The Old Town
was enclosed in a ring.
Desirous, next, of putting an end to the annoying exodus of the
natives, he fixed by law the number of inhabitants; there were to be
five hundred souls, neither more nor less. If in any one year the
population exceeded that figure, the surplus was taken away, from among
the adult males, to work as galley-slaves in his fleet; a deficiency in
the requisite number was met by giving new husbands from the lower
town, often three or four at a time "with a view to ensuring good
results," to those of the native women who had hitherto failed to
produce offspring. The system worked well. With some trifling but
reprehensive fluctuations, the birth-rate and the death-rate remained
even; things were at a standstill; a fact which caused His Highness to
be compared, by a courtly panegyrist, to Joshua who bade the sun arrest
his march across the heavens. Another of these gentlemen calls the
Duke's action a "triumph of art over nature," adding, not without a
grain of malice, that "never have the generative capacities of mankind
adapted themselves with more conspicuous success to the shape of an
unnecessary wall.
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