[L]egal charity has not only taken freedom of movement from the
English poor but also from those who are threatened by poverty. -from
"Memoir on Pauperism" Inspired by a trip to England at a time when that
nation was in the throes of political, social, and economic strife and
poverty was rampant, political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville
developed his theories on civil society as it relates to its poorest
members and set them down in this 1835 essay. With keen insight, he
explains: . why the richest nations have the most paupers . why private
charity is more likely to alleviate poverty than government aid . how
good intentions backfire to produce a chronically dependent underclass.
The political and economic situations Tocqueville examines are
immediately recognizable as one that haunts the world's richest nations
today, and his lessons are still to be learned. This is an important
book for our unsteady times. Also available from Cosimo Classics:
Tocqueville's Selected Letters on Politics and Society. French writer
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE (1805-1859) was born in Paris and practiced law
before embarking on travels in America to study the young nation's
political experiment. The result, the two-volume Democracy in America
(1835, 1840), is considered a classic discourse on 19th-century America.
