“Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
That was James Madison, explaining that the modern federal welfare state is not authorized by the Constitution.
Despite that, politicians today still insist that these programs aren’t just authorized, they’re also absolutely necessary to help people. But they ignore the fatal trap that Benjamin Franklin uncovered over 250 years ago: his long-forgotten warning that government welfare makes things worse.
MEANS MATTER
Today, politicians measure compassion by how much of your money they give away to supposedly help other people. But Benjamin Franklin saw it differently. After years of studying poverty and government programs designed to help the poor, he realized that the method is more important than the money.
“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.”
He recognized that helping the truly needy is a moral good. But shielding people from the consequences of their own choices? Definitely not.
“To relieve the misfortunes of our fellow creatures is concurring with the Deity, ’tis Godlike, but if we provide encouragements for Laziness, and supports for Folly, may it not be found fighting against the order of God and Nature, which perhaps has appointed Want and Misery as the proper Punishments for, and Cautions against as well as necessary consequences of Idleness and Extravagancy.”
Franklin hit on a reality that undercuts the whole premise of the modern welfare state. Good intentions don’t guarantee good results.
“Whenever we attempt to mend the scheme of Providence and to interfere in the Government of the World, we had need be very circumspect lest we do more harm than Good.”
SEEN AND UNSEEN
Almost a century later, Frédéric Bastiat gave the principle behind Franklin’s warning its famous name: the seen and the unseen.
“In the sphere of economics an action, a habit, an institution or a law engenders not just one effect but a series of effects. Of these effects only the first is immediate; it is revealed simultaneously with its cause, it is seen. The others merely occur successively, they are not seen; we are lucky if we foresee them.”
In practice, the trap plays out like this: politicians see a problem, pass a law, and pat themselves on the back. They never look at the long-term disaster they possibly just created. Franklin gave us a perfect example: colonial lawmakers tried to manage nature by decree, as if birds and insects obeyed statutes passed by central planners.
“In New England they once thought Black-birds useless and mischievous to their corn, they made [Laws] to destroy them, the consequence was, the Black-birds were diminished but a kind of Worms which devoured their Grass, and which the Black-birds had been used to feed on encreased prodigiously; Then finding their Loss in Grass much greater than their saving in corn they wished again for their Black-birds”
Franklin applied that same logic to welfare programs. You have to consider more than just the government checks being handed out in the short term.
“I am apt to suspect it must arise from Institution, and I have sometimes doubted, whether the Laws peculiar to England which compel the Rich to maintain the Poor, have not given the latter, a Dependance that very much lessens the care of providing against the wants of old Age.”
REALITY OVER THEORY
Franklin wasn’t working from theory. Years of travel had shown him how these programs worked in the real world. And he discovered a harsh truth.
“In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”
No country proved his point better than the mother country itself. Franklin pointed straight at England, which, at that time, had built the biggest welfare state in the world.
“There is no country in the world where so many provisions are established for them; so many hospitals to receive them when they are sick or lame, founded and maintained by voluntary charities; so many alms-houses for the aged of both sexes, together with a solemn general law made by the rich to subject their estates to a heavy tax for the support of the poor.”
Franklin was pointing to two very different kinds of relief. One came from voluntary charity, and the other came through a law forcing property owners to pay. The latter was not yet common in his day.
“Except in England and her American colonies, there is not in any country of the known world, not even in Scotland or Ireland, a provision by law to enforce a support of the poor. Everywhere else necessity reduces to beggary”
BIRTH OF ENTITLEMENTS
He was referencing laws enacted under the Tudor dynasty. As Henry Hazlitt documented in his 1971 essay, The Poor Laws of England, the first truly national welfare system was built step by step.
“In England the first poor law was enacted in 1536. In 1547 the city of London levied compulsory taxes for the support of the poor. In 1572, under Elizabeth, a compulsory rate was imposed on a national scale. In 1576 the compulsion was imposed on local authorities to provide raw materials to give work to the unemployed.”
Franklin was pointing specifically to the 1601 Act for the Relief of the Poor, which required parishes across England to levy taxes for poor relief. It started with a system to require those in need to work for it.
“To raise weekly or otherwise (by Taxation of every Inhabitant, Parson, Vicar and other, and of every Occupier of Lands, Houses, Tithes impropriate, Propriations of Tithes, Coal-Mines, or saleable Underwoods in the said Parish, in such competent Sum and Sums of Money as they shall think fit) a convenient Stock of Flax, Hemp, Wool, Thread, Iron, and other necessary Ware and Stuff, to set the Poor on Work”
But it wasn’t just about jobs. The law mandated a sweeping system of direct handouts as well.
