'No distinction is made with respect to the right to a maintenance-allowance, a sufficient qualification for which is a certificate of illness signed by one of our public physicians, or proof of having attained to the age of sixty years. The greatest liberality is exercised on principle in granting the medical certificate; indeed, everyone has the right, if one physician has refused to grant a certificate, to go to any other physician, as we prefer to support ten lazy impostors rather than reject one real invalid. Nevertheless we have among us as few foreign idlers as native ones. In this matter also, the influence of our institutions is found to be powerful enough to nip all such tendencies in the bud. Note, above all, that the strongest ambition of the immigrant is to become like us, to become incorporated with us; in order to this, if he is healthy and strong, he must participate in our affairs. They understand human nature very imperfectly who think that proletarians in whom there lingers a trace of human dignity would, when they have an opportunity of taking part in important enterprises as fully enfranchised self-controlling men, forego that opportunity and prefer to allow themselves to be supported by the commonwealth. The new-comers are _anxious_ to participate in all that is to be earned and done in this country; in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred no other stimulus to work is needed than this. And the few to whom this stimulus is not sufficient, soon find themselves, when the novelty of their surroundings has worn off, compelled by _ennui_ and isolation to turn to some productive activity. We have here no public-house life in the European sense, no consorting of habitual idlers: here a man _must_ work if he would feel at ease, and therefore everyone works who is capable of doing so. The most stubborn indolence cannot resist for more than a few weeks at the longest the magical influence of the thought that in order to dare to salute the first in the land as an equal no other title of honour or influence is necessary than any honest work. Consequently, even among the immigrants strong healthy idlers are extremely rare exceptions, which we allow to exist as cases of mental disease. But even these must not suffer want among us. Without possessing any recognised right to it, they receive what they need, and even more than is absolutely necessary according to European ideas.