Apéndice 4. Árbol genealógico de A. V. Dicey

• Pages: 813-817
• Author: Javier Carlos Díaz Rico

DICEY Y LA ESCUELA DE DERECHO DE OXFORD (1835-1922)

813

[Dicey − John St Loe Strachey, 14 de marzo, 1910, Parliamentary Archives,

fol. GB-061, STR/5/5/17].

14 March 1910.

My dear Strachey,

I hope you will look at my letter on the French Senate and the House of Lords.

I don’t know much of the Senate, but I know a good deal more than do most

Englishmen. It is the old case of the one-eyed man amongst the blind.

I write to ask a very denite question to which I think you possess the answer:

so it true, as asserted to me by a friend who knows a great deal about the poor

individually, but has not really studied economics, that, speaking broadly, “no

woman who supports herself by work can in England lay by enough to secure

independence in old age, say at 60?

My informant rst made the assertion with regard to ladies or what I suppose

you might call poor gentleman who had to support themselves by their work, e.g.

as governesses. My friend afterwards extended this statement to maid servants,

and the like.

My friend, who knows tenfold more about the poor individually than most

ladies or gentlemen, holds a doctrine which if sound, means that no English wo-

man who supports herself by work, and who neither dies young nor marries, can

as a rule look for independence in old age, say at 60. Booth, it was also alleged,

supports this doctrine. As to this being so, I have some doubts.

The question raised by the doctrine as to which I am consulting you seems to

me of immense importance, as upon its truth or falsehood depends to my mind

the whole view we are to take o English wage earners and their duties.

If my friend is right, even as regards the mass of working women, whether

ladies or servants, there seems to me a much stronger case for State aid than I

hitherto believed existed.

If the view on the other hand, which I have hitherto entertained, that men

and women who have to support themselves, can by proper conduct, lay by su-

cient to ensure the independence according to the scale of living to which they

are accustomed for old age, then it seems to me that if you look at the matter very

broadly, pauperism ought to be treated as prima facie something like a crime, i.e.

the failure to perform one’s full duty to the State.

Please treat the question for the moment as conned to women, as it was on

that point alone of which my friend was speaking.

Oddly enough I read a paper at our Oxford Political Economy Club which rai-

sed, in my mind at least, nearly the same enquire. Can you tell me where the

plainest answer to my question can be found? It must have occupied many minds.