In France during the period 1830–1905, the very boundaries of the debate on the social question were dictated by a foreign example, the English Poor Law. French fears of national public assistance programmes were grounded in a widespread disdain for the Poor Law. In this article I examine many of the major French works on charity and assistance written between the 1830s and 1900s and the debates surrounding reform proposals. I argue that the opponents of compulsory, tax-financed public assistance created a negative image of the English Poor Law in order to discredit attempts to introduce, first, the ‘right to assistance’ in 1848–1851, and later, bills providing for free medical assistance for the poor and aid to the elderly indigent in the 1890s and 1900s. I conclude with a discussion of how the proponents of mandatory, national assistance programmes defeated a carefully orchestrated and misleading public relations campaign led by some of the opponents of social welfare during the 1890s and 1900s.