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Bravo to William Raspberry for calling attention in his June 18 column to Alexis de Tocqueville`s superb but virtually unknown ”Memoir on Pauperism,” reprinted a few years ago in Public Interest. Tocqueville`s main point–that institutionalizing welfare creates a permanent, servile underclass–is further developed and explained in Hilaire Belloc`s classic, ”Servile State.”
As Raspberry notes, charity used to be the province of the private sector, namely the monasteries. Since the clerics` main concern was spiritual welfare, they did not indulge the sin of sloth, but ensured that welfare was deserved and, whenever possible, temporary. As a consequence, pauperism was unknown throughout the Middle Ages.
