Compulsory social conscience

Abstract

For centuries it was left to a man’s conscience to decide whether or not to help others less fortunate than himself. He knew his own income and his own commitments and he was best able to judge how much to put in the carol-singers’ hat, the beggar’s bowl, the church poor box, the Fund for Deserving Spinsters of the Parish. Sometimes men impoverished themselves to help alleviate the distress that surrounded them; sometimes they lived hard-working but selfish lives and then surprised their more openhanded neighbours by leaving a fortune to start a charity that, hundreds of years later, is still helping people in trouble today.