Memoir on Pauperism

Tocqueville's argument that poor relief guaranteed by law creates the dependence it was meant to cure.

by Alexis de Tocqueville53 passages held

French, the original language

Original title: Mémoire sur le paupérisme
First published: 1835(aged 30)
Original language: French

Overview

In 1833 Alexis de Tocqueville spent five weeks in England, the richest country in Europe, and found about one person in six living on poor relief. The memoir he delivered to the Royal Academic Society of Cherbourg in 1835 begins from that puzzle: countries that looked wretched, such as Portugal, had few people dependent on charity, while the most prosperous had the most. His answer is that progress multiplies needs. As industry grows, more people live on wages that can disappear in a bad year, and comforts that were once luxuries become necessities whose loss counts as poverty. The second part asks what should be done. Tocqueville defended private charity, given by one person to another. What he judged corrosive was public charity guaranteed by law, the English system descended from the poor law of Elizabeth I: it made relief a right, weakened the spur to work, obliged the poor to display their own degradation to claim it, and tied them to their parish, while the rich paid without sympathy and the poor received without gratitude. He left the state a narrower task: young children, the old, the sick and the insane, and relief after public disasters. The memoir went into the society's proceedings and out of sight. It was left out of the collected works published after his death, reprinted in a French journal in 1911, and first translated into English in 1968, by the American scholar Seymour Drescher. In 1997 it was reissued in London and Chicago with an introduction by the historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, as a contribution to the debates over welfare reform in Britain and the United States.

Key concepts

What does Tocqueville mean by pauperism?

The condition of people who live on public relief rather than on their own work or property. The memoir separates it from poverty in general: a country can be poor and have few paupers, as Portugal did, while England, the richest country in Europe, had about one person in six on relief. Pauperism is thus the product of a particular kind of society, not simply of want.

How does progress multiply needs, in the memoir's argument?

It raises what counts as necessary. As a society grows richer, comforts that were once luxuries become things a person cannot do without, and losing them is felt and counted as poverty. Industry adds a second pressure by putting more people on wages that can vanish in a bad year. Both enlarge the number of people who can fall into need as civilisation advances.

What is legal charity, and why does the memoir call it corrosive?

Legal charity is relief that the law guarantees as a right, as in the English system descended from Elizabeth I's poor law. Tocqueville judged it corrosive because it weakened the spur to work, made the poor display their own degradation to claim it, and tied them to their parish, while turning giving into a charge the rich paid without sympathy and the poor received without gratitude.

What tasks does the memoir leave to the state?

A narrow set of cases in which a person plainly cannot provide for themselves: young children, the old, the sick and the insane, and relief after public disasters. Everywhere else Tocqueville preferred private charity, given by one person to another. The line he draws runs between helping those who cannot help themselves and making relief a standing right for everyone.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Why the Richest Nations Have the Most Paupers

Why did England, the richest country in Europe, have so many more people on relief than poor Portugal? Tocqueville's answer is that progress itself multiplies needs.

In 1833 Tocqueville found about one person in six in England living on poor relief, while countries that looked wretched had few dependents. The puzzle dissolves once poverty is measured against need. Industry puts more people on wages that can vanish in a bad year, and comforts that were once luxuries become necessities whose loss counts as poverty. Civilisation raises the floor of what a person must have, and with it the number of people who can fall below it.

poverty
industrialization
civilization
labor
social class
social progress
needs
human needs
social inequality
agriculture

Enter a dialogue

Private Charity Against Relief Owed by Law

Should help for the poor be a gift or a legal right? Tocqueville defended the gift, and judged the right corrosive to those who receive it and to those who pay.

Private charity passes from one person to another; relief guaranteed by law, as in the English system descended from Elizabeth I's poor law, passes through the parish and the tax. Tocqueville argued that a legal right to relief weakened the spur to work, obliged the poor to display their own degradation to claim it, and tied them to their parish, while the rich paid without sympathy and the poor received without gratitude. He left the state a narrower task: young children, the old, the sick, the insane, and relief after public disasters.

poor relief
charity
public assistance
welfare
social welfare
social policy
dependency
dignity
idleness
work requirements
social incentives
freedom of movement
public administration

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 53
distinct concepts: 103
by passages held, corpus-wide: #646

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “poor relief” and “poverty”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 17 pairings. 42 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
poor relief	poverty	12
industrialization	labor	5
poor relief	public administration	5
poverty	public assistance	5
civilization	poverty	4
poverty	public administration	4
industrialization	poverty	3
charity	poor relief	2
charity	poverty	2
charity	industrialization	1
charity	public assistance	1
civilization	industrialization	1
civilization	public assistance	1
industrialization	poor relief	1
industrialization	public assistance	1
labor	poverty	1
labor	public assistance	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1835 Democracy in America (De la démocratie en Amérique)
The book that made Tocqueville's name, in two volumes of 1835 and 1840, drawn from his American journey of 1831–32; it carried him into the Académie française in 1841, at thirty-six.
FR
1835 Memoir on Pauperism (Mémoire sur le paupérisme) you are here FR
1848 Speech on the Right to Work (Discours sur la question du droit au travail)
On 12 September 1848, while he sat on the committee drafting the Second Republic's constitution, Tocqueville gave this speech urging the Constituent Assembly to keep a right to work out of it.
FR
1856 The Old Regime and the Revolution (L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution)
Where Democracy in America studied the American present, this book turns the same method on the French past; it is the only volume Tocqueville finished of a planned history of the Revolution.
FR
1893 Recollections (Souvenirs)
Tocqueville's memoir, and a companion to his speeches of the same years: the Second Republic as he lived it in the Assembly and at the foreign ministry.
FR

— or open another of their works