Background.
- ‘Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door‘ is a quotation from Martin Chuzzlewit (Chapter 27).
- Martin Chuzzlewit, is the sixth novel by Charles Dickens originally published between January 1843 and July 1844. The main theme of the novel revolves around the Chuzzlewit family, using satire to depict the selfishness of a number of characters.
Context.
Quotation said by the character Montague Tigg, speaking to Jonas Chuzzlewit. Jonas has visited the extravagant looking offices of The Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Company where he meets the chairman Montague Tigg, who is now styling himself as the more respectable sounding Tigg Montague.
Jonas, who is thinking of insuring the life of his wife, is distrustful about the business, and Tigg admits to it being fraudulent. The next day, Tigg and company throw a dinner for Jonas, who agrees to join the company after becoming drunk.
In this quotation, the corrupt and selfish Tigg uses an existing English phrase – charity begins at home – suggesting to Chuzzlewit that it is acceptable to look after yourself financially before others but by adding the second part – and justice begins next door – implies the law is impervious to his illicit ways of earning.
Source.
Taken from the following passage in Chapter 27 (SHOWING THAT OLD FRIENDS MAY NOT ONLY APPEAR WITH NEW FACES, BUT IN FALSE COLOURS. THAT PEOPLE ARE PRONE TO BITE, AND THAT BITERS MAY SOMETIMES BE BITTEN) of the novel Martin Chuzzlewit:
‘I can tell you,’ said Tigg in his ear, ‘how many of ’em will buy annuities, effect insurances, bring us their money in a hundred shapes and ways, force it upon us, trust us as if we were the Mint; yet know no more about us than you do of that crossing-sweeper at the corner. Not so much. Ha, ha!’
Jonas gradually broke into a smile.
‘Yah!’ said Montague, giving him a pleasant thrust in the breast; ‘you’re too deep for us, you dog, or I wouldn’t have told you. Dine with me to-morrow, in Pall Mall!’
‘I will’ said Jonas.
‘Done!’ cried Montague. ‘Wait a bit. Take these papers with you and look ’em over. See,’ he said, snatching some printed forms from the table. ‘B is a little tradesman, clerk, parson, artist, author, any common thing you like.’
‘Yes,’ said Jonas, looking greedily over his shoulder. ‘Well!’
‘B wants a loan. Say fifty or a hundred pound; perhaps more; no matter. B proposes self and two securities. B is accepted. Two securities give a bond. B assures his own life for double the amount, and brings two friends’ lives also—just to patronize the office. Ha ha, ha! Is that a good notion?’
‘Ecod, that’s a capital notion!’ cried Jonas. ‘But does he really do it?’
‘Do it!’ repeated the chairman. ‘B’s hard up, my good fellow, and will do anything. Don’t you see? It’s my idea.’
‘It does you honour. I’m blest if it don’t,’ said Jonas.
‘I think it does,’ replied the chairman, ‘and I’m proud to hear you say so. B pays the highest lawful interest—’
‘That an’t much,’ interrupted Jonas.
‘Right! quite right!’ retorted Tigg. ‘And hard it is upon the part of the law that it should be so confoundedly down upon us unfortunate victims; when it takes such amazing good interest for itself from all its clients. But charity begins at home, and justice begins next door. Well! The law being hard upon us, we’re not exactly soft upon B; for besides charging B the regular interest, we get B’s premium, and B’s friends’ premiums, and we charge B for the bond, and, whether we accept him or not, we charge B for “inquiries” (we keep a man, at a pound a week, to make ’em), and we charge B a trifle for the secretary; and in short, my good fellow, we stick it into B, up hill and down dale, and make a devilish comfortable little property out of him. Ha, ha, ha! I drive B, in point of fact,’ said Tigg, pointing to the cabriolet, ‘and a thoroughbred horse he is. Ha, ha, ha!’
Jonas enjoyed this joke very much indeed. It was quite in his peculiar vein of humour.
Characters.
Montague Tigg / Tigg Montague.
Montague Tigg is a down-on-his-luck rogue at the beginning of the novel Martin Chuzzlewit, and a hanger-on to distant Chuzzlewit kin Chevy Slyme. Later, along with the pawnbroker David Crimple he starts a thriving, sleazy insurance business, The Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Company and reverses his name to the more respectable sounding Tigg Montague. The company is essentially a ‘ponzi scheme’, a fraudulent investment operation which pays off early policyholders’ claims with premiums from more recent policyholders. Tigg manages to lure Jonas Chuzzlewit into joining his business, but this results in Jonas concocting a murderous plot in order to extricate himself.
- In a 1994 BBC television adaptation of Martin Chuzzlewit, the character of Montague Tigg was played by the actor Pete Postlethwaite.
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Related.
- If you like this, we think you might also be interested in these related quotations:
The phrase charity begins at home was first recorded as being used by the English physician, writer and theologian Thomas Browne in 1642 although the philosopher and theologian John Wycliffe used a similar phrase charity should begin at himself in 1383.