(_pistrini exercitio
subjugari_). If they were poor (_pauperes_) they were enslaved, and
the delinquent client was to be put to death.

The right to relief was dependent on the right of citizenship. Hence it
became hereditary and passed from father to son. It was thus in the
nature of a continuous endowed charity, like the well-known family
charity of Smith, for instance, in which a large property was left to
the testator's descendants, of whom it was said that as a result no
Smith of that family could fail to be poor. But the _annona civica_ was
an endowed charity, affecting not a single family, but the whole
population. Later, when Constantinople was founded, the right to relief
was attached to new houses as a premium on building operations. Thus it
belonged not to persons only, but also to houses, and became a species
of "immovable" property, passing to the purchaser of the house or
property, as would the adscript slaves. The bread followed the house
(_aedes sequantur annonae_). If, on the transfer of a house, bread
claims were lost owing to the absence of claimants, they were
transferred to the treasury (_fisci viribus vindicentur_). But the
savage law of Valentinian, referred to above, shows to what lengths such
a system was pushed. Early in its history the _annona civica_ attracted
many to Rome in the hope of living there without working. For the 400
years since the _lex Clodia_ was enacted constant injury had been done
by it, and now (A.D. 364) people had to be kept off the civic bounty as
if they were birds of prey, and the very poor man (_pauperrimus_), who
had no civic title to the food, if he obtained it by fraud, was
enslaved. Thus, in spite of the abundant state relief, there had grown
up a class of the very poor, the Gentiles of the state, who were outside
the sphere of its ministrations. The _annona civica_ was introduced not
only into Constantinople, but also into Alexandria, with baleful
results, and into Antioch. When Constantinople was founded the
corn-ships of Africa sailed there instead of to Rome. On charitable
relief, as we shall see, the _annona_ has had a long-continued and fatal
influence.

1. If the government considers itself responsible for provisioning the
people it must fix the price of necessaries, and to meet distress or
popular clamour it will lower the price. It becomes thus a large
relief society for the supply of corn. In a time of distress, when the
corn laws were a