I would have no sagacious critic pronounce me a man-hater from this

short story; whoever does is very much mistaken. I am a great lover

of company, and if the reader is not quite tired with mine, before

I show the weakness and ridicule of that piece of flattery made to

our species, and which I was just now speaking of, I will give him a

description of the man I would choose for conversation, with a promise

that before he has finished, what at first he might only take for a

digression foreign to my purpose, he shall find the use of it.

By early and artful instruction, he should be thoroughly imbued with

the notions of honour and shame, and have contracted an habitual

aversion to every thing that has the least tendency to impudence,

rudeness, or inhumanity. He should be well versed in the Latin tongue,

and not ignorant of the Greek, and moreover understand one or two of

the modern languages besides his own. He should be acquainted with

the fashions and customs of the ancients, but thoroughly skilled in

the history of his own country, and the manners of the age he lives

in. He should besides literature, have studied some useful science or

other, seen some foreign courts and universities, and made the true use

of travelling. He should at times take delight in dancing, fencing,

riding the great horse, and knowing something of hunting and other

country sports, without being attached to any, and he should treat

them all as either exercises for health, or diversions that should

never interfere with business, or the attaining to more valuable

qualifications. He should have a smatch of geometry and astronomy,

as well as anatomy, and the economy of human bodies; to understand

music so as to perform, is an accomplishment: but there is abundance

to be said against it; and instead of it, I would have him know so

much of drawing as is required to take a landskip, or explain ones

meaning of any form or model we would describe, but never to touch a

pencil. He should be very early used to the company of modest women,

and never be a fortnight without conversing with the ladies.

Gross vices, as irreligion, whoring, gaming, drinking and quarrelling,

I will not mention: even the meanest education guards us against them;

I would always recommend to him the practice of virtue, but I am for

no voluntary ignorance, in a gentleman, of any thing that is done in

court or city. It is impossible a man should be perfect, and therefore

there are faults I would connive at, if I could not prevent them;

and if between the years of nineteen and three-and-twenty, youthful

heat should sometimes get the better of his chastity, so it was done

with caution; should he on some extraordinary occasion, overcome by

the pressing solicitations of jovial friends, drink more than was

consistent with strict sobriety, so he did it very seldom and found

it not to interfere with his health or temper; or if by the height of

his mettle, and great provocation in a just cause, he had been drawn

into a quarrel, which true wisdom and a less strict adherence to the

rules of honour, might have declined or prevented, so it never befel

him above once: if I say he should have happened to be guilty of these

things, and he would never speak, much less brag of them himself,

they might be pardoned, or at least overlooked at the age I named,

if he left off then and continued discreet forever after. The very

disasters of youth, have sometimes frightened gentlemen into a more

steady prudence, than in all probability they would ever have been

masters of without them. To keep him from turpitude and things that are

openly scandalous, there is nothing better than to procure him free

access in one or two noble families, where his frequent attendance

is counted a duty: and while by that means you preserve his pride,

he is kept in a continual dread of shame.

A man of a tolerable fortune, pretty near accomplished as I have

required him to be, that still improves himself and sees the world till

he is thirty, cannot be disagreeable to converse with, at least while

he continues in health and prosperity, and has nothing to spoil his

temper. When such a one, either by chance or appointment, meets with

three or four of our equals, and all agree to pass away a few hours

together, the whole is what I call good company. There is nothing

said in it that is not either instructive or diverting to a man of

sense. It is possible they may not always be of the same opinion, but

there can be no contest between any, but who shall yield first to the

other he differs from. One only speaks at a time, and no louder than

to be plainly understood by him who sits the farthest off. The greatest

pleasure aimed at by every one of them, is to have the satisfaction of

pleasing others, which they all practically know may as effectually

be done, by hearkening with attention and an approving countenance,

as we said very good things ourselves.

Most people of any taste would like such a conversation, and justly

prefer it to being alone, when they knew not how to spend their time;

but if they could employ themselves in something from which they

expected, either a more solid or a more lasting satisfaction, they

would deny themselves this pleasure, and follow what was of greater

consequence to them. But would not a man, though he had seen no

mortal in a fortnight, remain alone as much longer, rather than get

into company of noisy fellows, that take delight in contradiction,

and place a glory in picking a quarrel? Would not one that has books

read for ever, or set himself to write upon some subject or other,

rather than be every night with party-men who count the island to

be good for nothing, while their adversaries are suffered to live

upon it? Would not a man be by himself a month, and go to bed before

seven a clock, rather than mix with fox-hunters, who having all day

long tried in vain to break their necks, join at night in a second

attempt upon their lives by drinking, and to express their mirth,

are louder in senseless sounds within doors, than their barking and

less troublesome companions are only without? I have no great value

for a man who would not rather tire himself with walking; or if he was

shut up scatter pins about the room in order to pick them up again,

than keep company for six hours with half a score common sailors the

day their ship was paid off.

