Toward the Welfare State: Some British Views on the ‘Right to Subsistence,’ 1768–1834∗

Abstract

For all the criticism leveled at particular programs of public assist? ance to the poor in recent years, there is nearly universal agreement in the late twentieth century that government must stand as the provider of-last-resort to those who have no other means to obtain the minimum requirements of food, clothing, and shelter. If it means nothing else, the state means protection from going hungry. In looking to the ideological origins of the modern welfare state, we find that most of the writing over the centuries in favor of public relief to the indigent turns on considerations either of justice or policy. Some writers have argued that the poor are entitled to a subsistence, that they have a to subsistence as a matter of justice. Others have made the case for public assistance on policy grounds, arguing its advantages for the economy or its expediency in maintaining political stability. Prior to the late eighteenth century, British writers on the Poor Law ? England's venerable system of parish relief for the poor dating from Tudor times ? rarely invoked the idea of entitlement. Rather, they dealt with policy aspects of the institution, both positive and negative.1 Yet from the earliest years of the Poor Law's operation, there had been available within another English tradition of social discourse ? that concerned with property and its obligations under the social contract ? a set of propositions on the just claims of the poor. In the right circum? stances these propositions might be transformed into a powerful argu? ment in support of poor laws, which indeed is what occurred in the late 1760s. That is the point of departure for this paper.