“And also competent Sums of Money for and towards the necessary Relief of the Lame, Impotent, Old, Blind, and such other among them being Poor, and not able to work, and also for the putting out of such Children to be apprentices, to be gathered out of the same Parish, according to the Ability of the same Parish, and to do and execute all other Things as well for the disposing of the said Stock, as otherwise concerning the Premisses, as to them shall seem convenient:”
What was seen as an act of compassion by those with means, was actually a gift of legal entitlement to other people’s money.
“This law was not made by the poor. The legislators were men of fortune. By that act they voluntarily subjected their own estates, and the estates of all others, to the payment of a tax for the maintenance of the poor, incumbering those estates with a kind of rent charge for that purpose, whereby the poor are vested with an inheritance, as it were, in all the estates of the rich.”
MOUNTING COSTS
The politicians and their supporters saw their own noble intentions. The unseen consequences? They were impossible for Franklin to ignore.
“Under all these obligations, are our poor modest, humble, and thankful; and do they use their best endeavors to maintain themselves, and lighten our shoulders of this burthen? On the contrary, I affirm that there is no country in the world in which the poor are more idle, dissolute, drunken, and insolent.”
This wasn’t just theory. It was backed up by cold, hard data. The iron law of government handouts is simple: Once the dole starts, it never stops growing. Hazlitt documented that growth in England.
“Poor relief, once started, kept growing. According to the early statistician, Gregory King (1648- 1712), toward the end of the seventeenth century over one million persons, nearly a fifth of the whole English nation, were in occasional receipt of alms, mostly in the form of public relief paid by the parish. The poor rate was a charge of nearly £800,000 a year on the country and rose to a million in the reign of Anne.”
In 1698, Richard Dunning noted the increase. And it went fast: in some places, costs rose 20-fold in just 60 years.
“Whosoever takes the small trouble of Inspecting the Poor Accounts of a few Parishes, may soon observe, That the Charge of maintaining them in some places, is within sixty Years last advanced from forty Shillings to forty pounds yearly”
In other places, it was even worse: 40-fold in the same time.
“In others twice that sum”
In most places, the best-case scenario was that costs had doubled in merely two decades, and would double again soon.
“And mostwheres double, within twenty Years last, and like to double again in a short time.”
Franklin knew exactly why the system was spiraling out of control. The politicians had eliminated the consequences of bad choices. And in doing so, they destroyed the incentive to make good ones.
“The day you passed that act, you took away from before their eyes the greatest of all inducements to industry, frugality, and sobriety, by giving them a dependence on somewhat else than a careful accumulation during youth and health, for support in age or sickness.”
THE POVERTY ENGINE
This is the ultimate tragedy of the welfare state. The government claims to be helping people. But as Franklin warned, handing out other people’s money does not reduce poverty. It mass-produces it.
“I fear the giving mankind a dependance on any thing for support in age or sickness, besides industry and frugality during youth and health, tends to flatter our natural indolence, to encourage idleness and prodigality, and thereby to promote and increase poverty, the very evil it was intended to cure; thus multiplying beggars, instead of diminishing them.”
He recognized the blind spot. People with wealth and power? They’re totally disconnected from the reality of life on welfare. They can’t imagine living on the amount it provides. But to someone who has always struggled, that money can look like a pretty good deal.
“To those indeed who have been educated in elegant plenty, even the provision made for the poor may appear misery, but to those who have scarce ever been better provided for, such provision may seem quite good and sufficient, these latter have then nothing to fear worse than their present Conditions, and scarce hope for any thing better than a Parish maintainance; so that there is only the difficulty of getting that maintainance allowed while they are able to work, or a little shame they suppose attending it, that can induce them to work at all, and what they do will only be from hand to mouth.”
Politicians today never seem to stop saying they need to take more from you to supposedly solve societal problems, like poverty. But Franklin knew the truth is the opposite. When you subsidize something, you get more of it.
And the only solution? Scrap the system entirely.
“In short, you offered a premium for the encouragement of idleness, and you should not now wonder that it has had its effect in the increase of poverty. Repeal that law, and you will soon see a change in their manners.”
NO SUCH POWER
So it shouldn’t be a surprise that when both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution were drafted, no one suggested delegating to the government a power to run these kinds of programs at all.
Thomas Jefferson grounded it in self-ownership and property rights.
“To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”
That brings us full circle to the “Father of the Constitution.” In a speech opposing a bill to provide charitable relief to 3,000 French refugees from what is now Haiti, James Madison was clear: the federal government is only authorized to exercise those powers delegated to it. And nothing more.
“the government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects.”
So the modern federal welfare state isn’t authorized by the Constitution. It never was, and it never will be.
“Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
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