ABSTRACT
Social welfare benefits provided by the state, which in Britain include cash payments and advisory services, are akin to charitable trusts and societies in that both aim at meeting certain needs of people. What, if anything, is the difference between social welfare benefits and charity? Is a welfare state a form of charity which hap pens to be run by the state, or is it an essentially dif ferent kind of thing from charity? People in Britain sometimes register unease at being offered welfare bene fits, or unwillingness to accept them, precisely because they regard them as charity and do not wish to accept them on this basis. The contrast, reflected in this uneasi ness, between ’charity' and 'what one is entitled to' or 'what someone has a duty to provide' is not, however, con fined to British social consciousness. It is implicit in a remark made by F.D. Roosevelt in 1931, when governor of the state of New York, that when an ailing economy pro duces large-scale unemployment, 'To these unfortunate cit izens aid must be extended by the government - not as a matter of charity but as a matter of social duty' (quoted in Woodroofe, 1962, p. 162). If we want to deny that welfare benefits are 'charity' or are to be shunned as de tracting from a person's dignity, we must have some idea in mind of the relation between the two.
