ABSTRACT
Daniel Defoe's pamphlet, "Giving Alms No Charity," was an attack not on almsgiving in the ordinary sense but on proposals for establishment of public workhouses for the unemployed. In it he maintained that existing parish relief was adequate to deal with poverty caused by "casualty" and argued against public measures to relieve poverty caused by the crimes of "luxury, sloath, and pride." Bernard de Mandeville, a Dutch physician who settled in London in the 1690s, defined charity so strictly as to exclude any action bearing the faintest whiff of self-regard. This rigorous definition, combined with a pessimistic view of human nature, allowed Mandeville to discount the role of altruism and benevolence in human affairs. With the exception of the "impotent and infirm" –the proper objects of charity –poor people had an obligation to work. Conversely, society had the double duty of providing them with the means of labor and compelling them to undertake it.
