Summary — The aim of this article is to discuss John Locke’s and Daniel Defoe’s ideas on the education and profitable employment of the poor. It deals with Locke’s Report of the Board of Trade to the Lords Justices, Respecting the Relief and Employment of the Poor and Defoe’s Giving Alms No Charity, and Employing the Poor a Grievance to the Nation. They are considered in their historical and cultural context, vis-a-vis contemporary attitudes towards the poor and proposals by philanthropists and poor-law reformers. Locke’s and Defoe's ideas of the political connection between the State and the poor are compared. Their relationship with Sir Humprhy Mackworth’s Bill for the Relief,Imployment, and Settlement of the Poor (better known as workhouse bill) is also stressed.

The author shares the opinion of those who have emphasized that, in condemning the system of workhouses and schools of industry proposed by Locke and Mackworth, Defoe does not go as far as criticising state intervention into a free market in labour, since his views are in fact consistent with the traditional mercantilist approach to the problem. Importance is given to the complex role played by the market in Defoe’s pamphlet: his acceptance of the existence of ‘Arcanas of Trade’ does not prevent him from advocating a low-wage policy or considering the market as a state institution. Defoe’s view of the market and its effects is also juxtaposed with the function given, in Locke’s Report, to schools of industry and corporal punishments, as means of reforming the characters of the poor, and to the importance attached to the workhouse system, in Mackworth’s bill as well as in a great deal of contemporary literature, as a means of relieving the poor and increasing the wealth of the kingdom, which was considered to be greatly endangered by their being out of work.