First Memoir on Pauperism, First Part, Post 10

I have said that in the Middle Ages, comfort was nowhere, subsistence everywhere.  When almost everyone in a population lived off the land, one came across great misery and coarse habits, but the most pressing human needs were satisfied.  It is very rare for the land not to be able to provide the means of subsistence to those who water it with their sweat.  The population was miserable but alive. Today, the population is happier, but one encounters everywhere a minority ready to die from want if public support were lacking.

Such a result is easy to comprehend.  As his product, the farmer has food that is a basic necessity.  The cost may be more or less advantageous, but it is almost assured; and if some accidental cause prevents a good harvest, the yield would at least provide a living to those who worked to produce it and permits them to look forward to better times.

The worker, on the contrary, speculates on artificial and secondary needs that many causes could restrain, and that important events could entirely suspend.  However bad times are, man needs a certain amount of food without which he languishes and dies, and one is always ready to see him make extraordinary sacrifices to procure it; but unfortunate circumstances can cause a population to dispense with certain enjoyments, in which it would readily indulge in other times.  But it is the taste for and use of these goods on which the worker depends to support himself.  If they are lacking, he has no other resource.  His own "harvest" is burnt; his "field" is plagued by sterility, and if such conditions continue, he sees nothing ahead but horrible misery and death.

First Memoir on Pauperism, First Part, Post 9

If one attentively considers what has been happening in Europe over the last several centuries, one will be convinced that insofar as civilization progresses, it causes a large displacement of the population.  Men left the plow to take up the shuttle and the hammer; from the cottage they passed to the factory; by acting in this way, they were obeying the immutable laws that govern the growth of organized societies.  One can no more impose a deadline on this movement than to impose limits on human perfectibility.  The limit of one, like the others, is known only to God.

What was, as what is the consequence of the gradual, irresistible movement we have just described?

A large quantity of new goods has been introduced into the world; the group who remained on the land found a variety of pleasures at their fingertips that were unknown in the last century; the life of the farmer became more convenient and pleasant; the life of the large landowner became more ornate and varied; comfort was within the reach of the greatest number, but these happy results could not have been obtained without paying the price.

First Memoir on Pauperism, First Part, Post 8

If we study the feudal era, we will find the great majority of the population lived almost without needs and the rest had only a small number of them.  The land sufficed for everyone, so to speak, comfort was nowhere to be found, subsistence was widespread.  It is necessary to establish this point of departure in order to understand what I am going to say.

As time passed, the cultivators of the soil conceived of new tastes.  Satisfaction of basic needs was no longer enough.  The peasant, without leaving his field, wished to be better lodged, better dressed; he glimpsed the pleasures of comfort and wished to procure them.  On the other hand, the class that had lived on the land without cultivating it extended the boundaries of its pleasures; its enjoyments became less showy but more complicated and more varied.  A thousand needs unknown to the medieval nobility came to be coveted by their descendants.  Large numbers of men who lived on the land left it to find ways to satisfy the new needs that emerged.  Agriculture, once everyone's occupation, was now only that of the majority.  Next to those who lived on the produce of the land without working is a large class who live by their industry without cultivating the soil.

Each century, released from the Creator's hands, develops the human mind, extending the boundaries of his thought, increasing his desires, increasing his power; the poor and the rich, each in their own sphere, conceived of the idea of new enjoyments of which their ancestors were ignorant.  To satisfy these new needs which could not be satisfied by farming, a part of the population left the land every year to dedicate themselves to industry.

First Memoir on Pauperism, First Part, Post 7

In the twelfth century, what we call the Third Estate did not yet exist.  The population was only divided into two categories: on the one hand, those who cultivate the soil without owning it; on the other, those who own land without cultivating it.

Regarding the first class of people, I imagine that, in some respects, their lot left less to be desired than that of the people of our own day.  These people, who had a larger share of liberty, status, and morality than the slaves in our colonies, nevertheless found themselves in a similar position.  Their livelihoods were for the most part assured; the interests of the master coincided with theirs on this point.  Limited in their desires, as well as in their power, not suffering in the present, tranquil in a future that did not belong to them, they enjoyed a kind of vegetative happiness whose appeal is as difficult for a highly civilized man to understand as its existence is difficult for him to deny.

