First Memoir on Pauperism, Second Part, Post 15

Since my voyage to England, the Poor Laws have been modified.  Many English flatter themselves that these reforms will effect great changes in the lot of the poor, on their morality, and on their number.  I would like to be able to share these hopes, but I cannot.  The English of our own days have recast anew in the new law the same principle adopted by Elizabeth 250 years ago.  Like this princess, they have imposed the obligation to support the poor upon society.  That is enough; all the abuses that I have tried to describe are contained in that principle as the tallest oak is in the acorn that a child can hold in his hand.  Only time is required for growth and development.  To want to establish a law  that comes regularly, permanently, and uniformly to the aid of the poor, without their numbers growing, without their sloth growing with their needs, their idleness with their vices, is to plant a seed, then to be astonished that a stem appears, then leaves, later, flowers, finally, fruits, which, scattering from afar, will cause to one day appear a green forest from the entrails of the earth.