Memoir on Pauperism (1835) Any measure that establishes legal charity on a permanent
basis and gives it administrative form
Gertrude Himmelfarb has written a most helpful introduction to this little known work (it was not even translated into English until 1968) by the great Alexis de Tocqueville, and I rely on her for the background to the book. Visiting England in 1833, de Tocqueville was struck by the prevalence of pauperdom in this most prosperous of nations. In 1835, shortly after the first volume of Democracy in America was published, he delivered this lecture to the Royal Academic Society of Cherbourg. Himmelfarb suggests that he may have been influenced by J. B. Say's Cours d'economie politique, in which Say offered what Himmelfarb refers to as a "supply-side theory of pauperism" : England is the country that has the most havens available
to the unfortunate, and it is perhaps the
De Tocqueville addresses himself to this quandary with his typical insight and foresight in a brief work which is as pertinent today as on the day he delivered the speech. He starts out by surveying human history to determine why it should be the case that pauperism arises in advanced industrial societies, rather than in relatively backwards agrarian ones. He concludes that the phenomenon is paradoxically a result of the advances. Where a subsistence society requires the labor of the whole population just to feed itself, an industrial society can do so with less and less laborers. The combination of idled hands among the many and a growing amount of disposable wealth among the few then leads to a situation where people will create new products in the hope that the wealthy will desire them. These endeavors are inherently more risky than basic food production, which must obviously go on regardless of changing tastes or hard times. In addition to forcing a significant portion of the population into a tenuous economic position, this manufacture of what are essentially superfluous goods creates a series of artificial desires. No one actually needs all of the consumer products of the modern economy, but once produce them and get the rich to buy them and soon they are viewed as necessities by the society as a whole. So, though the poorest in an industrial economy may be better off in terms of their standard of living than even the richest in a pre-industrial economy, they will nonetheless perceive themselves as destitute because they don't have all the gewgaws and doo dads that others have. Thus, societal wealth breeds desires, wants, "needs", which are unknown in cultures which must devote all of their energies to just satisfying true physical needs. And what do these parallel trends portend for the industrialized world ? : If all these reflections are correct, it is easy
to see that the richer a nation is, the more the number of
We should not delude ourselves. Let us look
calmly and quietly on the future of modern society.
In the second part of the Memoir, Tocqueville considers what forms of welfare will best attenuate these evils. As a starting point it is important to note Tocqueville's rather blunt assessment of human nature : Man, like all socially organized beings, has a natural
passion for idleness. There are, however, two
It should also be noted that he does accept the notion that there is a legitimate role for charity : I recognize not only the utility but the necessity
of public charity applied to inevitable evils such as
I even understand that public charity which opens
free schools for the children of the poor and gives
But even as he recognizes that there will be a proper role for charity, he warns that it must take a particular form : I think that beneficence must be a manly and reasoned
virtue, not a weak and unreflecting
In practice this means that charity should never be made a right, to which the "needy" are entitled, but should instead always be considered to be a gracious gesture on the part of society. This is necessary because rights must be based on the idea of equality of individuals, while a "right to charity" would be based on the inferiority of certain individuals. When I assert a right to speak, or to own property, or to worship my God, I am stating that I am the equal of any man and so am entitled to be treated equally under the law. But to assert a claim upon my fellow men for assistance is to assert my own inferiority and my dependence upon them. This would degrade, rather than uplift, the supplicant. Tocqueville also cites the qualitative difference between public and private charity as regards their effect on the sinews which hold society together : [I]ndividual alms-giving established valuable ties
