 Section 30 of The Fable of the Bees by Bernard Mandeville This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To me it is a great pleasure, when I look on the affairs of human life, to behold into what various and often strangely opposite forms the hope of gain and thoughts of lucre shape men according to the different employments they are of and stations they are in. How gay and married as every face appear at a well-ordered ball and what a solemn sadness is observed at the masquerade of a funeral, but the undertaker is as much pleased with his gains as the dancing master. Both are equally tired in their occupations, and the mirth of the one is as much forced as the gravity of the other is affected. Those who have never minded the conversation of a spruce-mercer and a young lady his customer that comes into his shop have neglected a scene of life that is very entertaining. I beg of my serious reader that he would, for a while, abate a little of his gravity and suffer me to examine these people separately as to their inside and the different motives they act from. His business is to sell as much silk as he can at a price by which he shall get what he proposes to be reasonable according to the customary profits of the trade. As to the lady, what she would be at is to please her fancy and buy cheaper by a groat or six pence per yard than the things she wants her commonly sold at. From the impression the gallantry of our sex has made upon her, she imagines if she be not very deformed, that she has a fine, mean, and easy behavior and a peculiar sweetness of voice, that she is handsome, and if not beautiful, at least more agreeable than most young women she knows, as she has no pretensions to purchase the same things with less money than other people, but what are built on her good qualities, so she sets herself off to the best advantage her wit and discretion will let her. The thoughts of love are here out of the case, so on the one hand she has no room for playing the tyrant and giving herself angry and peevish heirs and on the other, more liberty of speaking kindly and being affable than she can have almost on any other occasion. She knows that abundance of well-bred people come to his shop and endeavors to render herself as amiable as virtue and the rules of decency allow of. Coming with such a resolution of behavior, she cannot meet with anything to ruffle her temper. Before her coach is yet quite stopped, she is approached by a gentleman-like man that has everything clean and fashionable about him, who in low obeisance pays her homage and as soon as her pleasure is known that she has a mind to come in, hands her into the shop where immediately he slips from her and through a byway that remains visible only for half a moment with great address entrenched himself behind the counter. He are facing her with a profound reverence and modish phrase. He begs the favor of knowing her commands. Let her say and dislike what she pleases. She can never be directly contradicted. She deals with the man in whom consummate patience is one of the mysteries of his trade and whatever trouble she creates she is sure to hear nothing but the most obliging language and as always before her a cheerful countenance where joy and respect seem to be blended with good humor and altogether make up an artificial serenity more engaging than untaught nature is able to produce. When two persons are so well met the conversation must be very agreeable as well as extremely mannerly though they talk about trifles. While she remains irresolute what to take he seems to be the same in advising her and is very cautious how to direct her choice but when once she has made it and is fixed he immediately becomes positive that it is the best of the sort extols her fancy and the more he looks upon it the more he wonders he should not before have discovered the preeminence of it over anything he has in the shop. By precept, example, and great application he has learned and observed to slide into the inmost recesses of the soul sound the capacity of his customers and find out their blindside unknown to them by all which he is instructed with fifty other stratagems to make her overvalue her own judgment as well as the commodities she would purchase. The greatest advantage he has over her lies in the most material part of the commerce between them the debate about the price which he knows to a farthing and she is wholly ignorant of. Therefore he nowhere more egregiously imposes on her understanding and though here he has the liberty of telling what lies he pleases as to the prime cost and the money he has refused yet he trusts not to them only but attacking her vanity makes her believe the most incredible things in the world concerning his own weakness and her superior abilities. He had taken a resolution he says never to part with that peace under such a price but she has the power of talking him out of his goods beyond anybody he ever sold to he protests that he loses by his silk but seeing that she has a fancy for it and his resolve to give no more rather than disoblige a lady he has such an uncommon value for he will let her have it and only begs that another time she will not stand so hard with him. In the meantime the buyer who knows that she is no fool and has a voluble tongue is easily persuaded that she has a very winning way of talking and thinking it sufficient for the sake of good breeding she has known her merit and in some witty repartee retort the compliment he makes her swallow very contentedly the substance of everything he tells her the upshot is that with the satisfaction of having saved nine pence per yard she has bought her silk exactly at the same price as anybody else might have done and often gives six pence more than rather than not have sold it he would have taken this lady for want of being sufficiently flattered for a fault she is pleased to find in his behavior or perhaps the tying of his neck cloth or some other dislike as substantial may be lost and her custom bestowed on some other of the fraternity but where many of them live in a cluster it is not always easily determined which shop to go to and the reasons some of the fair sex have for their choice are often very whimsical and kept as great a secret we never follow our inclinations with more freedom than where they cannot be traced and it is unreasonable for others to suspect them a virtuous woman has preferred one house to all the rest because she had seen a handsome fellow in it and another of no bad character for having received greater civility before it than had been paid her anywhere else when she had no thoughts of buying and was going to Paul's church for among the fashionable mercers the fair dealer must keep before his own door and to draw in random customers make use of no other freedom or importunities than in obsequious air with a submissive posture and perhaps a bow to every well dressed female that offers to look towards his shop what I have said last makes me think on another way of inviting customers the most distant in the world from what I have been speaking of I mean that which is practiced by the waterman especially on those whom by their mean and garb they know to be peasants it is not unpleasant to see half a dozen people surround a man they never saw in their lives before and two of them that can get the nearest clapping each arm over his neck hug him in as loving and familiar a manner as if he was their brother newly come home from an East India voyage a third lays hold of his hand another of his sleeve his coat the buttons of it or anything he can come at while a fifth or sixth who has scamper twice round him already without being able to get at him plants himself directly before the man in hold and within three inches of his nose contradicting his rivals with an open mouthed cry shows him a dreadful set of large teeth and a small remainder of chewed bread and cheese which the countryman's arrival had hindered from being swallowed at all this no offense is taken and the peasant justly thinks they are making much of him therefore far from opposing them he patiently suffers himself to be pushed or pulled which way the strength that surrounds him shall direct he has not the delicacy to find fault with a man's breath who has just blown out his pipe or a greasy head of hair that is rubbing against his chops dirt and sweat he has been used to from his cradle and it is no disturbance to him to hear half a score people some of them at his ear and the furthest not five foot from him ball out as if he was hundred yards off he is conscious that he makes no less noise when he is Mary himself and is secretly pleased with their boisterous usages the hauling and pulling him about he construes the way it is intended it is a courtship he can feel and understand he cannot help wishing them well for the esteem they seem to have for him he loves to be taken notice of and admire the Londoners for being so pressing in the offers of their service to him for the value of three pence or less whereas in the country at the shop he uses he can have nothing but he must first tell them what he wants and though he lays out three or four shillings at a time has hardly a word spoke to him unless it be an answer to a question himself is forced to ask first this alacrity in his half moves his gratitude and unwilling to disoblige any from his heart he knows not whom to choose I have seen a man think all this or something like it as plainly as I could see the nose in his face and at the same time move along very contentedly under a load of watermen and with a smiling countenance carry seven or eight stone more than his own weight to the waterside if the little mirth I have shown in the drawing of these two images from low life misbecomes me I am sorry for it but I promise not to be guilty of that fault anymore and will now without loss of time proceed with my argument in artless dull simplicity and demonstrate the gross error of those who imagine that the social virtues and the amiable qualities that are praiseworthy in us are equally beneficial to the public as they are to the individual persons that are