of such labour self-intensified to its utmost pitch.