The other class displays the opposite situation.  We find here, with inherited leisure, the habitual and assured use of a great surplus.  Nevertheless, I am far from believing that even in the midst of this privileged class, the search for pleasure was carried so far as is generally supposed.  Luxury can easily exist in a nation that is yet half barbaric, but comfort cannot.  Comfort presupposes a large class, all of whose members simultaneously occupy themselves with making life easier and more pleasant.  But in the time of which we speak, the number of people not comlpletely preoccupied with making a living was very small.  The existence of this class was brilliant, ostentatious, but not comfortable.  They ate with their fingers on plates of silver or engraved steel, their clothes were covered in ermine and gold, and underwear did not exist; they lived in palaces with damp walls, and they sat on richly carved wooden chairs near immense fireplaces where whole trees were consumed without spreading any warmth.  I am convinced that there is no provincial town today whose residents do not enjoy more true comforts in their homes and do not find a thousand needs that civilization has made necessary easier to satisfy than the proudest baron of the Middle Ages.

First Memoir on Pauperism, First Part, Post 6

The barbarians that invaded the Roman Empire at the end of the fourth century were savages who realized the utility of land and wanted to reserve to themselves the advantages it could offer.  Most of the Roman provinces they attacked were populated by men, already long accustomed to cultivation of the soil, where morals had been refined among the peaceful work in the fields and in whom civilization had nevertheless not yet made enough progress to enable them to fight against their enemies' primitive impetuousness.  Victory placed not on the the government, but a third of the property into the hands of the barbarians.  The farmer, once an owner, became a tenant.  Inequality passed into the law; it became a right after it was a fact.  Feudal society formed and the Middle Ages began.  If one pays attention of what happened in the world since the origin of societies, one will readily discover that equality is only found at the two extremes of civilization.  Savages are equal among themselves because they are equally weak and ignorant.  Highly civilized men can all become equal because they all have at their disposal similar means to attain comfort and happiness.  Between these two extremes is inequality of condition, wealth, knowledge, the power of some, the poverty, ignorance, and weakness of others.

Skilled and wise writers have already worked to make the Middle Ages better known; others are still working in this field and among them we may include the secretary of the Academic Society of Cherbourg.  I leave this task to be fulfilled by those more capable than I; I only want to examine a corner of the immense picture that the feudal era reveals before our eyes.

First Memoir on Pauperism, First Part, Post 5

While some small groups of people had already learned the art of accumulating property, along with wealth, power, and nearly all intellectual and material pleasures that life could offer, the half-savage crowd are still ignorant of the secret of increasing comfort and extending freedom.  At this point in the history of the human race, men had already abandoned the coarse and proud virtues that were born in the woods; they lost the advantages of barbarism without yet acquiring what civilization could offer.  Attached to civilization of the soil as their sole resource, they did not know the art of defending the fruit of their labor.  Placed between savage independence that they could no longer enjoy, and civil and political liberty that they could not yet understand, they were handed over without recourse to violence and fraud, and showed themselves to be ready to submit to all kinds of tyranny, provided that they were allowed to live, or at least to vegetate near their furrows.

In this way did estates agglomerate to fantastic sizes; that the government concentrated itself into a few hands.  In this way did war, instead of imperiling the political state of the peoples, as it has done in our own time, menace the individual property of each citizen; that inequality reached its extreme limits and one saw the spirit of conquest spread, which was the father and mother of all long established aristocracies.

First Memoir on Pauperism, First Part, Post 4

From the moment men own land, they settle down.  They find in the cultivation of the soil abundant resources to guard against hunger.  Assured of a livelihood, it begins to occur to them that human existence holds other sources of enjoyment than the satisfaction of the first and most basic needs of life.