possessed of them and that the means of thriving and whatever conduces to the welfare and real happiness of private families must have the same effect upon the whole society this I confess I have labored for all along and I flatter myself not unsuccessfully but I hope nobody will like a problem the worse for seeing the truth of it proved more ways than one it is certain that the fewer desires a man has and the less he covets the more easy he is to himself the more active he is to supply his own wants and the less he requires to be waited upon the more he will be beloved and the less trouble he is in a family the more he loves peace and concord the more charity he has for his neighbor and the more he shines in real virtue there is no doubt but that in proportion he is acceptable to God and man but let us be just what benefit can these things be of or what earthly good can they do to promote the wealth the glory and worldly greatness of nations it is the sensual courtier that sets no limit to his luxury the fickle strumpet that invents new fashions every week the haughty duchess that in equipage entertainments and all her behavior would imitate a princess the profuse rake and lavish air that scatter about their money without wit or judgment buy everything they see and either destroy or give it away the next day the covetous and perjured villain that squeezed an immense treasure from the tears of widows and orphans and left the prodigals the money to spend it is these that are the prey and proper food of a full grown Leviathan or in other words such as the calamitous condition of human affairs that we stand in need of the plagues and monsters I named to have the variety of labor performed which the skill of man is capable of inventing in order to procure an honest livelihood to the vast multitudes of working poor that are required to make a large society and it is folly to imagine that great and wealthy nations can subsist and be at once powerful and polite without I protest against popery as much as Luther and Calvin did or Queen Elizabeth herself but I believe from my heart that the reformation has scarce been more instrumental in rendering the kingdoms and states that have embraced it flourishing beyond other nations than the silly and capricious invention of hooped and quilted petticoats but if this should be denied me by the enemies of priestly power at least I am sure that bar the great men who have fought for and against that layman's blessing it has from its beginning to this day not employed so many hands honest industrious laboring hands as the abominable improvement on female luxury I named has done in few years religion is one thing and trade is another he that gives most trouble to thousands of his neighbors and invents the most operos manufacturers is right or wrong the greatest friend to the society what a bustle is there to be made in several parts of the world before a fine scarlet or crimson cloth can be produced what multiplicity of trades and artificers must be employed not only such as are obvious as will comers spinners the weaver the cloth worker the scourer the dire the setter the drawer and the packer but others that are more remote and might seem foreign to it as the millwright the pewterer and the chemist which yet as well as a great number of other handicrafts to have the tools utensils and other implements belonging to the trades already named but all these things are done at home and may be performed without extraordinary fatigue or danger the most frightful prospect is left behind when we reflect on the toil and hazard that are to be undergone abroad the vast seas we are to go over the different climates we are to endure and the several nations we must be obliged to for their assistance Spain alone it is true might furnish us with wool to make the finest cloth but what skill and pains what experience and ingenuity are required to dye it of those beautiful colors how widely are the drugs and other ingredients dispersed through the universe that are to meet in one kettle alam indeed we have of our own our goal we might have from the Spain and vitriol from Hungary all this is in Europe but then for salt peter in quantity we are forced to go as far as the East Indies cocconeal unknown to the ancients is not much nearer to us though in a quite different part of the earth we buy it it is true from the Spaniards but not being their product they are forced to fetch it for us from the remotest corner of the new world in the East Indies so many sailors are broiling in the sun and sweltered with heat in the east and west of us another set of them are freezing in the north to fetch potashes from Russia when we are thoroughly acquainted with all the variety of toil and labor the hardships and calamities that must be undergone to compass the end I speak of and we consider the vast risks and perils that are run in those voyages and that few of them are ever made but at the expense only of the health and welfare but even the lives of many when we are acquainted with I say and duly consider the things I named it is scarce possible to conceive a tyrant so inhuman and void of shame that beholding things in the same view he should exact such terrible services from his innocent slaves and at the same time dare to own that he did it for no other reason than the satisfaction a man receives from having a garment made of scarlet or crimson cloth but to what height of luxury must a nation be arrived where not only the king's officers but likewise the guards even the private soldiers should have such impudent desires but if we turn the prospect and look on all those labors as so many voluntary actions belonging to different collings and occupations that men are brought up to for a livelihood and in which everyone works for himself how much so ever he may seem to labor for others if we consider that even the sailors who undergo the greatest hardships as soon as one voyages ended even after shipwreck are looking out and soliciting for employment in another if we consider I say and look on these things in another view we shall find that the labor of the poor is so far from being a burden and in imposition upon them that to have employment blessing which in their address to heaven they pray for and to procure it for the generality of them is the greatest care of every legislature as children and even infants are the apes of others so all youth have an ardent desire of being men and women and become often ridiculous by their impatient endeavors to appear what everybody sees they are not all large societies are not a little indebted to this folly for the perpetuity or at least long continuance of trades once established what pains will young people take and what violence will they not commit upon themselves to attain to insignificant and often blameable qualifications which for want of judgment and experience they admire in others that are superior to them in age this fondness of imitation makes them accustomed themselves by degrees to the use of things that were irksome if not intolerable to them at first till they know not how to leave them and are often very sorry for having inconsiderately increased the necessaries of life without any necessity what estates have been got by tea and coffee what a vast traffic is drove what a variety of labor is performed in the world to the maintenance of thousands of families that altogether depend on to silly if not odious customs the taking of snuff and smoking of tobacco both which it is certain do infinitely more hurt than good to those that are addicted to them I shall go further and demonstrate the usefulness of private losses and misfortunes to the public and the folly of our wishes when we pretend to be most wise and serious the fire of London was a great calamity but if the carpenters bricklayers smiths and all were employed in building but likewise those that made and dealt in the same manufactures and other merchandises that were burnt and other trades again that got by them when they were in full employ were to vote against those who lost by the fire the rejoicings would equal if not exceed the complaints in recruiting what is lost and destroyed by fire storms, sea fights, sieges, battles a considerable part of trade and interests the truth of which and whatever I have said of the nature of society will plainly appear from what follows it would be a difficult task to enumerate all the advantages and different benefits that accrue to a nation on account of shipping and navigation but if we only take into consideration the ships themselves and every vessel great and small that is made use of for water carriage from the least wary the timber and hands that are employed in the building of them and consider the pitch, tar, rosin, grease the masts, yards, sails and riggings, the variety of smiths work, the cables, ores and everything else belonging to them we shall find that to furnish only such a nation as ours with all the necessaries make up a considerable part of the traffic of Europe without speaking of the stores and ammunition of all sorts that are consumed in them by foreigners, watermen and others with their families that are maintained by them but should we, on the other hand take a view of the manifold mischiefs and variety of evils moral as well as natural that befall nations on the score of seafaring and their commerce with strangers the prospect would be very frightful and we could suppose a large populace island that should be wholly unacquainted with ships and sea affairs but otherwise a wise and that some angel or their genius should lay before them a scheme or draft where they might see on the one side all the riches and real advantages that would be acquired by navigation in a thousand years and on the other the wealth and lives that would be lost and all the other calamities that would be unavoidably sustained on account of it during the same time I am confident they would look upon ships with horror and detestation and that their prudent rulers would severely forbid the making and inventing all buildings or machines to go to sea with of what shape or denominations so ever and prohibit