If you closely study the state of the populations that have had such laws in effect for a long time, you will readily find that it has pernicious effects on morality as much as on public prosperity, ad that it corrupts men as much as it impoverishes them.
In general, nothing elevates and sustains the human spirit at so high a level as the idea of rights. One finds in the idea of right something grand and virile that removes the supplicant quality from the demand, and raises the supplicant to the level of the grantor. But the right of a poor person to obtain help from society has this particular quality, that instead of elevating the heart of the person who exercises the right, it debases it. In countries where the law does not offer such a recourse, the poor person, requesting individual charity, recognizes, it is true, that his situation is inferior to that of his peers; but he realizes it in secret and only once; from the moment an indigent is inscribed on the poor register in his parish, he can, no doubt, claim benefits with assurance, but what is the obtaining of this right if not an authentic admission of misery, weakness, and bad conduct of him who obtains it? Ordinary rights are confirmed upon men because of some personal advantage they have gained over their peers. This right is given in recognition of inferiority. The first calls attention to the advantage and affirms it; the second calls attention to the inferiority and gives it legal status.
The more the former is grand and assured, the more they are honored. The more the latter is permanent and extended, the more it degrades.
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