Holding in his hands the sufferings or the joys, the life or death of a considerable portion of his fellow human beings, of the most disordered, turbulent, coarsest portion, will he hot recoil from the use of this terrible power? And if one finds one of these fearless men, can one find several more? Nevertheless, these functions can only be exercised over a small area; one must appoint a large number of citizens. The English have been obliged to place poor inspectors in each community. What inevitably came of all this? Misery being ascertained, the causes of the misery remain uncertain: one is patent fact; the other proved by reasoning that is always debatable; the granting of help never resulting in more than a mistake impacting society indirectly; the refusal of help resulting in immediate bad results for the poor and the inspector himself, the choice of the latter can not be doubted. The law will ahve declared that only blameless misery will be helped; in practice, all misery will receive help. I will make similar arguments, equally supported by experience on the second point.
One wants alms to be the price of work. First of all, are there always public projects to work on? Are they equally distributed throughout the country, such that one would never encounter a district with plenty of public work to do, and few indigents to help; while another district has plenty of poor to support and little work? If this difficulty shows up in all epochs, might it not become insurmountable when, because of the progressive development of civilization, the progress of the population, the effects of the poor laws themselves, the number of indigents reaches, as in England, a sixth, others say a fourth, of the total population?
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