Page:The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery.djvu/99

 flocking to Rome to demand bread; but as this increase of population soon threatened Rome itself with starvation, they were expelled the city upon a given day, to go and die where they might. This was the ordinary course adopted by Roman administrations in critical times; and Symmachus, who was prefect of Rome about the year 383, wrote thus:—'We fear the total failure of provisions at Rome, even after having chased away all the stranger-population which took refuge amongst us, and which the city subsisted.'

"On their side, the Christians inveighed loudly against the burgesses of Rome for refusing to divide their superfluity with the strangers who sought relief within her walls. St. Ambrose, who makes mention of this expulsion in several parts of his works, inveighs indignantly against this want of feeling on the part of the pagans. 'Those,' says he, 'who banish the poor strangers from Rome are much to blame. It is inhuman to repulse a fellow-creature at the moment he craves succour at your hands. Brute beasts do not treat their kind so: 'tis only man that behaves so to man.' Sometimes the pagans themselves protested against the expulsion of strangers when famine threatened the towns they had fled from."

This, it will be observed, took place after the legal establishment of Christianity under Constantine. M. de Cassagnac continues:—

"For the rest, it is manifest from divers writings of the third and fourth centuries that, as soon as the charity of the early Christians became known, the poor gathered in groups around the churches. At Rome they congregated near the church of the Apostles, in the Vatican. It was there they received a diurnal distribution of alms, as may be seen (amongst other proofs) in the works of Ammian Marcellinus, and in the poem of Prudentius against Symmachus. Moreover, it seems all manner of imposition used to be committed by loose characters to surprise the compassion of the Christian bishops. Here is the way St. Ambrose expresses himself on this subject, in the second book of his treatise on the duties of ministers:—'We must fix bounds to our liberality, that it may not be abused or rendered useless. The priests, in particular, ought to be very circumspect on this head, that they may proportion their alms to the justice of the case, and not to the importunity of the claimant. Never did the greediness of beggars reach such a pitch. Able-bodied men present themselves, strolling about for the mere pleasure of vagabondizing, and who would absorb the relief due only to the veritable poor. There are some of them who feign to be in debt: let this point be strictly verified. Others declare they have been despoiled by robbers: let exact information be taken of these persons,' &c. The scandal given by these fraudulent beggars and their impositions went to such a length, that the Emperor Valentinian II. made a law, dated from Padua, in 382, expelling from Rome all who were not beggars really incapable of gaining a livelihood.

"The law of Valentinian is very curious, in so far as it contains certain data and precise details illustrative of the state of pauperism in Italy towards the close of the fourth century. We see by it, for example, that the greater part of the beggars congregated at Rome were either runaway slaves or serfs whom the culture