according to the skill of the workman, or the dangerous
nature of his employment, or the number of his children. The wages also
should be paid promptly, without delay.

But it may sometimes happen that the labour which a man can contribute
is not of such a kind as will enable him to receive the fair
remuneration that should suffice for his bodily comfort. The saint is
thinking of boy-labour, and the case of those too enfeebled by age or
illness to work adequately, or perhaps at all. What is to be done for
them? Let the State look to it, is his reply. The community must, by the
law of its own existence, support all its members, and out of its
superfluous wealth must provide for its weaker citizens. Those,
therefore, who can labour harder than they need, or who already possess
more riches than suffice for them, are obliged by the natural law of
charity to give to those less favourably circumstanced than themselves.

St. Antonino does not, therefore, pretend to advocate any system of
rigid equality among men. There is bound to be, in his opinion, variety
among them, and from this variety comes indeed the harmony of the
universe. For some are born to rule, and others, by the feebleness of
their understanding or of their will, are fitted only to obey. The
workman and servant must faithfully discharge the duties of their trade
or service, be quick to receive a command, and reverent in their
obedience. And the masters, in their turn, must be forbearing in their
language, generous in their remuneration, and temperate in their
commands. It is their business to study the powers of each of those whom
they employ, and to measure out the work to each one according to the
capacity which is discoverable in him. When a faithful labourer has
become ill, the employer must himself tend and care for him, and be in
no hurry to send him to a hospital.

About the hospitals themselves he has his own ideas, or at least he has
picked out the sanest that he can find in the books and conversation of
people whom he has come across. He insists strongly that women should,
as matrons and nurses, manage those institutions which are solely for
the benefit of women; and even in those where men also are received, he
can see no incompatibility in their being administered by these same
capable directors. He much commends the custom of chemists in Florence
on Sundays, feast-days, and holidays of opening their dispensaries in
turn. So that even should all t