between the rich and the poor. The deed itself
As is so often the case, de Tocqueville seems to have perceived social trends and understood where mankind's character would lead with the clarity of a prophet. To a remarkable degree, the arguments he presents in the Memoir have become the accepted wisdom that lay behind Welfare reform and ideas like President Bush's Faith-Based Initiative. We can only imagine how much different, how much better and more productive, the last two hundred years might have been had the industrialized world heeded his warning : I am deeply convinced that any permanent, regular
administrative system whose aim will be to
Precisely such a fate did claim many of the states of Europe, and most of the rest still groan beneath the suffocating weight of their cradle to grave welfare systems. As Tocqueville expected, America has been able to slow the onset of this fate, and the current climate of enthusiasm for privatizing social services offers some hope that we will be able to avoid it altogether, but until we actually do privatize Social Security and re-privatize health care, this sword of Damocles still dangles overhead. (Reviewed:) Grade: (A+) Tweet Websites:-WIKIPEDIA: Alexis de Tocqueville -VIDEO LECTURE: Alexis de TOCQUEVILLE: DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA (Paul Joseph Krause, Minerva Wisdom) -ESSAY: Two Declarations: A transatlantic dialogue and the documents behind it, 1776 to 1789 (Olivier Zunz, 10/22/24, Hedgehog Review) -ESSAY: Alexis de Tocqueville: He diagnosed American democracy’s ills and restored it to better health. (Patrick Deneen, August 7, 2024, Modern Age) -ESSAY: Our Man in Paris (Paul Krause, 7/04/24, Voegelin View) -ESSAY: Tocqueville, Washington, and the Moderation of the American Revolution (William Reddinger, June 15, 2023, Online Library of Liberty) -ESSAY: Greatness Without Cruelty: Young Nietzscheans should look to Tocqueville as a more politically responsible source for a new politics. (Daniel J. Mahoney, 11/30/23, American Mind) -ESSAY: Why Are We Lonely?: Ironically, isolation is something many Americans have in common. Why do we feel so alone? Tocqueville has answers. (Joey Hiles, SEPTEMBER 22, 2023, Plough) -ESSAY: On the Road with Alexis de Tocqueville: Without Tocqueville the traveller, Tocqueville the sage of democracy is difficult to conceive of at all. (Samuel Gregg, 4/13/23, Englesberg Ideas) -ESSAY: Frustrating life of a man of ideas: We remain interested in Tocqueville because of the power of his thought, not his life story (Paul Sagar, July 2022, The Critic) -ESSAY: Binding order and liberty: Tocqueville the politician: Tocqueville may not have been an effective foreign minister but his commitment to order and liberty is uncontested. (Samuel Gregg, 7/27/22, Englesberg Ideas) -ESSAY: Tocqueville's Puritans: Christianity and the American Founding (Sanford Kessler, August 1992, The Journal of Politics) -REVIEW ESSAY: THE HABIT OF DEMOCRACY: Alexis de Tocqueville and the pleasures of citizenship. (ADAM GOPNIK, 2001-10-15, The New Yorker) -ESSAY: Tocqueville and the cultural basis of American democracy (Daniel J. Elazar, June 1999, PS: Political Science & Politics) -ESSAY: The Tragedy of Democracy: 'Rights', Tolerance and Moral 'Neutrality': It took a 19th century aristocrat to realise that democracy?s greatest virtue-the elevation of individual autonomy over hereditary influence-could also be its greatest vice. (Samuel Gregg, Policy) - -INTERVIEW: Olivier Zunz on Alexis de Tocqueville, “The Man Who Understood Democracy” (Library of America, July 14, 2022) -REVIEW: of Memoirs on Pauperism and Other Writings, translated by Christine Dunn Henderson (Daniel J. Mahoney, Law & Liberty) - -REVIEW: of The Man Who Understood Democracy by Olivier Zunz (THeodore Dalrymple, Law & Liberty) - -REVIEW: of Man Who Understood Democracy (Jedediah Britton-Purdy, New Republic) -REVIEW: of Tocqueville: A Biography (Samuel Gregg, Policy) - -REVIEW: Of The Restless Mind: Alexis de Tocqueville on the Origin and Perpetuation of Human Liberty by Peter Augustine Lawler (Bruce Frohnen, Imaginative Conservative) -REVIEW: of The Man who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville By Olivier Zunz (Alan Ryan, Literary Review) -REVIEW: of Man Who Understood America (Gustav Jönsson, American Purpose) -REVIEW: of The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville By Olivier Zunz (Sarah Gustafson, University Bookman) -REVIEW: of Tocqueville's Dilemmas, and Ours by Ewa Atanassow (Sarah Gustafson, Law & Liberty) -REVIEW: of Travels with Tocqueville by Jeremy Jennings (Sarah Gustafson, Law & Liberty) Book-related and General Links: -ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA : tocqueville -ETEXT : Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville -Tocqueville's America (American Studies at the University of Virginia) -The Alexis de Tocqueville Tour : Exploring Democracy in America (CSPAN) -PAL: Alexis de Tocqueville (1805 1859) -The Tocqueville Review (University of Toronto) -Alexis de Tocqueville Institution -Le Club Tocqueville -BOOKNOTES : Title: Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America Author:Harvey Mansfield Sunday, December 3rd, 2000 (C-SPAN) -SPEECH : Ashbrook Colloquium : Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop Topic: "Democracy in America" (Friday, March 30, 2001, Ashland University) -PROFILE : ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE (Robert C. Frederiksen, Florida State University) -ESSAY : Welfare and Charity: Lessons from Victorian England (Gertrude Himmelfarb, Acton Institute : Transforming Welfare: The Revival of American Charity) -ESSAY : Back to the workhouse for America : how a group of historians influenced George W. Bush's domestic policy (Tristram Hunt, New Statesman) -ESSAY : Skepticism, Meliorism, and The Public Interest (Irving Kristol, The Public Interest) -ESSAY : Tocqueville today (Roger Kimball , New Criterion) -ESSAY : THE TOCQUEVILLE FRAUD (John J. Pitney, Jr. , The Weekly Standard, November 13, 1995) -ESSAY : Panic Tocqueville -ESSAY : Gramsci vs. Tocqueville or Marxism vs. the American Ideology (Ronald Radosh, FrontPageMagazine.com | January 4, 2001) -ESSAY : Higher Learning : In which our man in Washington foregoes dirty talk for Tocqueville and finally learns what a wigwam is. (Michael W. Lynch, Reason, June 2001) -ESSAY : In search of a forgotten dream : In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville travelled through America, and hailed its unique spirit of equality. David Cohen retraced his journey to find a nation with a very different mood (New Statesman) -A Biography of Alexis de Tocqueville by Mike Noble -COURSE NOTES : POSC-329: Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America--Then and Now (Salvatore Lombardo, Siena College) -LINKS : RESOURCES ON ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE (Christine Alice Corcos, CENTER OF CIVIL LAW STUDIES LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY LAW CENTER) -ARCHIVES : Tocqueville (Find Articles) -ARCHIVES : Tocqueville (Mag Portal) -REVIEW : of Memoir on Pauperism (Terry Teachout, NY Times Book Review) -REVIEW : of Memoir on Pauperism (Robert Haggard, Essays in History) -REVIEW : of Memoir on Pauperism : The Forgotten Tocqueville: What he saw in 19th century England (Martin Morse Wooster, Big Eye) -REVIEW : of A Memoir of Pauperism by Alexis de Tocqueville (Richard Grenier, Washington Times) -REVIEW : of Memoir on Pauperism (D. Nyhan) -REVIEW : of Memoir on Pauperism (Brewer Family Homepage) -REVIEW : of Democracy in America (CALEB CRAIN, NY Times Book Review) -LETTER : To the Editor (James Q. Wilson, NY Times) -REVIEW : of DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA, by Alexis de Tocqueville; transl. by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Michael Novak, Wilson Quarterly) -REVIEW : of Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville, translated and edited by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Noemie Emery, National Review) -REVIEW : of Democracy in America By Alexis de Tocqueville. Translated, edited, and with introduction by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Peter Wood, Partisan Review) -REVIEW : of Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville, translated and edited by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (John W. Dean, Salon) -REVIEW : of Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville Translated, edited, and with an Introduction by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Stephen Holt, History Today) -REVIEW : Tocqueville, ed. and trans. by Mansfield and Winthrop, Democracy in America (Seymour Drescher, Journal of American History) -REVIEW : of Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy. By Pierre Manent (Brian C. Anderson, First Things) -REVIEW : of Tocqueville's Revenge: State, Society, and Economy in Contemporary France. By Jonah D. Levy (John S. Ambler, American Political Science Review, September 01 2000) -REVIEW: Tocqueville's Lament (P.N. FURBANK, NY Review of Books) -REVIEW: Robert O. Paxton: The Divided Liberal, NY Review of Books Tocqueville: A Biography by André Jardin Tocqueville and the Two Democracies by Jean-Claude Lamberti SEYMOUR DRESCHER :
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