Oxfam has called for massive income redistribution in England, because of income inequality, but the contradiction this makes with the organization’s own practices causes Dalrymple to say:

It is curious that a charity should appeal to envy and hatred. Man being a comparing animal, envy comes naturally to him, and I doubt that it will ever be expunged entirely from the human heart; but it is one of the seven deadly sins nonetheless, and for good reason. It poisons the mind by focusing on what a person does not have rather than on what he does, and on what he can’t do rather than what he can; it embitters by drawing attention to those more fortunate than oneself, without causing one to become more compassionate to those less fortunate. Envy is midwife to that most unfortunate of human conditions, fatalism without contentment.