The Proposition to Keep Out Foreign Paupers

In an essay written in the early 19th century, Thomas Paine wrote against a proposal to keep out foreign paupers. He says we are not obliged to open our poor houses to those who aren't unable to work among these foreigners. This is the humanitarian feeling of the liberalism of the time and it goes against the grain of state authority even into our own day. The liberals of the time made bad enemies and they made powerful enemies among the established institutions and the powers that were at the time. These enemies gradually began to evolve a counter ideology, a counter philosophy to liberalism. It eventually came to be known as conservatism. They believed that liberalism led to a trampling on all weak and