all such abominable contrivances on great penalties if not the pain of death but to let alone the necessary consequence of foreign trade the corruption of manners as well as plagues, poxes and other diseases that are brought to us by shipping should we only cast our eyes on what is either to be imputed to the wind and weather the treachery of the seas the ice of the north the vermin of the south the darkness of nights and unwholesomeness of climates or else occasioned by the want of good provisions and the faults of mariners and unskillfulness of some and the neglect and drunkenness of others and should we consider the losses of men and treasures swallowed up in the deep the tears and necessities of widows and orphans made by the sea the ruin of merchants and the consequences the continual anxieties that parents and wives are in for the safety of their children and husbands and not forget the many pangs and heartaches that are felt throughout a trading nation by owners and insurers at every blast of wind should we cast our eyes I say on these things consider with due attention and give them the weight they deserve and not be amazing how a nation of thinking people should talk of their ships and navigation as a peculiar blessing to them and placing an uncommon felicity in having an infinity of vessels dispersed through the wide world and always some going to and others coming from every part of the universe but let us once in our consideration on these things confine ourselves to what the ships suffer only the vessels themselves rigging and appurtenances without thinking on the freight they carry or the hands that work them and we shall find that the damage sustained that way only is very considerable and must one year with another amount to vast sums the ships that are found at sea split against rocks and swallowed up by sands some by the fierceness of tempests altogether others by that and the want of pilots experience and knowledge of the coasts the mass that are blown down or forced to be cut and thrown overboard the yards sails and courtage of different sizes that are destroyed in storms and the anchors that are lost add to these the necessary repairs of leaks sprung and other hurts received from the rage of winds and the violence of the waves many ships are set on fire by carelessness and the effects of strong liquors which none are more addicted to than sailors sometimes unhealthy climates at others the badness of provision breed fatal distempers that sweep away the greatest part of the crew and not a few ships are lost for want of hands these are all calamities inseparable from navigation and seem to be great impediments that clog the wheels of foreign commerce how happy would a merchant think himself if his ships should always have fine weather and the wind he wished for the very mariner he employed from the highest to the lowest be a knowing experienced sailor and a careful sober good man was such a felicity to be had for prayers what owner of ships is there or dealer in Europe nay the whole world who would not be all day long teasing heaven to obtain such a blessing for himself without regard to what detriment it would do to others such a petition would certainly be a very yet where is the man who imagines not that he has a right to make it and therefore as everyone pretends to an equal claim to those favors let us without reflecting on the impossibility of its being true suppose all their prayers effectual and their wishes answered and afterwards examine into the result of such a happiness ships would last as long as timber houses to the full because they are a strongly built and latter are liable to suffer by high winds and other storms which the first by our supposition are not to be so that before there would be any real occasion for new ships the master builders now in being and everybody under them that is set to work about them would all die a natural death if they were not starved or come to some untimely end for in the first place all ships having prosperous gales and never waiting for the wind they would make very quick voyages both out and home secondly no merchandises would be damaged by the sea or by stress of weather thrown overboard but the entire landing would always come safe ashore and hence it would follow that three parts and four of the merchant men already made would be superfluous for the present and the stock of ships that are now in the world serve a vast many years masts and yards would last as long as the vessels themselves and we should not need to trouble norway on that score great while yet the sales and rigging indeed of the few ships made use of would wear out but not a quarter part so fast as now they do for they often suffer more in one hour storm than in ten days fair weather anchors and cables there would be seldom any occasion for and one of each would last a ship time out of mind this article alone would yield many a tedious holiday to the anchor smiths rope yards this general want of consumption would have such an influence on the timber merchants and all that import iron sale cloth hemp pitch tar et cetera that four parts and five of what in the beginning of this reflection on sea affairs I said made a considerable branch of the traffic of Europe would be entirely lost I have only touched hitherto on the consequences of this blessing in relation to shipping but it would be detrimental to all other branches of trade besides and destructive to the poor of every country that exports anything of their own growth or manufacture the goods and merchandises that every year go to the deep that are spoiled at sea by salt water by heat by vermin destroyed by fire or lost to the merchant by other accidents all owing to storms or tedious voyages or else the neglect or rapacity of sailors such goods I say and merchandise are part of what every year is sent abroad throughout the world and must have employed great multitudes of poor before they could come on board a hundred bales of cloth that are burnt or sunk in the Mediterranean are as beneficial to the poor in England as if they had safely arrived at smirna or Aleppo and every yard of them had been retailed on the grand seniors dominions the merchant may break and by him the clothier the dire the packer the other tradesmen the middling people may suffer but the poor that were set to work about them can never lose day laborers commonly receive their earnings once a week and all the working people that were employed either in any of the various branches of manufacture itself or the several landed water carriages it requires to be brought to perfection from the sheeps back to the vessel it was entered in were paid at least much the greatest part of them before came on board should any of my readers draw conclusions in infinitum from my assertions that good sunk or burnt are as beneficial to the poor as if they had been well sold and put to their proper uses I would count him a cavilar and not worth answering should it always rain in the sun never shine the fruits of the earth would soon be rotten and destroyed and yet it is no paradox to affirm that to have grass or corn rain is necessary as the sun shine in what manner this blessing of fair winds and fine weather would affect the mariners themselves and the breed of sailors maybe easily conjectured from what has been said already as they would hardly one ship and four be made use of so the vessels themselves being always exempt from storms fewer hands would be required to work them and consequently five and six of the semen we have might be spared which in this nation most employments of the poor being over stocked would be but an untoward article as soon as those superfluous semen should be extinct it would be impossible to man such large fleets as we could at present but I do not look upon this as a detriment or the least inconvenience for the reduction of mariners as to numbers being general throughout the world all the consequence would be that in case of war the maritime powers would be obliged to fight with fewer ships which would be an happiness instead of an evil and would you carry this felicity to the highest pitch of perfection it is but to add one desirable blessing more and no nation shall ever fight at all the blessing I hint at is what all good Christians are bound to pray for vis that all princes and states would be true to their oaths and promises and just to one another as well as their own subjects that they might have a greater regard for the dictates of conscience and religion than those of state politics and worldly wisdom and prefer the spiritual welfare of others to their own carnal desires and the honesty the safety the peace and tranquility of the nations they govern to their own love of glory spirit of revenge avarice and ambition the last paragraph will to many seem a digression that makes little for my purpose but what I mean by it is to demonstrate that goodness, integrity and a peaceful disposition in rulers and governors of nations are not the proper qualifications to aggrandize them and increase their numbers any more than the uninterrupted series of success that every private person would be blessed with if he could and which I have shown would be injurious and destructive to a large society that should place a felicity in worldly greatness and being envied by their neighbors and value themselves upon their honor and their strength no man needs to guard himself against blessings but calamities require hands to avert them the amiable qualities of man put none of the species upon stirring his honesty his love of company his goodness content and frugality are so many comforts to an indolent society and the more real and unaffected they are the more they keep everything at rest and peace and the more they will prevent trouble and motion itself the same almost may be said of the gifts and munificence of heaven and all the bounties and benefits of this nature this is certain that the more extensive they are and the greater plenty we have of them the more we save our labor but the necessities the vices and imperfections of man together with the various inclinencies of the