Memoir on Pauperism
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
“Any measure which establishes legal charity on a permanent basis and gives it an administrative form thereby creates an idle and lazy class” --Tocqueville's Political Economy, Richard Swedberg, 2009 "Tocqueville's two memoirs — Memoir on Pauperism and what has become known as The Second Memoir on Pauperism — are each about twenty pages long. The first was published in the proceedings of the Cherbourg Academy in 1835 [...]" |
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"Memoir On Pauperism: Does public charity produce an idle and dependant class of society? (1835) is a text by Alexis de Tocqueville originally published by Ivan R. Dee. Inspired by a trip to England, it is considered one of 's more obscure works.
Excerpts
Any measure which establishes legal charity on a permanent basis and gives it an administrative form thereby creates an idle and lazy class, living at the expense of the industrial and working class. This, at least, is its inevitable consequence if not the immediate result. It reproduces all the vices of the monastic system, minus the high ideals of morality and religion which often went along with it. Such a law is a bad seed planted in the legal structure. Circumstances, as in America, can prevent the seed from developing rapidly, but they cannot destroy it, and if the present generation escapes its influence, it will devour the well-being of generations to come.
If you closely observe the condition of populations among whom such legislation has long been in force you will easily discover that the effects are not less unfortunate for morality than for public prosperity, and that it depraves men even more than it impoverishes them.
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