a reluctancy in people to be employed in any kind of work.

Idleness in any person whatsoever is a high offence against the public economy. In China it is a maxim, that if there be a man who does not work, or a woman that is idle, in the empire, somebody must suffer cold or hunger: the produce of the lands not being more than sufficient, with culture, to maintain the inhabitants; and therefore, though the idle person may shift off the want from himself, yet it must in the end fall somewhere. The court also of Areopagus at Athens punished idleness, and exerted a right of examining every citizen in what manner he spent his time; the intention of which was, that the Athenians, knowing they were to give an account of their occupations, should follow only such as were laudable, and that there might be no room left for such as lived by unlawful arts. The civil law expelled all sturdy vagrants from the city; and, in our own law, all idle persons or vagabonds, whom our ancient statutes describe to be "such as wake on the night, and sleep on the day, Blackfriars Comment, and haunt customary taverns and ale-houses, and routs about; and no man wot from whence they come, ne whether they go;" or such as are more particularly described by statute 17 Geo. II. c. 5, and divided into three classes, idle and disorderly persons, rogues and vagabonds, and incorrigible rogues;—all these are offenders against the good order, and blemishes in the government, of any kingdom. They are therefore all punished, by the statute last mentioned; that is to say, idle and disorderly persons with one month's imprisonment in the house of correction; rogues and vagabonds with whipping, and imprisonment not exceeding six months; and incorrigible rogues with the like discipline, and confinement not exceeding two years; the breach and escape from which confinement in one of an inferior class, ranks him among incorrigible rogues; and in a rogue (before incorrigible) makes him a felon, and liable to be transported for seven years. Persons harbouring vagrants are liable to a fine of forty shillings, and to pay all expenses brought upon the parish thereby; in the same manner as, by our ancient laws, whoever harboured any stranger for more than two nights, was answerable to the public for any offence that such his inmate might commit.