Samuel Smiles

Thank you Josh, for sharing this about Samuel Smiles on Google.

I could basically copy and paste the entire article, because it was just that good, but I will refrain. Here is one of my favorite passages from the article, written by Lawrence W. Reed. 

The welfare state was anathema to Smiles. He felt it was a woefully ineffective substitute for personal charity. “The value of legislation as an agent in human advancement has usually been much over-estimated,” he wrote. “No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.” What he said about poverty legislation a century and a half ago would be a fitting description of the results of the welfare programs of today:

We have tried to grapple with the evils of [misery] by legislation, but it seems to mock us. Those who sink into poverty are fed, but they remain paupers. Those who feed them feel no compassion; and those who are fed return no gratitude. There is no bond of sympathy between the givers and the receivers.

Amazing how people from the 1800's can have such perspective and their words can give insight into events happening now.