air and other elements contain in them the seeds of all arts industry and labors it is the extremities of heat and cold the inconstancy and badness of seasons the violence and uncertainty of winds the vast power and treachery of war the rage and untractableness of fire and the stubbornness and sterility of the earth that rack our invention how we shall either avoid the mischiefs they may produce or correct the malignity of them and turn their several forces to our own advantage a thousand different ways while we are employed in supplying the infinite variety of our wants which will ever be multiplied as our knowledge is enlarged and our desires increase hunger, thirst, and nakedness are the first tyrants that force us to stir afterwards our pride, sloth, sensuality and fickleness are the great patrons that promote all arts and sciences, trades, handicrafts and callings while the great taskmasters necessity, avarice, envy, and ambition each in the class that belongs to him keep the members of the society to their labor and make them all submit most of them cheerfully to the drudgery of their station kings and princes not accepted the greater the variety of trades and manufactures the more operos they are and the more they are divided in many branches the greater numbers may be contained in a society without being others way and the more easily they may be rendered a rich potent and flourishing people few virtues employ any hands and therefore they may render a small nation good but they can never make a great one to be strong and laborious patient in difficulties and assiduous in all business are commendable qualities but as they do their own work so they are their own reward and neither art nor industry are there any compliments to them whereas the excellency of human thought and contrivance has been and is yet nowhere more conspicuous than in the variety of tools and instruments of workmen and artificers and the multiplicity of engines that were all invented either to assist the weakness of man to correct his many imperfections to gratify his laziness or obviate his impatience it is immorality there is nothing so perfectly good in creatures that it cannot be hurtful to any one of the society nor anything so entirely evil but it may prove beneficial to some part or other of the creation so that things are only good and evil in reference to something else and according to the light and position they are placed in what pleases us is good in that regard and by this rule every man wishes well for himself to the best of his capacity with little respect to his neighbor there never was any rain yet though in a very dry season when public prayers had been made for it but somebody or other who wanted to go abroad wished it might be fair weather only for that day when the corn stands thick in the spring and the generality of the country rejoice at the pleasing object the rich farmer who kept his last year's crop for a better market pines at the site and inwardly grieves at the prospect of a plentiful harvest nay we shall often hear your idle people openly wish for the possessions of others and not to be injurious for sooth add this wise proviso that it should be without detriment to the owners but I am afraid they often do it without any such restriction in their hearts it is a happiness that the prayers as well as wishes of most people are insignificant and good for nothing or else the only thing that could keep mankind fit for society and the world from falling into confusion would be the impossibility that all the petitions made to heaven should be granted a dutiful pretty young gentleman newly come from his travels lies at Briel waiting with impatience for an easterly wind to waft him over to England where a dying father who wants to embrace and give him his blessing before he yields his breath lies him, melted with grief and tenderness in the meanwhile a British minister who is to take care of the protest and interest in Germany is riding post to Harwich and in violent haste to be at ratus bone before the diet breaks up at the same time a rich fleet lies ready for the Mediterranean and a fine squadron is bound for the Baltic all these things may probably happen at once at least there is no difficulty in supposing they should these people are not atheists or very great reprobates they will all have some good thoughts before they go to sleep and consequently about bedtime they must all differently pray for a fair wind and a prosperous voyage I do not say but it is their duty and it is possible they may be all heard but I am sure they cannot be all served at the same time after this I flatter myself to have demonstrated that the kindly qualities and kind affections that are natural to man nor the real virtues he is capable of acquiring by reason and self denial are the foundation of society but that what we call evil in this world moral as well as natural is the grand principle that makes us sociable creatures the solid basis the life and support of all trades and deployments without exception that there we must look for the true origin of all arts and sciences the moment evil ceases the society must be spoiled if not totally dissolved I could add a thousand things to enforce and further illustrate this truth with abundance of pleasure but for fear of being troublesome I shall make an end though I confess that I have not been half so solicitous to gain the approbation of others as I have studied to please myself in this amusement yet if I ever hear that by following this diversion I have given any to the content reader it will always add to the satisfaction I have received in the performance in the hope my vanity forms of this I leave him with regret and conclude with repeating the seeming paradox the substance of which is advanced in the title page that private vices by the dexterous management of a skillful politician may be turned into public benefits end of section 30 section 31 of The Fable of the Bees by Bernard Mandeville this LibriVox recording is in the public domain a vindication of the book from the aspersions contained in a presentment of the grand jury of Middlesex and an abusive letter to Lord See that the reader may be fully instructed in the merits of the cause between my adversaries and myself it is requisite that before he sees my defense he should know my charge and have before him all the accusations against me at large the presentment of the grand jury is worded thus we the grand jury for the county of Middlesex have with the greatest sorrow and concern observed the many books and pamphlets that are almost every week published against the sacred articles of our holy religion and all discipline and order in the church and the manner in which this is carried on seems to us to have a direct tendency to propagate infidelity and consequently corruption of all morals we are justly sensible of the goodness of the Almighty that has preserved us from the plague which has visited our neighboring nation and for which great mercy his Majesty was graciously pleased to command by his proclamation that thanks should be returned to heaven but how provoking must it be to the Almighty that his mercies and deliverances extended to this nation and our thanksgiving that was publicly commanded for it should be attended with such flagrant impieties we know of nothing that can be of greater service to his Majesty and the Protestant succession which is happily established among us for the defense of the Christian religion then the suppression of blasphemy and profaneness which has a direct tendency to subvert the very foundation on which his Majesty's government is fixed so restless have these zealots for infidelity been in their diabolical attempts against religion that they have first openly blasphemed and denied the doctrine of the ever-blessed trinity endeavoring by specious pretenses to revive the Aryan heresy which was never introduced into any nation but the vengeance of heaven pursued it secondly they affirm an absolute fate and deny the providence and government of the Almighty in the world thirdly they have endeavored to subvert all order and discipline of the church and by vile and unjust reflections on the clergy they strive to bring contempt on all religion that by the libertinism of their opinions they may encourage and draw others into the immoralities of their practice fourthly that a general libertinism may the more effectually be established the universities are decried and all instructions of youth in the principles of the Christian religion are exploded with the greatest malice and falsity fifthly the more effectually to carry on these works of darkness studied artifices and invented colors have been made use of to run down religion and virtue as prejudicial to society and detrimental to the state and to recommend luxury avarice pride and all kind of vices as being necessary to public welfare and not tending to the destruction of the constitution nay the very stews themselves have had strained apologies and forced and comiums made in their favor and produced in print with design we conceive to debauch the nation these principles having a direct tendency to the subversion of all religion and civil government the duty to the almighty our love to our country and regard to our oaths oblige us to present as the publisher of a book entitled the fable of the bees or private vices public benefits second edition seventeen twenty three and also as the publisher of a weekly paper called the british journal number twenty six thirty five thirty six and thirty nine the letter I complain of is this it is welcome news to all the king's loyal subjects and true friends to the established government and succession in the illustrious house of Hanover that your lordship is said to be contriving some effectual means of securing us from the dangers where with his majesty's happy government seems to be threatened by catiline under the name of cato by the writer of a book entitled the fable of the bees etc and by others of their fraternity you are undoubtedly useful friends to the pretender and diligent for his sake in laboring to subvert and ruin our