So long as men remained nomadic hunters, inequality could not rise among them in a permanent manner.  There was no outward sign that could establish the superiority of one man, especially of one family, over another family or individual in a lasting way; and had this sign existed, it could not be passed on to his children.  But from the instant when land ownership was recognized and after men had converted vast forests into rich fallow fields and fertile meadows, from this moment, one saw individuals holding more land than was needed to feed themselves and they passed ownership into the hands of their descendants.  From thence came the existence of surpluses, with surpluses arose the taste for pleasures besides the satisfaction of the coarsest of physical needs.

It is in this stage of social development that one must place the origins of all aristocracies.

First Memoir on Pauperism, First Part, Post 3

In order to make my thoughts understood here, I feel the need to go back for a moment to the source of human societies.  I will then descend rapidly down the stream of humanity until our own day.

Here are men who associate together for the first time.  They leave the woods, they are still savages; they associate not to enjoy life, but to find the wherewithal to live.  A shelter for intemperate weather, sufficient food, such is the object of their efforts.  Their minds do not go beyond these goods, and, if they obtain them without too much trouble, they consider themselves happy with their lot and they sleep in lazy comfort.  I have lived among barbaric peoples in North America; I deplored their lot, but they did not find it cruel.  Lying down amid the smoke of his hut, covered in coarse clothes, the work of his hands or the product of a hunt, the Indian looks upon our arts with pity, considering the achievements of our civilization as a fatiguing, shameful subjugation; he envies us only our weapons.

Arriving at the earliest societies, men still have very few desires; they scarcely feel needs similar to those of animals; they have simply discovered in social organization the means to satisfy them with less trouble.  Before agriculture was known to them, they lived by hunting; from the moment they learned the art of producing a harvest from the earth, they became farmers.  Each one drew from the land that fell to his share the means to feed himself and his children.  Ownership of land was created, and with it, one saw the most active element of progress begin.

First Memoir on Pauperism, First Part, Post 2

But if you change the location of your observations to Spain, especially Portugal, the opposite spectacle will strike you.  You will meet on your way a badly nourished, badly dressed, ignorant, and coarse population, living in half-cultivated countrysides in miserable homes; nevertheless, in Portugal, the number of indigents is insignificant.  Mr. de Villeneuve estimates that in that country, there is one poor person per 25 inhabitants.  The celebrated geographic expert Balbi had some time ago put the figure at one poor person per 98 people.

Instead of comparing foreign countries, compare one part of the same country to another and you will come to a similar result:  you will see a proportional increase, on the one hand, of those who live comfortably, and, on the other hand, of those who resort to public contributions in order to live.

The average proportion of indigents in France, according to the calculations of a conscientious writer*, all of whose theories I am far from approving, is one poor person per 20 people.  But one notes immense differences among the different parts of the country.  The department of Nord, surely the richest, most populated, and the most advanced in everything, counts nearly a sixth of its population for whom charitable help is necessary.  In the Creuse, the poorest and least industrialized of all our departments, one only meets one indigent per 58 people.  In these statistics, La Manche is indicated as having one poor person per 28 residents.

I think that it is not impossible to give a reasonable explanation of this phenomenon.  The effect that I have described is due to several general causes, which would take too long to discuss in depth, but that one can at least point out.

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*  Mr. de Villeneuve, according to Alexis de Tocqueville's notes

First Memoir on Pauperism, First Part, Post 1

On the progressive development of pauperism in modern countries and the means employed to combat it.

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When one travels through the different countries of Europe, one is struck by an extraordinary and seemingly inexplicable spectacle.

Countries that appear to be the poorest are those that, in reality, count the fewest indigents, whilst among the peoples whose opulence you admire, a part of the population, in order to live, is obliged to resort to contributions from others.

Travel through the English countryside and you will believe yourself transported to the Eden of modern civilization.  Magnificently maintained roads, clean new homes, fat herds loitering in rich meadows, farmers full of strength and health, more dazzling wealth than in any other country in the world, simple ease, more luxurious, and better provided for than anywhere else; everywhere the look of care, well-being, and leisure; an air of universal prosperity that one seems to breathe in from the atmosphere itself and that makes the heart quiver at each step: this is how England looks to the traveler at first glance.

Now, enter into the interior of the communities; examine the parish registers and you will discover with inexpressible astonishment that a sixth of the residents of this thriving kingdom lives on public charity.