Malthus highlighted the difference between governmentally instituted welfare and privately supported benevolence and proposed a gradual abolition of poor laws which he thought would be accompanied by a mitigation of the circumstances within which people would need relief and by privately supported benevolence supporting those in distress. He reasoned that poor relief acted against the longer-term interests of the poor by raising the price of commodities and undermining the independence and resilience of the peasant. In other words, the poor laws tended to "create the poor which they maintain."