First Memoir on Pauperism, Second Part, Post 11

Public charity exerts no less negative an influence on the liberty of the poor than on its morality.  This is easily shown: from the moment that one made it a community duty to provide for the poor, it immediately and necessarily followed that each community was only responsible for those poor who resided in their territory; it is the only way to equalize the public burden resulting from the law and to keep proportion between the number of poor and the means to support them.  But since in countries that have organized government charity, private charity is practically unknown, the result is that he whose misfortunes and vices have rendered unable to earn a living is condemned on pain of death, not to leave the village where he was born.  If he leaves, he travels in enemy territory; the individual interest of the communities more active than the best organized national police denounces his arrival, watches what he does, and if he wishes to settle in a new place, is pointed out to the authorities anad brought bback to the place he left.  By their Poor Laws, the English have immobilized one sixth of their population.  They have fixed them to the earth like the serfs of the Middle Ages.  Serfdom forced man to stay in his place of birth against his will; government charity prevents him from wanting to leave.  I see only this difference between the two systems.  The English have gone farther and they have drawn from the principle of public benefits even worse consequences and from which I think escape is permissible.  English towns are so fearful that a new indigent might become their responsibility and obtain residence in their midst that when a stranger of unpromising appearance arrives in their community and stays temporarily, or when some unforeseen misfortune strikes him, the municipal authorities make haste to demand a deposit against probable future misery, and if the stranger cannot provide it, he must leave.

Thus does public charity not only deprive the English poor of their mobility, but also that of all those menaced by poverty.