ABSTRACT
“The condition of the poor,” Alexis de Tocqueville observed in 1833, “is England’s greatest evil” (Tocqueville 1958: 41). Three years past a revolution in his home country, the famous observer of mores and politics took advantage of five weeks in England to judge the possibility of revolution across the Channel. “The number of poor people,” he declared,
is growing here at a frightening pace, partly because of defects in the laws. But the chief and permanent cause of the problem is, I think, the concentration of landed property. In England, the number of property-owners is decreasing rather than increasing, and the number of proletarians grows with the population. This state of affairs couples with taxes so high that rich people can’t hire poor people as they would if such a large share of their money didn’t go to the state; such things can only cause more and more misery … In sum, England seems to be in a critical situation, which certain events could quite possibly turn into a violent revolution. Yet if things follow their natural course I don’t think the revolution will occur, and I see plenty of chances for the English to change their political and social situation at the cost of great pain but without upheaval and civil war. (Tocqueville 1958: 41–42; see also Spring 1980)
