n as a high offence, and
misdemeanour. The penalty of God's laws against idleness, as expressed in
the system of nature, was starvation; and it was held intolerable that any
man should be allowed to escape a divine judgment by begging under false
pretences, and robbing others of their honest earnings.

In a country also the boast of which was its open-handed hospitality, it
was necessary to take care that hospitality was not brought to discredit by
abuse; and when every door was freely opened to a request for a meal or a
night's lodging, there was an imperative duty to keep a strict eye on
whatever persons were on the move. We shall therefore be prepared to find
"sturdy and valiant beggars" treated with summary justice as criminals of a
high order; the right of a government so to treat them being proportioned
to the facilities with which the honestly disposed can maintain themselves.

It might have been expected, on the other hand, that when wages were so
high, and work so constant, labourers would have been left to themselves to
make provision against sickness and old age. To modern ways of thinking on
these subjects, there would have seemed no hardship in so leaving them; and
their sufferings, if they had suffered, would have appeared but as a
deserved retribution. This, however, was not the temper of earlier times.
Charity has ever been the especial virtue of Catholic States, and the aged
and the impotent were always held to be the legitimate objects of it. Men
who had worked hard while they were able to work were treated like decayed
soldiers, as the discharged pensionaries of society; they were held
entitled to wear out their age (under restrictions) at the expense of
others; and so readily did society acquiesce in this aspect of its
obligations, that on the failure of the monasteries to do their duty, it
was still sufficient to leave such persons to voluntary liberality, and
legislation had to interfere only to direct such liberality into its
legitimate channels. In the 23rd of Edw. III. cap. 7, a prohibition was
issued against giving alms to "valiant beggars," and this proving
inadequate, and charity being still given indiscriminately, in the twelfth
year of Richard II. the system of licences was introduced, and a pair of
stocks was erected by order in every town or village, to "justify" persons
begging unpermitted. The monasteries growing more and more careless, the
number of paupers continued to multiply, and th