Domestic Encyclopædia (1802)/Alms-Houses

ALMS-HOUSES are asylums for the support and maintenance of a certain number of poor, aged, or infirm persons during their lives. When these institutions are of a private nature, and limited in their extent, they are certainly beneficial to society; yet it may on the whole be doubted, whether such public establishments, especially as they are generally managed under the absolute controul of rapacious trustees, do not in a great measure tend to relax the springs of industry, and encourage habits of indolence. For, by accustoming people rather to resort to eleemosynary sources, than exert their own strength and abilities, they cannot fail to degrade the moral feelings of human nature, and to destroy that independence which constitutes its noblest support.—See the articles Charity and Hospitals.