Tag: Tocqueville

I have been studying the poor laws of England. From 1601 to 1834 England was unique among European nations in that people in need could receive financial aid, paid for by taxes. Other countries relied almost entirely on charity.

But the cost of relief kept going up. As early as 1662, an act was passed limiting relief to the poor who were born or  in the local parish or had lived there long enough to be “settled.”  Those from elsewhere had to go home if they wanted relief—or even if the parish overseers suspected they might want relief in the future. The immobility of the poor made it hard to find jobs.

The poor (who became known as paupers) were increasingly viewed as idle and vicious. Over the years, prominent people from John Locke to Jeremy Bentham came up with fanciful schemes for correcting the bad behavior of the poor—educating them, working them, punishing them. Little change occurred, however.

It turns out that Alexis de Tocqueville, the famous French author of Democracy in America, probably understood England’s poor laws better than the English did. Continue reading “A Tocqueville Insight, Largely Ignored”