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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 The largest corn-market, Rome, was withdrawn from the trade--the market to which all the necessaries of life would naturally have gravitated; and the supply of corn was placed in the hand
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