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

by Bernard Mandeville

Cleo. I believe the maxim to be just, and that it is not less calculated for the real advantage of the poor, than it appears to be for the benefit of the rich. For, among the labouring people, those will ever be the least wretched as to themselves, as well as most useful to the public, that being meanly born and bred, submit to the station they are in with cheerfulness; and contented, that their children should succeed them in the same low condition, inure them from their infancy to labour and submission, as well as the cheapest diet and apparel; when, on the contrary, that sort of them will always be the least serviceable to others, and themselves the most unhappy, who, dissatisfied with their labour, are always grumbling and repining at the meanness of their condition; and, under pretence of having a great regard for the welfare of their children, recommend the education of them to the charity of others; and you shall always find, that of this latter class of poor, the greatest part are idle sottish people, that, leading dissolute lives themselves, are neglectful to their families, and only want, as far as it is in their power, to shake off that burden of providing for their brats from their own shoulders.

Hor. I am no advocate for charity schools; yet I think it is barbarous, that the children of the labouring poor, should be for ever pinned down, they, and all their posterity, to that slavish condition; and that those who are meanly born, what parts or genius soever they might be of, should be hindered and debarred from raising themselves higher.

Cleo. So should I think it barbarous, if what you speak of was done any where, or proposed to be done. But there is no degree of men in Christendom that are pinned down, they and their posterity, to slavery for ever. Among the very lowest sort, there are fortunate men in every country; and we daily see persons, that without education, or friends, by their own industry and application, raise themselves from nothing to mediocrity, and sometimes above it, if once they come rightly to love money and take delight in saving it: and this happens more often to people of common and mean capacities, than it does to those of brighter parts. But there is a prodigious difference between debarring the children of the poor from ever rising higher in the world, and refusing to force education upon thousands of them promiscuously, when they should be more usefully employed. As some of the rich must come to be poor, so some of the poor will come to be rich in the common course of things. But that universal benevolence, that should every where industriously lift up the indigent labourer from his meanness, would not be less injurious to the whole kingdom than a tyrannical power, that should, without a cause, cast down the wealthy from their ease and affluence. Let us suppose, that the hard and dirty labour throughout the nation requires three millions of hands, and that every branch of it is performed by the children of the poor. Illiterate, and such as had little or no education themselves; it is evident, that if a tenth part of these children, by force and design, were to be exempt from the lowest drudgery, either there must be so much work left undone, as would demand three hundred thousand people; or the defect, occasioned by the numbers taken off, must be supplied by the children of others, that had been better bred.

Hor. So that what is done at first out of charity to some, may, at long run, prove to be cruelty to others.

Cleo. And will depend upon it. In the compound of all nations, the different degrees of men ought to bear a certain proportion to each other, as to numbers, in order to render the whole a well proportioned mixture. And as this due proportion is the result and natural consequence of the difference there is in the qualifications of men, and the vicissitudes that happen among them, so it is never better attained to, or preserved, than when nobody meddles with it. Hence we may learn, how the short-sighted wisdom of perhaps well-meaning people, may rob us of a felicity that would flow spontaneously from the nature of every large society, if none were to divert or interrupt the stream.

Hor. I do not care to enter into these abstruse matters; what have you further to say in praise of money?

Cleo. I have no design to speak either for or against it; but be it good or bad, the power and dominion of it are both of vast extent, and the influence of it upon mankind has never been stronger or more general in any empire, state, or kingdom, than in the most knowing and politest ages, when they were in their greatest grandeur and prosperity; and when arts and sciences were the most flourishing in them: Therefore, the invention of money seems to me to be a thing more skilfully adapted to the whole bent of our nature, than any other or human contrivance. There is no greater remedy against sloth or stubbornness; and with astonishment I have beheld the readiness and alacrity with which it often makes the proudest men pay homage to their inferiors: It purchases all services, and cancels all debts; nay, it does more, for when a person is employed in his occupation, and he who sets him to work, a good paymaster, how laborious, how difficult or irksome soever the service be, the obligation is always reckoned to lie upon him who performs it.

Hor. Do not you think, that many eminent men in the learned professions would dissent from you in this?

Cleo. I know very well, that none ought to do it, if ever they courted business, or hunted after employment.

Hor. All you have said is true among mercenary people; but upon noble minds that despise lucre, honour has far greater efficacy than money.