First Memoir on Pauperism, Second Part, Post 16

I am certainly very far from wanting to put benevolence on trial, which is one of the msot beautiful and sacred of virtues.  But I think there is no principle so good, all of whose consequences one must deem as also good.  I believe that benevolence ought to be a strong, rational virtue, not a weak, ill-considered taste; that one must not do the good that pleases the giver the most, but the most truly useful good for the receiver; not those that alleviate the miseries of a few completely, but those that serve the well being of the greatest number.  I can only appraise benevolence in this way; understood another way, it is still a sublime instinct, but does not merit the name of virtue in my eyes.

I recognize that individual charity nearly always produces useful results.  It is attracted to the greatest miseries, follows bad fortune silently, and repairs in an improvisatory and quiet way the evil that it has done.  It shows up everywhere where there are unfortunates to help; it grows with their sufferings, and nevertheless one cannot without imprudence count on it, for a thousand accidents could delay or stop its workings; one does not know where it will be met with, and it is not informed of all suffering.

I admit that the association of charitable persons, in regularizing their efforts, can give more activity and power to individual benevolence; I recognize not only the usefulness, but the necessity of public charity for inevitable misfortune, such as the weakness of childhood, the infirmities of old age, sickness, madness; I also admit its usefulness during times of public calamity such as escape from God's hands from time to time and come to announce his anger to the nations.  The alms of the State is then also as instantaneous, as unforeseen, and as temporary as the calamity itself.

I hear of public charity opening schools for the children of the poor and providing free of charge to the intelligence the means of acquiring by work the needs of the body.

But I am deeply convinced that all regular, permanent administrative systems whose goal it is to provide for the needs of the poor will cause more misery than it will cure, corrupt the population it wishes to help and console, will reduce the rich to nothing more than the farmers of the poor, dry up the incentive for thrift, will stop the accumulation of capital, compromise trade, weigh down human activity and industry, and finish by bringing about a violent revolution in the State, when the number of those receiving alms will have become nearly as large as the number of those who give them, and when the poor can no longer draw from the impoverished upper classes enough resources to provide for their needs, they will find it easier to despoil them at once of their property than to ask for help.