[Footnote 1:  II. ii. 32, 6.]

The mediaeval teaching on almsgiving is very well summarised by Fr. Jarrett,[1] as follows:  ’(1) A man is obliged to help another in his extreme need even at the risk of grave inconvenience to himself; (2) a man is obliged to help another who, though not in extreme need, is yet in considerable distress, but not at the risk of grave inconvenience to himself; (3) a man is not obliged to help another when necessity is slight, even though the risk to himself should be quite trifling.’

[Footnote 1:  Mediaeval Socialism, p. 90.]

The importance of the duty of almsgiving further appears from the section where Aquinas lays down that the person to whom alms should have been given may, if the owner of the goods neglects his duty, repair the omission himself.  ’All things are common property in a case of extreme necessity.  Hence one who is in dire straits may take another’s goods in order to succour himself if he can find no one who is willing to give him something.’[1] The duty of using one’s goods for the benefit of one’s neighbours was a fit matter for enforcement by the State, provided that the burdens imposed by legislation were equitable.  ’Laws are said to be just, both from the end, when, to wit, they are ordained to the common good—­and from their author, that is to say, when the law that is made does not exceed the power of the law-giver—­and from their form, when, to wit, burdens are laid on the subjects according to an equality of proportion and with a view to the common good.  For, since every man is part of the community, each man in all that he is and has belongs to the community:  just as a part in all that it is belongs to the whole; wherefore nature inflicts a loss on the part in order to save the whole; so that on this account such laws, which impose proportionate burdens, are just and binding in conscience.’[2]

[Footnote 1:  Ibid., art. 7 ad. 3.]

[Footnote 2:  I. ii. 96,4.]

There can be no doubt that the practice of the scholastic teaching of community of user, in its proper sense, made for social stability.  The following passage from Trithemius, written at the end of the fifteenth century, is interesting as showing how consistently the doctrine of St. Thomas was adhered to two hundred years after his death, and also that the failure of the rich to put into practice the moderate communism of St. Thomas was the cause of the rise of the heretical communists, who attacked the very foundations of property itself:  ’Let the rich remember that their possessions have not been entrusted to them in order that they may have the sole enjoyment of them, but that they may use and manage them as property belonging to mankind at large.  Let them remember that when they give to the needy they only give them what belongs to them.  If the duty of right use and management of property, whether worldly or spiritual, is neglected, if the rich think that they are the sole lords and