Given Dalrymple’s well-known arguments about personal responsibility and Western (so-called) poverty, it is probably not well understood how tolerant he is of beggars, the homeless and the like. For example, as recounted in Taki’s Magazine, recently a former prisoner knocked on his door late at night claiming to be a door-to-door salesman.

Dalrymple’s response? He invited the man in:

I bought yet another feather duster that we did not need, but I did not tell him that we did not need it: I wanted him to think it would really come in useful, as perhaps it will in twenty years’ time, when all the others are worn out. I was fully aware, of course, of all the many ways in which this young man might have been cheating me; but the thought of turning away someone who was genuine, and who appeared to be a suffering human being, was many times more painful to me than the thought of being bilked of £9.99.