The Fable of the Bees; Or, Private Vices, Public Benefits

by Bernard Mandeville

Hor. But what is it at last, that raises opulent cities and powerful nations from the smallest beginnings?

Cleo. Providence.

Hor. But Providence makes use of means that are visible; I want to know the engines it is performed with.

Cleo. All the ground work that is required to aggrandize nations, you have seen in the Fable of the Bees. All sound politics, and the whole art of governing, are entirely built upon the knowledge of human nature. The great business in general of a politician is to promote, and, if he can, reward all good and useful actions on the one hand; and on the other, to punish, or at least discourage every thing that is destructive or hurtful to society. To name particulars would be an endless task. Anger, lust, and pride, may be the causes of innumerable mischiefs, that are all carefully to be guarded against: but setting them aside, the regulations only that are required to defeat and prevent all the machinations and contrivances that avarice and envy may put man upon, to the detriment of his neighbour, are almost infinite. Would you be convinced of these truths, do but employ yourself for a month or two, in surveying and minutely examining into every art and science, every trade, handicraft and occupation, that are professed and followed in such a city as London; and all the laws, prohibitions, ordinances and restrictions that have been found absolutely necessary, to hinder both private men and bodies corporate, in so many different stations, first from interfering with the public peace and welfare; secondly, from openly wronging and secretly over-reaching, or any other way injuring one another: if you will give yourself this trouble, you will find the number of clauses and provisos, to govern a large flourishing city well, to be prodigious beyond imagination; and yet every one of them tending to the same purpose, the curbing, restraining, and disappointing the inordinate passions, and hurtful frailties of man. You will find, moreover, which is still more to be admired, the greater part of the articles in this vast multitude of regulations, when well understood, to be the result of consummate wisdom.

Hor. How could these things exist, if there had not been men of very bright parts and uncommon talents?

Cleo. Among the things I hint at, there are very few that are the work of one man, or of one generation; the greatest part of them are the product, the joint labour of several ages. Remember what in our third conversation I told you, concerning the arts of ship-building and politeness. The wisdom I speak of, is not the offspring of a fine understanding, or intense thinking, but of sound and deliberate judgment, acquired from a long experience in business, and a multiplicity of observations. By this sort of wisdom, and length of time, it may be brought about, that there shall be no greater difficulty in governing a large city, than (pardon the lowness of the simile) there is in weaving of stockings.

Hor. Very low indeed.

Cleo. Yet I know nothing to which the laws and established economy of a well ordered city may be more justly compared, than the knitting-frame. The machine, at first view, is intricate and unintelligible; yet the effects of it are exact and beautiful; and in what is produced by it, there is a surprising regularity: but the beauty and exactness in the manufacture are principally, if not altogether, owing to the happiness of the invention, the contrivance of the engine. For the greatest artist at it can furnish us with no better work, than may be made by almost any scoundrel after half a year’s practice.

Hor. Though your comparison be low, I must own that it very well illustrates your meaning.

Cleo. Whilst you spoke, I have thought of another, which is better. It is common now, to have clocks that are made to play several tunes with great exactness: the study and labour, as well as trouble of disappointments, which, in doing and undoing, such a contrivance must necessarily have cost from the beginning to the end, are not to be thought of without astonishment; there is something analogous to this in the government of a flourishing city, that has lasted uninterrupted for several ages: there is no part of the wholesome regulations belonging to it, even the most trifling and minute, about which great pains and consideration have not been employed, as well as length of time; and if you will look into the history and antiquity of any such city, you will find that the changes, repeals, additions and amendments, that have been made in and to the laws and ordinances by which it is ruled, are in number prodigious: but that when once they are brought to as much perfection as art and human wisdom can carry them, the whole machine may be made to play of itself, with as little skill as it required to wind up a clock; and the government of a large city once put into good order, the magistrates only following their noses, will continue to go right for a while, though there was not a wise man in it; provided that the care of Providence was to watch over it in the same manner as it did before.