Jeremy Bentham on the Relief of Indigence: An Exercise in Applied Philosophy

Utilitas ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-96
Author(s):  
Michael Quinn
Keyword(s):  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Applied Philosophy ◽  
Public Responsibility ◽  
Unpublished Works

This paper will attempt to provide an overview of Bentham's fundamental thinking with regard to the relief of indigence. The manuscripts on which it draws form the texts of unpublished works, namely a set of ‘Three Essays on the Poor Laws’, which were completed by Bentham, and ‘Pauper Systems Compared’, which remains in a comparatively unfinished state. In the ‘Essays’, Bentham considers first the question of whether the relief of indigence should be a public responsibility, and, having concluded that it should, moves on to consider what conditions should be attached to that relief. In ‘Systems Compared’, Bentham analyzes different systems of provision in terms of their compatibility with these conditions.

Jeremy Bentham: Pauperism, Colonialism, and Imperialism

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
BARBARA ARNEIL
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
Theoretical Contribution ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Poor ◽  
First Contact

Using two recently published folios by Jeremy Bentham, I draw out a fundamental but little-analyzed connection between pauperism and both domestic and settler colonialism in opposition to imperialism in his thought. The core theoretical contribution of this article is to draw a distinction between a colonial, internal, and productive form of power that claims to improve people and land from within, which Bentham defends, and an imperial, external, and repressive form of power that dominates or rules over people from above and afar, that he rejects. Inherent in colonialism and the power unleashed by it are specific and profoundly negative implications in practice for the poor and disabled of Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries subject to domestic colonialism and indigenous peoples subject to settler colonialism from first contact until today. I conclude Bentham is best understood as a pro-colonialist and anti-imperialist thinker.

Benjamin Franklin and the Poor Laws

1944 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-91
Author(s):  
Howell V. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Benjamin Franklin ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
The Poor

III. The Medical Mission and the Care of the Sick Poor in Nineteenth-Century England

1964 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen J. Heasman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
Medical Missions ◽  
Medical Mission ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
The Poor

Sidney and Beatrice Webb, in their book The State and the Doctor, which was submitted in the first instance as a memorandum to the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws in 1909, dismiss the work of the free dispensaries and medical missions in one short paragraph.

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