The poor person who demands alms in the name of the law is in a more humiliating position than one who asks his fellows for pity in the name of the One who looks upon rich and poor with the same eyes and subjects them to equal laws.
But this is not all: individual charity establishes precious links between rich and poor. The former is interested by his giving itself in the lot of the one whose misery he is trying to alleviate; the latter, sustained by help he had no right to expect and that he perhaps did not even hope to receive is attracted towards the former by gratitude. A moral connection has been established between two classes that so many interests andd passions conspire to separate, and, divided by fortune, their wills bring them closer; it is not so with government charity. This leaves the alms and takes away the morality. The rich, who is despoiled of some part of his surplus without being consulted, sees only in the poor man an avid stranger called in by the legislator to partake of his property. The poor, on the other hand, feels no gratitude for a benefit one cannot refuse him and that does not satisfy him; for public alms, which assure subsistence, does not make life any happier or more comfortable than private charity does; government charity does not obviate the fact that there are poor and rich in society, that some cannot look around without hate and fear, while others cannot think of their hardships without despair and envy. Far from uniting in one people, these two rial nations that have existed since the world began and that are called the rich and the poor, it breaks the only link that could be established between them, it ranges them, each under his own banner, it counts them, puts them in their places, and pits them one against the other.
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