matter of moment in England, a similar system was
adopted in the well-known Speenhamland scale (1795), by which a larger
or lesser allowance was given to a family according to its size and
the prevailing price of corn. A maintenance was thus provided for the
able-bodied and their families, at least in part, without any
equivalent in labour; though in England labour was demanded of the
applicant, and work was done more or less perfunctorily. In amount the
Roman dole seems to have been equivalent to the allowance provided for
a slave, but the citizen received it without having to do any labour
task. He received it as a statutory right. There could hardly be a
more effective method for degrading his manhood and denaturalizing his
family. He was also a voter, and the alms appealed to his weakness and
indolence; and the fear of displeasing him and losing his vote kept
him, socially, master of the situation, to his own ruin. If in England
now relief were given to able-bodied persons who retained their votes,
this evil would also attach to it.

2. The system obliged the hard-working to maintain the idlers, while
it continually increased their number. The needy teacher in Juvenal,
instead of a fee, is put off with a _tessera_, to which, not being a
citizen, he has no right. "The foreign reapers," it was said, "filled
Rome's belly and left Rome free for the stage and the circus." The
freeman had become a slave--"stupid and drowsy, to whom days of ease
had become habitual, the games, the circus, the theatre, dice,
eating-houses and brothels." Here are all the marks of a degraded
pauperism.

3. The system led the way to an ever more extensive slavery. The man
who could not live on his dole and other scrapings had the alternative
of becoming a slave. "Better have a good master than live so
distressfully"; and "If I were free I should live at my own risk; now
I live at yours," are the expressions suggestive of the natural
temptations of slavery in these conditions. The escaped slaves
returned to "their manger." The _annona_ did not prevent destitution.
It was a half-way house to slavery.

4. The effect on agriculture, and proportionally on commerce
generally, was ruinous. The largest corn-market, Rome, was withdrawn
from the trade--the market to which all the necessaries of life would
naturally have gravitated; and the supply of corn was placed in the
hand