Phases of Charity (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1877 edition. Excerpt: ... positions which they were tar from competent to hold. Now, let us mark well what followed when once the floodgates of indiscriminate charity had been thrown open. First, a law was passed that any citizen of Rome ( not only the poor ) should at any time have the right to purchase corn from the state at a greatly reduced price; then followed the passing of a second law that a certain quantity of corn should be distributed monthly to any citizen, without question, and without any payment whatever; till on the eve of the establishment of the Empire, no fewer than 320,000 citizens were in the monthly receipt of this dole. It is true that during the golden reign of Augustus, this number of state pensioners was fixed by law at 200,000; but the startling fact remains that less than 150 years was sufficient to pauperize and render dependent a fearfully large proportion of one of the most manly races which have ever lived. Nor is this all. Not a single historian of note who has written on the causes of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire but has placed these "leges friimentaria" these Corn-laws of Rome, as the most fatal factor in that great catastrophe. They had created the monster "pauperism " in violation of all moral and social law, and in their extremity it turned against them with a terrible retribution. Now this is what we, as a nation, as a city are doing to day. We have already endeavored to show the fatal effects of indiscriminate charity upon the individual; how it unmans him by destroying all self-respect and independence and ambition; how it encourages idleness and unthriftiness and improvidence. We have already endeavored to show its disastrous effects upon the home; how it disintegrates the family and loosens the bonds of relationship, ...