constitution under a specious pretense of defending it your lordship's wise resolution totally to suppress such impious writings and the direction already given for having them presented immediately by some of the grand juries will effectually convince the nation that no attempts against christianity will be suffered or cured here and this conviction will at once rid men's minds of the uneasiness which this flotidious race of writers has endeavored to raise in them will therefore be a firm bulwark to the protestant religion will effectually defeat the projects and hopes of the pretender and best secure us against any change in the ministry and no faithful britain could be unconcerned if the people should imagine any the least neglect in any single person bearing a part in the ministry or begin to grow jealous that anything could be done which is not done in defending their religion from every the least appearance of danger approaching towards it and my lord this jealousy might have been apt to rise if no measures had been taken to discourage and crush the open advocates of irreligion it is no easy matter to get jealousy out of one's brains when it is once got into them jealousy my lord it is as furious a fiend as any of them all I have seen a little thin weak woman so invigorated by a fit of jealousy that five grenadiers could not hold her my lord go on with your just methods of keeping the people clear of this cursed jealousy for amongst the various kinds and associations of it that which concerns their religion is the most violent, flagrant frantic sort of all and accordingly has in former reigns produced those various mischiefs which your lordship has faithfully determined to prevent dutifully regarding the royal authority and conforming to the example of his majesty who has graciously given directions which are well known to your lordship for the preserving of unity in the church and the purity of the Christian faith it is in vain to think that the people of England will ever give up their religion or be very fond of any ministry that will not supported as the wisdom of this ministry has done against such audacious attacks as are made upon it by the scribblers for scribbler your lordship knows is the just appellation of every author who under whatever plausible appearance of good sense attempts to undermine the religion and therefore the content and quiet the peace and happiness of his fellow subjects by subtle and artful and fallacious arguments and insinuations have inadvert those insufferable miseries which the church of Rome would bring upon us tyranny is the bane of human society and there is no tyranny heavier than that of the triple crown and therefore this free and happy people has justly conceived an utter abhorrence and dread of popery and of everything that looks like encouragement or tendency to it but they do also abhor and dread the violence offered to Christianity itself by our British Adelines who shelter their treacherous designs against it under the false colors of regard and goodwill to our blessed Protestant religion while they demonstrate too plainly demonstrate that the title of Protestants does not belong to them unless it can belong to those who are in effect protestors against all religion and really the people cannot be much blamed for being a little unwilling to part with their religion for they tell ye that there is a God and that God governs the world and that he is want to bless or blast the kingdom in proportion to the degrees of religion or irreligion prevailing in it your lordship has a fine collection of books and which is a finer thing still you do certainly understand them and can turn to an account of any important affair in a trice I would therefore fain know whether your lordship can show from any writer let him be as profane as the scribblers would have him that any one empire kingdom, country or province great or small did not dwindle and sink and was confounded when it once failed of providing studiously for the support of religion the scribblers talk much of the roman government and liberty and the spirit of the old romans but it is undeniable that their most plausible talk of these things is all pretense and grimace and an artifice to serve the purposes of irreligion and by consequence to render the people uneasy and ruin the kingdom for if they did in reality esteem and would faithfully recommend to their countrymen the sentiments and principles the main purposes and practices of the wise and prosperous romans they would in the first place put us in mind that old romans was as remarkable for observing and promoting natural religion as new romans has been for corrupting that which is revealed and as the old romans did signally recommend themselves to the favor of heaven by their faithful care of religion so were they abundantly convinced and did accordingly acknowledge with universal consent that their care of religion was the great means of gods preserving the empire and crowning it with conquest and success prosperity and glory hence it was that when their orators were bent upon exerting their utmost in moving and persuading the people upon any occasion they ever put them in mind of their religion if that could be anyway affected by the point in debate not doubting that the people would determine in their favor if they could but demonstrate that the safety of religion depended upon the success of their cause and indeed neither the romans nor any other nation upon earth did ever suffer their established religion to be openly ridiculed, exploded or opposed and I am sure your lordship would not for all the world that this thing would be done with impunity amongst us which was never endured in the world before did ever any man since the blessed revelation of the gospel run riot upon christianity as some men, nay and some few women too have lately done must the devil grow rampant at this rate and not be called a quorum nobis why should he not content himself to carry off people in the common way the way of cursing and swearing Sabbath breaking and cheating bribery and hypocrisy drunkenness and whoring and such kind of things as he used to do never let him domineer in men's mouths and writings as he does now with loud, tremulous infidelity blasphemy and profaneness enough to frighten the king's subjects out of their wits we are now come to a short question god or the devil that is the word and time will show who and who goes together thus much may be said at present that those have abundantly shown their spirit of opposition to sacred things who have not only invade against the national profession and exercise of religion and endeavored with bitterness and dexterity to render it odious and contemptible but are solicitous to hinder multitudes of the natives of this island from having the very seeds of religion sewn among them with advantage arguments are urged with the utmost vehemence against the education of poor children in the charity schools though there hath not one just reason been offered against the provision made for that education the things that have been objected against it are not in fact true and nothing ought to be regarded by serious and wise men as a weighty or just argument if it is not a true one how hath catalined the confidence left to look any man in the face after he hath spent more confidence than most men's whole stock amounts to in saying that this pretended charity has in effect destroyed all other charities which were before given to the aged sick and impotent it seems pretty clear that if those who do not contribute to any charity school are become more uncharitable to any other object than formerly they were their want of charity to the one is not owing to their contribution to the other and as to those who do contribute to these schools they are so far from being more sparing in their relief of other objects than they were before that the poor widows the aged and impotent do plainly receive more relief from them in proportion to their numbers and abilities then from any the same numbers of men under the same circumstance of fortune who do not concern themselves with charity schools in any respect but in condemning and decrying them I will meet catalined at the grecian coffee house any day in the week and by an enumeration of particular persons in as great a number as he pleaseth demonstrate the truth of what I have to say but I do not much depend upon his giving me this meeting because it is his business not to encourage demonstrations of the truth but to throw disguises upon it otherwise he never could have allowed himself after representing the charity schools as intended to breed up children to reading and writing and a sober behavior that they may be qualified to be servants immediately to add these words a sort of idle and rioting vermin by which the kingdom is already almost devoured and are become everywhere a public nuisance etc what is it owing to the charity schools that the servants are become so idle such rioting vermin such a public nuisance that women servants turn whores and the men servants robbers housebreakers and sharpers as he says they commonly do is this owing to the charity schools or if it is not how come see to allow himself the liberty of representing these schools as means of increasing this load of mischief which is indeed too plainly fallen upon the public the imbibing principles of virtue hath not usually been thought the chief occasion of running into vice if the early knowledge of truth and of our obligations to it were the surest means of departing from it nobody would doubt that the knowledge of truth was instilled into a catiline very early and with the utmost care it is a good pretty thing in him to spread a report and to lay so much stress upon it as he does that there is more collected at the church doors in a day to make these poor boys and girls appear in caps and livery coats than for all the poor in a year oh rare catiline this point you will carry most swimmingly for you have no witnesses against you nor any living soul to contradict you except the collectors and overseers of the poor and all other principal inhabitants of