“Art. 174. All persons who are not proprietors or renters of the land on which they are residing, or who shall not have made a contract to work with some proprietor or renter, shall be reputed vagabonds, and shall be arrested by the rural police of the section in which they may be found, and carried before the justice of the peace of the commune.
“Art. 175. The justice of the peace, after interrogating and hearing the person brought before him, shall make known to him the articles of the law which oblige him to employ himself in agricultural labour; and after that communication he shall remand him to prison, until he shall have bound himself by a contract according to the provisions of the law.
“Art. 176. The justice of the peace will allow the person arrested to make his own choice of the individual with whom he is to contract to labour.
“Art. 177. If, after eight days of detention, the prisoner shall not have agreed to go to field work, he shall be sent to the public works for cleaning the town or district where he may be arrested, and there he shall be employed until he shall consent to go to field labour. The person who removes any labourer from the public works to employ him in private work shall be subject to a fine of fifty dollars, of which a moiety is to be paid to the person complaining.
“Art. 178. If the prisoner be a child under age, the justice of the peace shall inquire out his parents, and send him to them to follow their condition of life.
“Art. 179. After the expiration of three months from the publication of this Code, rigorous measures shall be enforced against delinquents.
“Art. 180. Every person attached to the country as a cultivator, who shall on a working day, and during the hours of labour, be found unemployed, or lounging on the public roads, shall be considered idle, and be arrested and taken before the justice of the peace, who shall commit him to prison for twenty-four hours for the first offence, and shall send him to labour on the public works upon a repetition of the offence.
“Art. 181. To provide against vagabondage, under the pretence of being a soldier.
“Art. 182. Officers commanding the rural police shall take care that in their respective sections no person shall live in idleness. For this purpose they have authority to oblige such persons as are not actually employed in labour, to give an account of their occupations; and such persons as cannot prove that they cultivate the soil, or are keepers of cattle-pens, shall be considered as without visible means of procuring their livelihood, and shall be arrested as vagabonds.