[851] If any of my readers are disturbed by this thorny question, I beg leave to recommend, to them Letter 69 of Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes; and the late Mr. John Palmer of Islington's Answer to Dr. Priestley's mechanical arguments for what he absurdly calls 'Philosophical Necessity.' BOSWELL. See post, under Aug. 29, 1783; note.
[852] See ante, ii. 217, and iii. 55.
[853] 'I have proved,' writes Mandeville (Fables of the Bees, ed. 1724, p. 179), 'that the real pleasures of all men in nature are worldly and sensual, if we judge from their practice; I say all men in nature, because devout Christians, who alone are to be excepted here, being regenerated and preternaturally assisted by the divine grace, cannot be said to be in nature.'
[854] Mandeville describes with great force the misery caused by gin— 'liquid poison' he calls it—'which in the fag-end and outskirts of the town is sold in some part or other of almost every house, frequently in cellars, and sometimes in the garret.' He continues:—'The short-sighted vulgar in the chain of causes seldom can see further than one link; but those who can enlarge their view may in a hundred places see good spring up and pullulate from evil, as naturally as chickens do from eggs.' He instances the great gain to the revenue, and to all employed in the production of the spirit from the husbandman upwards. Fable of the Bees, p. 89.
[855] 'If a miser, who is almost a plum (i.e. worth £100,000, Johnson's Dictionary), and spends but fifty pounds a year, should be robbed of a thousand guineas, it is certain that as soon as this money should come to circulate, the nation would be the better for the robbery; yet justice and the peace of the society require that the robber should be hanged.' Ib. p. 83.
[856] Johnson, in his political economy, seems to have been very much under Mandeville's influence. Thus in attacking Milton's position that 'a popular government was the most frugal; for the trappings of a monarchy would set up our ordinary commonwealth,' he says, 'The support and expense of a court is, for the most part, only a particular kind of traffick, by which money is circulated, without any national impoverishment.' Works, vii. 116. Mandeville in much the same way says:—'When a covetous statesman is gone, who spent his whole life in fattening himself with the spoils of the nation, and had by pinching and plundering heaped up an immense treasure, it ought to fill every good member of the society with joy to behold the uncommon profuseness of his son. This is refunding to the public whatever was robbed from it. As long as the nation has its own back again, we ought not to quarrel with the manner in which the plunder is repaid.' Ib. p. 104.
[857] See ante, ii. 176.
[858] In The Adventurer, No. 50, Johnson writes:—'"The devils," says Sir Thomas Brown, "do not tell lies to one another; for truth is necessary to all societies; nor can the society of hell subsist without it."' Mr. Wilkin, the editor of Brown's Works (ed. 1836, i. liv), says:—'I should be glad to know the authority of this assertion.' I infer from this that the passage is not in Brown's Works.
[859] Hannah More: see post, under date of June 30, 1784.
[860] In her visits to London she was commonly the guest of the Garricks. A few months before this conversation Garrick wrote a prologue and epilogue for her tragedy of Percy. He invested for her the money that she made by this play. H. More's Memoirs, i. 122, 140.