very family has its stores and cellars, so they had
public ones, and distributed the provisions according to the ages and
constitutions of the people. If the same regulation was not precisely
observed by the Athenians, the Corinthians, and the other people of
Greece, the same maxim existed in full force against idleness.

According to the laws of Draco, Solon, &c., a conviction of wilful
poverty was punished with the loss of life. Plato, more gentle in his
manners, would have them only banished. He calls them enemies of the
state; and pronounces as a maxim, that where there are great numbers of
mendicants, fatal revolutions will happen; for as these people have
nothing to lose, they plan opportunities to disturb the public repose.

The ancient Romans, whose universal object was the public prosperity,
were not indebted to Greece on this head. One of the principal
occupations of their censors was to keep a watch on the vagabonds. Those
who were condemned as incorrigible sluggards were sent to the mines, or
made to labour on the public edifices. The Romans of those times, unlike
the present race, did not consider the _far niente_ as an occupation;
they were convinced that their liberalities were ill-placed in bestowing
them on such men. The little republics of the _bees_ and the _ants_ were
often held out as an example; and the last particularly, where Virgil
says, that they have elected overseers who correct the sluggards:

"---- Pars agmina cogunt,
Castigantque moras."

And if we may trust the narratives of our travellers, the _beavers_
pursue this regulation more rigorously and exactly than even these
industrious societies. But their rigour, although but animals, is not so
barbarous as that of the ancient Germans; who, Tacitus informs us,
plunged the idlers and vagabonds in the thickest mire of their marshes,
and left them to perish by a kind of death which resembled their
inactive dispositions.

Yet, after all, it was not inhumanity that prompted the ancients thus
severely to chastise idleness; they were induced to it by a strict
equity, and it would be doing them injustice to suppose, that it was
thus they treated those _unfortunate poor_, whose indigence was
occasioned by infirmities, by age, or unforeseen calamities. Every
family constantly assisted its branches to save them from being reduced
to beggary; which to them appeared worse than death. The magistrates
protected those who were destitute of frie