I will grant, nevertheless, that the greatest part of mankind,

rather than be alone any considerable time, would submit to the

things I named: but I cannot see, why this love of company, this

strong desire after society, should be construed so much in our

favour, and alleged as a mark of some intrinsic worth in man, not to

be found in other animals. For to prove from it the goodness of our

nature, and a generous love in man, extended beyond himself on the

rest of his species, by virtue of which he was a sociable creature,

this eagerness after company and aversion of being alone, ought to

have been most conspicuous, and most violent in the best of their

kind; the men of the greatest genius, parts and accomplishments,

and those who are the least subject to vice; the contrary of which

is true. The weakest minds, who can the least govern their passions,

guilty consciences that abhor reflexion, and the worthless, who are

incapable of producing any thing of their own that is useful, are

the greatest enemies to solitude, and will take up with any company

rather than be without; whereas, the men of sense and of knowledge,

that can think and contemplate on things, and such as are but little

disturbed by their passions, can bear to be by themselves the longest

without reluctancy; and, to avoid noise, folly, and impertinence,

will run away from twenty companies; and, rather than meet with any

thing disagreeable to their good taste, will prefer their closet or

a garden, nay, a common or a desert to the society of some men.

But let us suppose the love of company so inseparable from our species,

that no man could endure to be alone one moment, what conclusions

could be drawn from this? Does not man love company, as he does every

thing else, for his own sake? No friendships or civilities are lasting

that are not reciprocal. In all your weekly and daily meetings for

diversion, as well as annual feasts, and the most solemn carousels,

every member that assists at them has his own ends, and some frequent

a club which they would never go to unless they were the top of it. I

have known a man who was the oracle of the company, be very constant,

and as uneasy at any thing that hindered him from coming at the hour,

leave his society altogether, as soon as another was added that could

match, and disputed superiority with him. There are people who are

incapable of holding an argument, and yet malicious enough to take

delight in hearing others wrangle; and though they never concern

themselves in the controversy, would think a company insipid where

they could not have that diversion. A good house, rich furniture,

a fine garden, horses, dogs, ancestors, relations, beauty, strength,

excellency in any thing whatever; vices as well as virtue, may all

be accessary to make men long for society, in hopes that what they

value themselves upon will at one time or other become the theme of

the discourse, and give an inward satisfaction to them. Even the

most polite people in the world, and such as I spoke of at first,

give no pleasure to others that is not repaid to their self-love,

and does not at last centre in themselves, let them wind it and turn

it as they will. But the plainest demonstration that in all clubs

and societies of conversable people, every body has the greatest

consideration for himself, is, that the disinterested, who rather

over-pays than wrangles; the good humoured, that is never waspish nor

soon offended; the easy and indolent, that hates disputes and never

talks for triumph, is every where the darling of the company: whereas,

the man of sense and knowledge, that will not be imposed upon or talked

out of his reason; the man of genius and spirit, that can say sharp

and witty things, though he never lashes but what deserves it; the man

of honour, who neither gives nor takes an affront, may be esteemed,

but is seldom so well beloved as a weaker man less accomplished.

As in these instances, the friendly qualities arise from our contriving

perpetually our own satisfaction, so, on other occasions, they proceed

from the natural timidity of man, and the solicitous care he takes

of himself. Two Londoners, whose business oblige them not to have

any commerce together, may know, see, and pass by one another every

day upon the Exchange, with not much greater civility than bulls

would: let them meet at Bristol they will pull off their hats, and

on the least opportunity enter into conversation, and be glad of one

another's company. When French, English, and Dutch, meet in China,

or any other Pagan country, being all Europeans, they look upon

one another as countrymen, and if no passion interferes, will feel

a natural propensity to love one another. Nay, two men that are at

enmity, if they are forced to travel together, will often lay by their

animosities, be affable, and converse in a friendly manner, especially

if the road be unsafe, and they are both strangers in the place they

are to go to. These things by superficial judges, are attributed to

mans sociableness, his natural propensity to friendship and love of

company; but whoever will duly examine things, and look into man more

narrowly, will find, that on all these occasions we only endeavour to

strengthen our interest, and are moved by the causes already alleged.

