At home in England, or projecting liberal citizenship in Moll Flanders

Among the various national projects sketched in the Essay, Defoe proposes nationally administered pension-offices to replace the existing parish system. While the parish system drew its funding from poor-rates and from donations and gave full responsibility for procuring funds as well as administrative autonomy to each parish-community, Defoe proposes a uniform system that draws its funds from the income of earners. Each earner would regularly contribute a certain portion of her earnings, and when she is incapable of working (as a result of injury, disease, or old age), she would receive either complete care, including health and board, or a pension whose amount is determined in relation to the incurred loss in productivity. Any person who works is required to contribute, and any person who has contributed is eligible for compensation (Essay 57-67).

Defoe here designs an association for people who need each other's help to raise money, are capable of realizing this need, and are therefore willing to cooperate for this particular purpose. Thus the plan is for a state of earners-it aspires to turn all persons into earners and to cater to persons' needs as such. But this plan also gestures toward a more generalized welfare system-one that doesn't rely on the prior contribution of the compensated individuals-when Defoe goes on to consider what is to be done when a person is incapable, and never has been capable, of realizing her needs. He projects for such people in the chapter "Of Fools." Fools are "depriv'd of Reason to act for themselves" (69)-they are precluded from membership in the pension office because their deliberative capacities are disabled and they will never be able to earn. How, then, should their needs be taken care of?

At first, Defoe uses the more conventional charity logic, suggesting that those who received abundant reason have a moral responsibility to contribute from the fortune that they earn by means of this good fortune:

If I were to be ask'd, Who ought in particular to be charg'd with this Work? I would answer in general, Those who have a Portion of Understanding extraordinary: Not that I would lay a Tax upon any man's Brains, or discourage Wit, by appointing Wise Men to maintain Fools: But some Tribute is due to God's Goodness for bestowing extraordinary Gifts; and who can it be better paid to, that such as suffer for want of the same Bounty?

For the providing therefore some Subsistence for such, that Natural Defects may not be expos'd:

It is Propos'd,

That a Fool-House be Erected, either by Publick Authority, or by the City, or by an Act of Parliament; into which, all that are Naturals, or born Fools, without Respect of Distinction, should be admitted and maintain'd.

For the Maintenance of this a small stated Contribution, settl'd by the Authority of an Act of Parliament, without any Damage to the Persons paying the same, might be very easily rais'd, by a Tax upon Learning, to be paid by the Authors of Books. (71)

But if at first Defoe seems a little naive about the percentage of those endowed with extraordinary reason, he soon adds to the book tax another source for funding fools: revenues from a lottery inaugurated especially for the purpose. With the lottery, he writes, we shall "maintain Fools out of our own Folly" (72).