most of the parishes where any charity schools are in England the jest of it is my lord that these scribblers would still be thought good moral men but when men make it their business to mislead and deceive their neighbors and that in matters of moment by distorting and disguising the truth by misrepresentations and false insinuations if such men are not guilty of usurpation while they take upon them the character of good moral men then it is not immoral in any man to be false and deceitful in cases where the law cannot touch him for being so and morality bears no relation to truth and fair dealing however I shall not be very willing to meet one of these moral men upon howl slow heath if I should happen to ride that way without pistols for I have a notion that they who have no conscience in one point do not much abound with it in another your lordship who judges accurately of men as well as books will easily imagine if you had no other knowledge of the charity schools that there must be something very excellent in them because such kind of men as these are so warm in opposing them they tell you that these schools are hindrances to husbandry and to manufacture as to husbandry the children are not kept in the schools longer than till they are of age and strength from the principal arts of it or to bear constant labor in it and even while they are under this course of education your lordship may depend upon it that they shall never be hindered from working in the fields or being employed in such labor as they are capable of in any parts of the year when they can get such employment for the support of their parents and themselves in this case the parents in several counties are proper judges of their several situations and circumstances at the same time not so very fond of their children getting a little knowledge rather than a little money but that they will find other employment for them than going to school whenever they can get a penny by so doing and the case is the same as to the manufacturers the trustees of the charity schools and the parents of the children bred in them would be thankful to those gentlemen who make the objection if they would assist in removing it by subscribing to a fund for joining the employment of manufacture to the business of learning to read and write in the charity schools this would be a noble work it is already affected by the supporters of some charity schools and is aimed at and earnestly desired by all the rest but Rome was not built in a day till this great thing can be brought about let the masters and managers of the manufacturers in the several places of the kingdom be so charitable as to employ the poor children for a certain number of hours and every day in the respective manufacturers while the trustees are taking care to fill up their other hours of the day in the usual duties of the charity schools it is an easy matter for party men for designing and perverted minds to invent colorable fallacious arguments and to offer railing under the appearance of reasoning against the best things in the world but undoubtedly no impartial man who is affected with a serious sense of goodness and a real love for this country can think this proper and just view of the charity schools liable to any just weighty objection or refuse to contribute his endeavors to improve and raise them to that perfection which is proposed in them in the meantime let no man be so weak or so wicked as to deny that when poor children cannot meet with employment in any other honest way rather than suffer their tender age to be spent in idleness or in learning the arts of lying it is true charity to them and good service done to our country to employ them in learning the principles of religion and virtue till their age and strength will enable them to become servants and families or to be engaged in husbandry or manufacture or any kind of mechanic trade or laborious employment for to these laborious employments are the charity children generally if not always turned as soon as they become capable of them and therefore Catiline may be pleased to retract his objection concerning shopkeepers or retailers of commodities wherein he has affirmed that their employments which he says ought to fall to the share of children of their own degree are mostly anticipated and engrossed by the managers of the charity schools he must excuse my acquainting or lordship that this affirmation is in fact directly false which is in inconvenience very apt to fall upon his affirmations as it has particularly done upon one of them more which I would mention for he is not ashamed roundly to assert that the principles of our common people are debauched in our charity schools who are taught as soon as they can speak to blabber out high church and ormond and so are bred up to be traders before they know what treason signifies your lordship and other persons of integrity whose words are the faithful representatives of their meaning would now think if I had not given you the key to catiline's talk that he has been fully convinced that the children in the charity schools are bred up to be traders my lord if anyone master be suffered by the trustees to continue in any charity school against whom proof can be brought that he is disaffected to the government or that he does not as faithfully teach the children obedience and loyalty to the king as any other duty in the catechism then I will gratify catiline with a license to pull down the schools and hang up the masters according to his heart's desire these and such things as these are urged with the like bitterness and as little truth in the book mentioned above viz the fable of the bees or private vices public benefits etc catiline explodes the fundamental articles of faith impiously comparing the doctrine of the blessed trinity to fiefa fum this profligate author of the fable is not only an auxiliary to catiline in opposition to faith but has taken upon him to tear up the very foundations of moral virtue and establish vice in its room the best physician in the world did never labor more to purge the natural body of bad qualities than this bumble bee has done to purge the body politic of good ones he himself bears testimony to the truth of this charge against him for when he comes to the conclusion of his book he makes this observation upon himself and his performance after this i flatter myself to have demonstrated that neither the friendly qualities and kind affections that are natural to man nor the real virtues he is capable of acquiring by reason and self denial are the foundation of society but what we call evil in this world moral as well as natural is the grand principle that makes us sociable creatures the solid basis the life and support of all trades and employments without exception that there we must look for the true origin of all arts and sciences and that the moment evil ceases the society must be spoiled if not totally dissolved now my lord you see the grand design the main drift of catiline and his confederates now the scene opens and the secret springs appear now the fraternity adventure to speak out and surely no band of men ever dared to speak at this rate before now you see the true cause of all their enmity to the poor charity schools it is leveled against religion religion my lord which the schools are instituted to promote and which this confederacy is resolved to destroy for the schools are certainly one of the great instruments of religion and virtue one of the firmest bowl works against popery one of the best recommendations of this people to the divine favor and therefore one of the greatest blessings to our country of anything that has been set on foot since our happy reformation and deliverance from the idolatry and tyranny of Rome if any trivial inconvenience did arise from so excellent a work as some little inconvenience attends all human institutions and affairs the excellency of the work would still be matter of joy and find encouragement with all the wise and the good who despise such insignificant objections against it as other men are not ashamed to raise and defend now your lordship also sees the true cause of the satire which is continually formed against the clergy by catiline and his confederates why should mr. Hall's conviction and execution be any more objection against the clergy than mr. layers against the gentleman of the long robe why because the profession of the law does not immediately relate to religion and therefore catiline will allow that if any persons of that profession should be traders or otherwise vicious all the rest may not withstanding the iniquity of a brother be as loyal and virtuous as any other subjects in the king's dominions but because matters of religion are the professed concern and the employment of the clergy therefore catiline's logic makes it out as clear as the day that if any of them be disaffected to the government all the rest are so too or if any of them be chargeable with vice this consequence from it is plain that all or most of the rest are as vicious as the devil can make them I shall not trouble your lordship with a particular vindication of the clergy nor is there any reason that I should for they are already secure of your lordship's good affection to them and they are able to vindicate themselves where so ever such a vindication is wanted being as faithful and virtuous and learned a body of men as any in Europe yet they suspend the publication of arguments in a solemn defense of themselves because they neither expect nor desire approbation and esteem from impious and abandoned men and at the same time they cannot doubt that all persons not only of great penetration but of common sense do now clearly see that the arrows shot against the clergy are intended to wound and destroy the divine institution of the ministerial offices and to extirpate the religion which the sacred offices were appointed to preserve and promote this was always supposed and suspected by every honest and impartial man but it is now demonstrated by those who before had given occasion to such suspicions for they have now openly declared that faith in the principal