Note 19 — Chapter IV · THE FRENCH SCHOOL (THE SCHOOL OF THE ENVIRONMENT).
Henry P. (Henry Pomeroy) Horton translation
Under the heading “economic conditions”, he calls attention, in the second place to “assistance, savings, property.” When we study the effect of charity upon criminality in the departments of France, we see that mendicity and vagrancy decrease, and that crimes are only of moderate frequency, in places where the official assistance given is the smallest, while criminality is pretty prevalent and even on the increase where the greatest amount of official assistance is given. “Thus very limited assistance will do less harm than if it were more extensive. Such is the interpretation the mind gathers from a comparison of the economic and judicial statistics. Excess in alms-giving, with difficulty separable from a bad distribution of wealth, will therefore have a demoralizing influence; it enervates and sterilizes, and its fruits would appear more bitter if it were possible to unveil the little secrets of assistance under the thousand forms that it wears.”19