The rich being compelled by increasing scarcity to contract their expenses, artificers and tradesmen, one after another, were thrown out of employ; and thus the streets were filled with a starving crowd, daily increased by those who flocked from the country and from neighbouring towns, reduced to depend upon charity, and allured to the capital by its superior wealth. So great was the evil, such the scenes of misery presented to the eye in every street, that the municipal authorities resolved on opening two vast establishments—the lazaretto, or hospital for persons with infectious disorders, and a building usually appropriated to the reception of foundlings. To these places all mendicants and persons without means of subsistence were taken by the police, and maintained at the public expense. At one of these establishments 3000 persons were admitted within a few days, and fresh inmates were continually presenting themselves. Private munificence materially lightened the heavy charge thus laid upon the public treasury. But, then as now, numbers were so devoted to a vagabond life, that rather than accept food, clothing, and shelter, under the moderate restraints necessary to preserve order in such a multitude, they would have remained in rags, exposed to the inclemency of the weather, and dependent even for the bread of life upon casual relief. To quicken the diligence of the police, a small reward was given for each person whom they brought in. At length the discontent among those who were shut up, generated by the restrictions on their liberty, and heightened by a mortality far less probably than that which took place among them while scattered abroad, but more alarming because brought all at once into view, became so great, that the magistrates broke up these establishments, and the misery of unbounded beggary again prevailed throughout Milan.