articles of it is not only needless but ridiculous that the welfare of human society must sink and perish under the encouragement of virtue and that immorality is the only firm foundation whereon the happiness of mankind can be built and subsist the publication of such tenets as these and open a valid proposal to extirpate the Christian faith and all virtue and to fix moral evil for the basis of the government is so stunning, so shocking so frightful, so flagrant an enormity that if it should be imputed to us as a national guilt the divine vengeance must inevitably fall upon us and how far this enormity would become a national guilt if it should pass disregarded and unpunished a casuous less skillful and discerning than your lordship may easily guess and no doubt your lordship's good judgment in so plain and important a case has made you like a wise and faithful patriot resolve to use your utmost endeavors in your high station to defend religion from the bold attacks made upon it as soon as I have seen a copy of the bill for the better security of his majesty and his happy government by the better security of religion in Great Britain your lordship's just scheme of politics your love of your country and your great services done to it shall again be acknowledged by my lord, your most faithful humble servant, Theophilus Philo Britannus these violent accusations and the great clamor everywhere raised against the book by governors, masters and other champions of charity schools together with the advice of friends and the reflection on what I owed to myself drew from me the following answer the candid reader in the perusal of it will not be offended at the repetition of some passages one of which he may have met with twice already when he shall consider that to make my defense by itself to the public I was obliged to repeat what had been quoted in the letter since the paper avoidably fall into the hands of many who had never seen either the fable of the bees or the defamatory letter wrote against it the answer was published in the London Journal of August 10th 1723 in these words whereas in the evening post of Thursday July 11 a presentment was inserted of the grand jury of Middlesex against the publisher of a book entitled the fable of the bees or private vices public benefits and since that a passionate and abusive letter has been published against the same book and the author of it in the London Journal of Saturday July 27th I think myself indispensably obliged to vindicate the above said book against the black aspersions that undeservedly have been cast upon it being conscious that I have not had the least ill design in composing it the accusations against it having been made openly in the public papers it is not equitable the defense should appear in a more private manner what I have to say in my behalf I shall address to all men of sense and sincerity asking no other favor of them than their patience and attention setting aside what in that letter relates to others and everything that is foreign and immaterial I shall begin with the passage that is quoted from the book quote after this I flatter myself to have demonstrated that neither the friendly qualities and kind affections that are natural to man nor the real virtues he is capable of acquiring by reason and self-denial are the foundation of society but that what we call evil in this world moral as well as natural is the grand principle that makes us sociable creatures the solid basis the life and support of all trades and deployments without exception that there we must look for the true origin of all arts and sciences and that the moment evil ceases the society must be spoiled if not totally dissolved these words I own are in the book and being both innocent and true like to remain there in all future impressions but I will likewise own very freely that if I had wrote with a design to be understood by the meanest capacities I would not have chose the subject they're treated of or if I had I would have amplified and explained every period talked and distinguished magisterially and never appeared without the fescue in my hand as for example to make the passage pointed at intelligible I would have bestowed a page or two on the meaning of the word evil after that I would have taught them that every defect every want was an evil that on the multiplicity of those wants depended all those mutual services which the individual members of a society pay to each other and consequently the greater variety there was of wants the larger number of individuals might find their private interest in laboring for the good of others and united together compose one body is there a trade or handicraft but what supplies us with something we wanted this want certainly before it was supplied was an evil which that trade or handicraft was to remedy and without which it could never have been thought of is there an art or science that was not invented to mend some defect had this ladder not existed there could have been no occasion for the former to move it I say page two hundred thirty six quote the excellency of human thought and contrivance has been and is yet nowhere more conspicuous than in the variety of tools and instruments of workmen and artificers and the multiplicity of engines that were all invented either to assist the weakness of man to correct as many imperfections to gratify his laziness or to obviate his impatience several forgoing pages run in the same strain but what relation has all this to religion or infidelity more than it has a navigation or the peace in the north the many hands that are employed to supply our natural wants that are really such as hunger thirst and nakedness are inconsiderable to the vast numbers that are all innocently gratifying the depravity of our corrupt nature I mean the industrious who get a livelihood by their honest labor to which the vain and voluptuous must be beholden for all their tools and implements of ease and deluxury quote the short-sighted vulgar in the chain of causes seldom can see farther than one link but those who can enlarge their view and will give themselves leisure of gazing on the prospect of concatenated events may in a hundred places see good spring up and pollute from evil as naturally as chickens do from eggs unquote the words are to be found page 26 in the remark made on the seeming paradox that in the grumbling hive the worst of all the multitude did something for the common good where in many instances may be amply discovered how insurchable providence daily orders the comforts of the laborious and even the deliverances of the oppressed secretly to come forth not only from the vices of the luxurious but likewise the crimes of the flotigious and most abandoned men of candor and capacity perceive at first sight that in the passage censured there is no meaning hid or expressed that is not altogether contained in the following words quote man is a necessitous creature on innumerable accounts and yet from the very necessities and nothing else arise all trades and employments unquote but it is ridiculous for men to meddle with books above their sphere the fable of the bees was designed for the entertainment of people of knowledge and education when they have an idle hour which they know not how to spend better it is a book of severe and exalted morality that contains a strict test of virtue and infallible touchstone to distinguish the real from the counter fitted and shows many actions to be faulty that are palmed upon the world for good ones it describes the nature and symptoms of human passions depicts their course and disguises and traces self-love in its darkest recesses I might safely add beyond any other system of ethics the whole is a rhapsody void of order or method but no part of it has anything that is sour or pedantic the style I confess is very unequal sometimes very high and rhetorical and sometimes very low and even very trivial such as it is I am satisfied that it has diverted persons of great probity and virtue and questionable good sense and I am in no fear that it will ever cease to do so while it is read by such whoever has seen the violent charge against this book will pardon me for saying more in commendation of it than a man not laboring under the same necessity would do of his own work on any other occasion the incomiums upon stews complained of in the presentment are nowhere in the book what might give a handle to this charge must be a political dissertation concerning the best method to guard and preserve women of honor and virtue from the insults of dissolute men whose passions are often ungovernable as in this there is a dilemma between two evils which it is impracticable to shun both so I have treated it with the utmost caution and begin thus quote I am far from encouraging vice and should think it an unspeakable felicity for a state if the sin of uncleanness could be utterly banished from it but I am afraid it is impossible unquote I give my reasons why I think it's so and speaking occasionally of the music houses at Amsterdam I give a short account of them than which nothing can be more harmless and I appeal to all impartial judges whether what I have said of them is not ten times more proper to give men even the voluptuous of any state a disgust and aversion against them than it is to raise any criminal desire I am sorry the grand jury should conceive that I publish this with the design to debauch the nation without considering that in the first place there is not a sentence nor a syllable that can either offend the chastest ear or sully the imagination of the most vicious or in the second that the matter complained of is manifestly addressed to magistrates and politicians or at least the more serious and thinking part of mankind whereas a general corruption of manners as to lewdness to be produced by reading can only be apprehended from obscenities easily purchased and every way adapted to the tastes and capacities of the heedless multitude and unexperienced youth of both sexes but that the performance so outrageously exclaimed against was never calculated for either of these classes of people is self-evident