The Fable of the Bees; Or, Private Vices, Public Benefits. Bernard Mandeville
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at the glory of conquest, nothing shall happen of what I have been talking of. Different passions oblige us to take different measures; what I have said I would have understood of ordinary play for money, at which men endeavour to get, and venture to lose what they value: And even here I know it will be objected by many, that though they have been guilty of concealing their gains, yet they never observed those passions which I allege as the causes of that frailty; which is no wonder, because few men will give themselves leisure, and fewer yet take the right method of examining themselves as they should do. It is with the passions in men, as it is with colours in cloth: It is easy to know a red, a green, a blue, a yellow, a black, &c. in as many different places; but it must be an artist that can unravel all the various colours and their proportions, that make up the compound of a well-mixed cloth. In the same manner, may the passions be discovered by every body whilst they are distinct, and a single one employs the whole man; but it is very difficult to trace every motive of those actions that are the result of a mixture of passions.
Line 163. And virtue, who from politics
Has learn’d a thousand cunning tricks,
Was, by their happy influence,
Made friends with vice.——
It may be said, that virtue is made friends with vice, when industrious good people, who maintain their families, and bring up their children handsomely, pay taxes, and are several ways useful members of the society, get a livelihood by something that chiefly depends on, or is very much influenced by the vices of others, without being themselves guilty of, or accessary to them, any otherwise than by way of trade, as a druggist may be to poisoning, or a sword-cutler to blood-shed.
Thus the merchant, that sends corn or cloth into foreign parts to purchase wines and brandies, encourages the growth or manufactory of his own country; he is a benefactor to navigation, increases the customs, and is many ways beneficial to the public; yet it is not to be denied, but that his greatest dependence is lavishness and drunkenness: For, if none were to drink wine but such only as stand in need of it, nor any body more than his health required, that multitude of wine-merchants, vintners, coopers, &c. that make such a considerable show in this flourishing city, would be in a miserable condition. The same may be said not only of card and dice-makers, that are the immediate ministers to a legion of vices; but that of mercers, upholsterers, tailors, and many others, that would be starved in half a year’s time, if pride and luxury were at once to be banished the nation.
Line 167. The worst of all the multitude
Did something for the common good.
This, I know, will seem to be a strange paradox to many; and I shall be asked what benefit the public receives from thieves and house-breakers. They are, I own, very pernicious to human society, and every government ought to take all imaginable care to root out and destroy them; yet if all people were strictly honest, and nobody would meddle with, or pry into any thing but his own, half the smiths of the nation would want employment; and abundance of workmanship (which now serves for ornament as well as defence) is to be seen every where both in town and country, that would never have been thought of, but to secure us against the attempts of pilferers and robbers.
If what I have said be thought far fetched, and my assertion seems still a paradox, I desire the reader to look upon the consumption of things, and he will find that the laziest and most unactive, the profligate and most mischievous, are all forced to do something for the common good, and whilst their mouths are not sowed up, and they continue to wear and otherwise destroy what the industrious are daily employed about to make, fetch and procure, in spite of their teeth obliged to help, maintain the poor and the public charges. The labour of millions would soon be at an end, if there were not other millions, as I say, in the fable.
————Employ’d,
To see their handy-works destroy’d.
But men are not to be judged by the consequences that may succeed their actions, but the facts themselves, and the motives which it shall appear they acted from. If an ill-natured miser, who is almost a plumb, and spends but fifty pounds a-year, though he has no relation to inherit his wealth, should be robbed of five hundred or a thousand guineas, it is certain, that as soon as this money should come to circulate, the nation would be the better for the robbery, and receive the same, and as real a benefit from it, as if an archbishop had left the same sum to the public; yet justice, and the peace of society, require that he or they who robbed the miser should be hanged, though there were half a dozen of them concerned.
Thieves and pick-pockets steal for a livelihood, and either what they can get honestly is not sufficient to keep them, or else they have an aversion to constant working: they want to gratify their senses, have victuals, strong drink, lewd women, and to be idle when they please. The victualler, who entertains them, and takes their money, knowing which way they come at it, is very near as great a villain as his guests. But if he fleeces them well, minds his business, and is a prudent man, he may get money, and be punctual with them he deals with: The trusty out-clerk, whose chief aim is his master’s profit, sends him in what beer he wants, and takes care not to lose his custom; while the man’s money is good, he thinks it no business of his to examine whom he gets it by. In the mean time, the wealthy brewer, who leaves all the management to his servants, knows nothing of the matter, but keeps his coach, treats his friends, and enjoys his pleasure with ease and a good conscience; he gets an estate; builds houses, and educates his children in plenty, without ever thinking on the labour which wretches perform, the shifts fools make, and the tricks knaves play to come at the commodity, by the vast sale of which he amasses his great riches.
A highwayman having met with a considerable booty, gives a poor common harlot, he fancies, ten pounds to new-rig her from top to toe; is there a spruce mercer so conscientious that he will refuse to sell her a thread sattin, though he knew who she was? She must have shoes and stockings, gloves, the stay and mantua maker, the sempstress, the linen-draper, all must get something by her, and a hundred different tradesmen dependent on those she laid her money out with, may touch part of it before a month is at an end. The generous gentleman, in the mean time, his money being near spent, ventured again on the road, but the second day having committed a robbery near Highgate, he was taken with one of his accomplices, and the next sessions both were condemned, and suffered the law. The money due on their conviction fell to three country fellows, on whom it was admirably well bestowed. One was an honest farmer, a sober pains-taking man, but reduced by misfortunes: The summer before, by the mortality among the cattle, he had lost six cows out of ten, and now his landlord, to whom he owed thirty pounds, had seized on all his stock. The other was a day-labourer, who struggled hard with the world, had a sick wife at home, and several small children to provide for. The third was a gentleman’s gardener, who maintained his father in prison, where, being bound for a neighbour, he had lain for twelve pounds almost a year and a half; this act of filial duty was the more meritorious, because he had for some time been engaged to a young woman, whose parents lived in good circumstances, but would not give their consent before our gardener had fifty guineas of his own to show. They received above fourscore pounds each, which extricated every one of them out of the difficulties they laboured under, and made them, in their opinion, the happiest people in the world.
Nothing is more destructive, either in regard to the health or the vigilance and industry of the poor, than the infamous liquor, the name of which, derived from Juniper in Dutch, is now, by frequent use, and the laconic spirit of the nation, from a word of middling length, shrunk into a monosyllable, intoxicating gin, that charms the unactive, the desperate and crazy of either sex, and makes the starving sot behold his rags and nakedness with stupid indolence, or banter both in senseless laughter, and more insipid jests! It is a fiery lake that sets the brain in flame, burns up the entrails, and scorches every part within; and, at the same time, a Lethe of oblivion, in which the wretch immersed drowns his most pinching cares, and with his reason, all anxious reflection on brats that cry for food, hard winters frosts, and horrid empty home.
In hot and adust tempers it makes men quarrelsome, renders them brutes and savages, sets them on to fight for nothing, and has often been the cause of murder. It has broke and destroyed the strongest constitutions, thrown them into consumptions, and been the fatal and immediate occasion of apoplexies, phrenzies, and sudden death.