Memoir on Pauperism

There is nothing which, generally speaking, elevates and

sustains the human spirit more than the idea of rights. There is
something great and virile in the idea of right which removes from
any request its suppliant character, and places the one who
claims it on the same level as the one who grants it. But the right
of the poor to obtain society’s help is unique in that instead of
elevating the heart of the man who exercises it, it lowers him. In
countries where legislation does not allow for such an opportunity,
the poor man, while turning to individual charity, recognises,
it is true, his condition of inferiority in relation to the rest
of his fellow men; but he recognizes it secretly and temporarily.
From the moment that an indigent is inscribed on the poor list of
his parish, he can certainly demand relief, but what is the
achievement of this right if not a notarised manifestation of
misery, of weakness, of misconduct on the part of its recipient?
Ordinary rights are conferred on men by reason of some personal
advantage acquired by them over their fellow men. This other
kind is accorded by reason of a recognised inferiority. The first is
a clear statement of superiority; the second publicises inferiority
and legalises it. The more extensive and the more secure ordinary
rights are, the more honour they confer; the more permanent and
extended the right to relief is, the more it degrades.

The poor man who demands alms in the name of the law is,
therefore, in a still more humiliating position than the indigent
who asks pity of his fellow men in the name of He who regards all
men from the same point of view and who subjects rich and poor
to equal laws.

But this is still not all: individual alms-giving established
valuable ties between the rich and the poor. The deed itself
involves the giver in the fate of the one whose poverty he has
undertaken to alleviate. The latter, supported by aid which he had
no right to demand and which he may have had no hope of
getting, feels inspired by gratitude. A moral tie is established
between those two classes whose interests and passions so often
conspire to separate them from each other, and although divided
by circumstance they are willingly reconciled. This is not the case
with legal charity. The latter allows the alms to persist, but
removes its morality. The law strips the man of wealth of a part
of his surplus without consulting him and he sees the poor man
only as a greedy stranger invited by the legislator to share his
wealth. The poor man, on the other hand, feels no gratitude for a
benefit which no one can refuse him and which could not satisfy
him in any case. Public alms guarantee life, but do not make it
happier or more comfortable than individual alms-giving; legal
charity does not thereby eliminate wealth or poverty in society.
One class still views the world with fear and loathing while the
other regards its misfortune with despair and envy. Far from
uniting these two rival nations, who have existed since the
beginning of the world and who are called the rich and the poor,
into a single people, it breaks the only link which could be
established between them. It ranges each one under a banner,
tallies them, and, bringing them face to face, prepares them for
combat.

Memoir on Pauperism, Alex de Toqueville, trans: Seymour Drescher