from every circumstance the beginning of the prose is altogether philosophical and hardly intelligible to any that have not been used to matters of speculation and the running title of it is so far from being specious or infighting that without having read the book itself nobody knows what to make of it while at the same time the price is five shillings from all which it is plain that if the book contains many dangerous tenets I have not been very solicitous to scatter them among the people I have not said a word to please or engage them and the greatest compliment I have made them has been apague vulgis but as nothing I say page 138 would more clearly demonstrate the falsity of my notions than that the generality of the people should fall in with them so I do not expect the approbation of the multitude I write not to the many nor seek for any well-wishers but among the few that can think abstractly and have their minds elevated above the vulgar of this I have made no ill use and ever preserved such a tender regard to the public that when I have advanced any uncommon sentiments I have used all the precautions imaginable that they might not be hurtful to weak minds that might casually dip into the book when page 137 I owned that it was my sentiment that no society could be raised into a rich and mighty kingdom or so raised subsist in their wealth and power for any considerable time without the vices of man I had premised what was true that I had never said or imagined that man could not be virtuous as well in a rich and mighty kingdom as in the most pitiful commonwealth which caution a man less scrupulous than myself might have thought superfluous when he had already explained himself on that head in the very same paragraph which begins thus I lay down as a first principle that in all societies great or small it is the duty of every member of it to be good that you ought to be encouraged vice-discountenance the laws obeyed and the transgressors punished there is not a line in the book that contradicts this doctrine and I defy my enemies to disprove what I have advanced page 139 that if I have shown the way to worldly greatness I have always, without hesitation preferred the road that leads to virtue no man ever took more pains than myself mind page 138 when I say that societies cannot be raised to wealth and power and the top of earthly glory without vices I do not think that vice are saying I bid men to be vicious any more than I bid them to be quarrelsome or covetous when I affirm that the profession of the law could not be maintained in such numbers and splendor if there was not abundance and caution of the same nature I had already given towards the end of the preface on account of a palpable evil inseparable from the felicity of London to search into the real causes of things imports no ill design nor has any tendency to do harm a man may write on poisons and be an excellent physician page 235 I say no man needs to guard himself against blessings but calamities require hands to avert them and lower it is the extremities of heat and cold the inconstancy and badness of seasons the violence and uncertainty of winds the vast power and treachery of water the rage and untractableness of fire and the stubbornness and sterility of the earth that rack our invention how we shall either avoid the mischiefs they produce or correct the malignity of them and turn their several forces to our own advantage a thousand different ways while a man is inquiring into the occupation of vast multitudes I cannot see why he may not say all this and much more without being accused of depreciating and speaking slightly of the gifts and munificence of heaven when at the same time he demonstrates that without rain and sunshine this globe would not be habitable to creatures like ourselves out of the way subject and I would never quarrel with the man who should tell me that it might as well have been let alone yet I always thought it would please men of any tolerable taste and not be easily lost my vanity I could never conquer so well as I could wish and I am too proud to commit crimes and as to the main scope the intent of the book I mean the view it was wrote with protest that it has been with cleared of it in the preface where you will find these words if you ask me why I have done all this cui bono and what good these notions will produce truly besides the reader's diversion I believe none at all but if I was asked what naturally ought to be expected from them I would answer that in the first place the people who continually find fault with others by reading them would be taught to look at home and examining their own consciences be made ashamed of always railing at what they are more or less guilty of themselves and that in the next those who are so fond of the ease and comforts of a great and flourishing nation would learn more patiently to submit to those inconveniences which no government upon earth can remedy when they should see the impossibility of enjoying any great share of the first without partaking likewise of the latter the first impression of the fable of the bees which came out in 1714 was never carped at or publicly taken notice of and all the reason I can think on why this second edition should be so unmercifully treated though it has many precautions which the former wanted is an essay on charity and charity schools which is added to what was printed before I confess that it is my sentiment that all hard and dirty work ought in a well-governed nation be the lot and portion of the poor and that to divert their children from useful labor till they are 14 or 15 years old is a wrong method to qualify them for it when they are grown up. I have given several reasons for my opinion in that essay to which I refer all impartial men of understanding assuring them that they will not meet with such monstrous impiety in it as reported what an advocate I have been for libertinism and immorality and what an enemy to all instructions of youth and the Christian faith may be collected from the pains I have taken on education for above seven pages together and afterwards again page 193 where speaking of the instructions the children of the poor might receive at church from which I say quote or some other place of worship I would not have the meanest of a Paris that is able to walk to it be absent on Sundays I have these words quote it is the Sabbath the most useful day in seven that is set apart for divine service and religious exercise as well as resting from bodily labor and it is a duty incumbent on all magistrates to take a particular care of that day the poor more especially and their children should be made to go to church on it both in the fore and the afternoon because they have no time on any other by precept an example they ought to be encouraged to it from their very infancy the willful neglect of it ought to be counted as scandalous and if downright compulsion to what I urge might seem to harsh and perhaps impracticable all diversions at least ought strictly to be prohibited and the poor hindered from every amusement abroad that might allure or draw them from it unquote if the arguments I have made use of are not convincing I desire they may be refuted and I will acknowledge it as a favor in any one that shall convince me of my error without ill language by showing me where in I have been mistaken but Calumny it seems is the shortest way of confuding an adversary when men are touched in a sensible part vast sums are gathered for these charity schools and I understand human nature too well to imagine that the sharers of the money should hear them spoke against with any patients I foresaw therefore the usage I was to receive and having repeated the common cant that is made for charity schools I told my readers page 165 quote this is the general cry and he that speaks the least word against it is an uncharitable hard-hearted and inhuman if not a wicked profane and atheistic ol' wretch unquote for this reason it cannot be thought that it was a great surprise to me when in that extraordinary letter to Lord see I saw myself called quote profligate author the publication of my tenets an open and avowed proposal to extirpate the Christian faith and all virtue and what I had done so stunning so shocking so frightful so flagrant and enormity that it cried for the vengeance of heaven unquote this is no more than what I have already expected from the enemies to truth and fair dealing and I shall retort nothing on the angry author of that letter who endeavors to expose me to the public fury I pity him and have charity enough to believe that he has been imposed upon himself by trusting to fame and the hearsay of others for no man in his wits can imagine that he should have read one quarter part of my book and write as he does I am sorry if the words private vices public benefits have ever given any offense to a well-meaning man the mystery of them is soon unfolded when once they are rightly understood but no man of sincerity will question the innocence of them that has read the last paragraph where I take my leave of the reader quote and conclude with repeating the seeming paradox the substance of which is advanced in the title page that private vices by the dexterous management of a skillful politician may be turned into public benefits unquote these are the last words of the book printed in the same large character with the rest but I set aside all what I have said in my vindication and if in the whole book called fable of the bees and presented by the grand jury of middle sex to the judges of the king's bench there is to be found the least title of blasphemy or profaneness or anything tending to immorality or the corruption of manners I desire it may be published and if this be done without invective personal reflections or setting the mob upon me things to answer I will not only recant but likewise beg pardon of the offended public in the most solemn manner and if the hangman might be thought too good for the office burn the book myself at any reasonable time and place my adversary shall be pleased to appoint the author of the fable of the bees end of section 31