What I have endeavoured hitherto, has been to prove, that the pulchrum

et honestum, excellency and real worth of things are most commonly

precarious and alterable as modes and customs vary; that consequently

the inferences drawn from their certainty are insignificant, and

that the generous notions concerning the natural goodness of man

are hurtful, as they tend to mislead, and are merely chimerical: the

truth of this latter I have illustrated by the most obvious examples in

history. I have spoke of our love of company and aversion to solitude,

examined thoroughly the various motives of them, and made it appear

that they all centre in self-love. I intend now to investigate into

the nature of society, and diving into the very rise of it, make

it evident, that not the good and amiable, but the bad and hateful

qualities of man, his imperfections and the want of excellencies,

which other creatures are endued with, are the first causes that

made man sociable beyond other animals, the moment after he lost

Paradise; and that if he had remained in his primitive innocence,

and continued to enjoy the blessings that attended it, there is no

shadow of probability that he ever would have become that sociable

creature he is now.

How necessary our appetites and passions are for the welfare of all

trades and handicrafts, has been sufficiently proved throughout the

book, and that they are our bad qualities, or at least produce them,

nobody denies. It remains then, that I should set forth the variety of

obstacles that hinder and perplex man in the labour he is constantly

employed in, the procuring of what he wants; and which in other words

is called the business of self-preservation: while, at the same time,

I demonstrate that the sociableness of man arises only from these

two things, viz. the multiplicity of his desires, and the continual

opposition he meets with in his endeavours to gratify them.

The obstacles I speak of, relate either to our own frame, or the globe

we inhabit, I mean the condition of it, since it has been cursed. I

have often endeavoured to contemplate separately on the two things I

named last, but could never keep them asunder; they always interfere

and mix with one another; and at last make up together a frightful

chaos of evil. All the elements are our enemies, water drowns and

fire consumes those who unskilfully approach them. The earth in a

thousand places produces plants, and other vegetables that are hurtful

to man, while she feeds and cherishes a variety of creatures that are

noxious to him; and suffers a legion of poisons to dwell within her:

but the most unkind of all the elements is that which we cannot live

one moment without: it is impossible to repeat all the injuries we

receive from the wind and weather; and though the greatest part of

mankind, have ever been employed in defending their species from the

inclemency of the air, yet no art or labour have hitherto been able

to find a security against the wild rage of some meteors.

Hurricanes, it is true, happen but seldom, and few men are swallowed

up by earthquakes, or devoured by lions; but while we escape those

gigantic mischiefs, we are persecuted by trifles. What a vast variety

of insects are tormenting to us; what multitudes of them insult and

make game of us with impunity! The most despicable scruple not to

trample and graze upon us as cattle do upon a field: which yet is

often born with, if moderately they use their fortune; but here again

our clemency becomes a vice, and so encroaching are their cruelty and

contempt of us on our pity, that they make laystalls of our hands,

and devour our young ones if we are not daily vigilant in pursuing

and destroying them.

There is nothing good in all the universe to the best-designing man,

if either through mistake or ignorance he commits the least failing in

the use of it; there is no innocence or integrity, that can protect

a man from a thousand mischiefs that surround him: on the contrary,

every thing is evil, which art and experience have not taught us

to turn into a blessing. Therefore how diligent in harvest time is

the husbandman, in getting in his crop and sheltering it from rain,

without which he could never have enjoyed it! As seasons differ with

the climates, experience has taught us differently to make use of

them, and in one part of the globe we may see the farmer sow while he

is reaping in the other; from all which we may learn how vastly this

earth must have been altered since the fall of our first parents. For

should we trace man from his beautiful, his divine original, not

proud of wisdom acquired by haughty precept or tedious experience,

but endued with consummate knowledge the moment he was formed; I mean

the state of innocence, in which no animal nor vegetable upon earth,

nor mineral under ground was noxious to him, and himself secured from

the injuries of the air as well as all other harms, was contented

with the necessaries of life, which the globe he inhabited furnished

him with, without his assistance. When yet not conscious of guilt,

he found himself in every place to be the well obeyed unrivalled lord

of all, and unaffected with his greatness, was wholly wrapped up in

sublime meditations on the infinity of his Creator, who daily did

vouchsafe intelligibly to speak to him, and visit without mischief.

