Labour may be a burden and a chastisement, but it is also an
honour and a glory. Without it, nothing can be accomplished. All
that is great in man comes through work; and civilisation is its
product. Were labour abolished, the race of Adam were at once
stricken by moral death.

It is idleness that is the curse of man--not labour. Idleness
eats the heart out of men as of nations, and consumes them as rust
does iron. When Alexander conquered the Persians, and had an
opportunity of observing their manners, he remarked that they did
not seem conscious that there could be anything more servile than
a life of pleasure, or more princely than a life of toil.

When the Emperor Severus lay on his deathbed at York, whither he
had been borne on a litter from the foot of the Grampians, his
final watchword to his soldiers was, "LABOREMUS" (we must work);
and nothing but constant toil maintained the power and extended
the authority of the Roman generals.

In describing the earlier social condition of Italy, when the
ordinary occupations of rural life were considered compatible with
the highest civic dignity, Pliny speaks of the triumphant generals
and their men, returning contentedly to the plough. In those days
the lands were tilled by the hands even of generals, the soil
exulting beneath a ploughshare crowned with laurels, and guided by
a husbandman graced with triumphs: "IPSORUM TUNC MANIBUS
IMPERATORUM COLEBANTUR AGRI: UT FAS EST CREDERE, GAUDENTE TERRA
VOMERE LAUREATO ET TRIUMPHALI ARATORE." (1) It was only after
slaves became extensively employed in all departments of industry
that labour came to be regarded as dishonourable and servile. And