will have been accomplished if he induces any one to examine the question more closely for himself.
The first point to be noted is that great measures of unrestricted State relief have had, from the earliest times, a monotonously disastrous effect upon the character of those who have received it. The Theoric Fund in Athens provided for an allowance of two oboli a day at first, and later three oboli to citizens attending public festivals and assemblies. Mr Grote defends this in principle "as the natural corollary of the religious idea associated with the festival" (cap. lxxv.); but he adds that "it was pushed to an abusive and mischievous excess in later times," and undoubtedly it ultimately degenerated into a great system of State relief to the poorer citizens. A writer of the times says that "Pericles by his Theoric Fund made his fellow-citizens babblers, idle and greedy, prodigal and dissolute." Aristotle points out its impotence to relieve poverty, "the demagogues distributed the surplus revenues to the poor, who received them all at the same time, and then they were in want again. It was only like pouring money through a sieve … the problem was to contrive how plenty and not poverty should become permanent" (Loch, "Charity and Social Life," p. 33, Ar. Pol. 1320a). The Annona Civica in Rome was equally disastrous to character, and equally futile as a measure for the relief of poverty. Initiated by Gracchus, B.C. 121, it at first ordained that corn should be sold to citizens at a cheap price. Later, Clodius, as a political move, made the distribution free. The distribution was originally quarterly, then it became monthly, and finally it was daily. It was estimated that at first only one-eighth of the citizens participated, and that in the time of Julius Caesar the proportion was three-quarters. Caesar reduced the numbers, but they eventually rose again; "in
