nds, or incapable of labour.
When Ulysses was disguised as a mendicant, and presented himself to
Eurymachus, this prince observing him, to be robust and healthy, offered
to give him employment, or otherwise to leave him to his ill fortune.
When the Roman Emperors, even in the reigns of Nero and Tiberius,
bestowed their largesses, the distributors were ordered to exempt those
from receiving a share whose bad conduct kept them in misery; for that
it was better the lazy should die with hunger than be fed in idleness.

Whether the police of the ancients was more exact, or whether they were
more attentive to practise the duties of humanity, or that slavery
served as an efficacious corrective of idleness; it clearly appears how
small was the misery, and how few the numbers of their poor. This they
did, too, without having recourse to hospitals.

At the establishment of Christianity, when the apostles commanded a
community of wealth among their disciples, the miseries of the poor
became alleviated in a greater degree. If they did not absolutely live
together, as we have seen religious orders, yet the wealthy continually
supplied their distressed brethren: but matters greatly changed under
Constantine. This prince published edicts in favour of those Christians
who had been condemned in the preceding reigns to slavery, to the mines,
to the galleys, or prisons. The church felt an inundation of prodigious
crowds of these miserable men, who brought with them urgent wants and
corporeal infirmities. The Christian families were then not numerous;
they could not satisfy these claimants. The magistrates protected them:
they built spacious hospitals, under different titles, for the sick, the
aged, the invalids, the widows, and orphans. The emperors, and the most
eminent personages, were seen in these hospitals, examining the
patients; they assisted the helpless; they dressed the wounded. This did
so much honour to the new religion, that Julian the Apostate introduced
this custom among the pagans. But the best things are continually
perverted.

These retreats were found insufficient. Many slaves, proud of the
liberty they had just recovered, looked on them as prisons; and, under
various pretexts, wandered about the country. They displayed with art
the scars of their former wounds, and exposed the imprinted marks of
their chains. They found thus a lucrative profession in begging, which
had been interdicted by the laws. The profession did