In such a golden age, no reason or probability can be alleged, why

mankind ever should have raised themselves into such large societies

as there have been in the world, as long as we can give any tolerable

account of it. Where a man has every thing he desires, and nothing to

vex or disturb him, there is nothing can be added to his happiness; and

it is impossible to name a trade, art, science, dignity, or employment,

that would not be superfluous in such a blessed state. If we pursue

this thought, we shall easily perceive that no societies could have

sprung from the amiable virtues and loving qualities of man; but,

on the contrary, that all of them must have had the origin from his

wants, his imperfections, and the variety of his appetites: we shall

find likewise, that the more their pride and vanity are displayed,

and all their desires enlarged, the more capable they must be of

being raised into large and vastly numerous societies.

Was the air always as inoffensive to our naked bodies, and as pleasant

as to our thinking it is to the generality of birds in fair weather,

and man had not been affected with pride, luxury and hypocrisy, as

well as lust, I cannot see what could have put us upon the invention of

clothes and houses. I shall say nothing of jewels, of plate, painting,

sculpture, fine furniture, and all that rigid moralists have called

unnecessary and superfluous: but if we were not soon tired with walking

a-foot, and were as nimble as some other animals; if men were naturally

laborious, and none unreasonable in seeking and indulging their ease,

and likewise free from other vices, and the ground was every where

even, solid and clean, who would have thought of coaches or ventured

on a horse's back? What occasion has the dolphin for a ship, or what

carriage would an eagle ask to travel in?

I hope the reader knows, that by society I understand a body politic,

in which man either subdued by superior force, or by persuasion drawn

from his savage state, is become a disciplined creature, that can find

his own ends in labouring for others, and where under one head or other

form of government, each member is rendered subservient to the whole,

and all of them by cunning management are made to act as one. For

if by society we only mean a number of people, that without rule or

government, should keep together, out of a natural affection to their

species, or love of company, as a herd of cows or a flock of sheep,

then there is not in the world a more unfit creature for society than

man; an hundred of them that should be all equals, under no subjection,

or fear of any superior upon earth, could never live together awake

two hours without quarrelling, and the more knowledge, strength, wit,

courage and resolution there was among them, the worse it would be.

It is probable, that in the wild state of nature, parents would keep a

superiority over their children, at least while they were in strength,

and that even afterwards, the remembrance of what the others had

experienced, might produce in them something between love and fear,

which we call reverence: it is probable, likewise, that the second

generation following the example of the first; a man with a little

cunning would always be able, as long as he lived and had his senses,

to maintain a superior sway over all his own offspring and descendants,

how numerous soever they might grow. But the old stock once dead,

the sons would quarrel, and there could be no peace long before there

had been war. Eldership in brothers is of no great force, and the

pre-eminence that is given to it, only invented as a shift to live

in peace. Man, as he is a fearful animal, naturally not rapacious,

loves peace and quiet, and he would never fight, if nobody offended

him, and he could have what he fights for without it. To this fearful

disposition, and the aversion he has to his being disturbed, are

owing all the various projects and forms of government. Monarchy,

without doubt, was the first. Aristocracy and democracy were two

different methods of mending the inconveniencies of the first, and

a mixture of these three an improvement on all the rest.

But be we savages or politicians, it is impossible that man, mere

fallen man, should act with any other view but to please himself while

he has the use of his organs, and the greatest extravagancy either

of love or despair can have no other centre. There is no difference

between will and pleasure in one sense, and every motion made in spite

of them must be unnatural and convulsive. Since, then, action is so

confined, and we are always forced to do what we please, and at the

same time our thoughts are free and uncontrouled, it is impossible we

could be sociable creatures without hypocrisy. The proof of this is

plain, since we cannot prevent the ideas that are continually arising

within us, all civil commerce would be lost, if, by art and prudent

dissimulation we had not learned to hide and stifle them; and if all

we think was to be laid open to others, in the same manner as it is

to ourselves, it is impossible that, endued with speech, we could be

sufferable to one another. I am persuaded that every reader feels the

truth of what I say; and I tell my antagonist that his conscience

flies in his face, while his tongue is preparing to refute me. In

all civil societies men are taught insensibly to be hypocrites from

their cradle; nobody dares to own that he gets by public calamities,

or even by the loss of private persons. The sexton would be stoned

should he wish openly for the death of the parishioners, though every

body knew that he had nothing else to live upon.

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 merry does 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 to 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 sixpence

per yard than the things she wants are 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 mien and easy

behaviour, 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 airs, 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 endeavours to render herself as amiable as virtue

and the rules of decency allow of. Coming with such a resolution of

behaviour, she cannot meet with any thing to ruffle her temper.

Before her coach is yet quite stopped, she is approached by a

gentleman-like man, that has every thing 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 by-way that

remains visible only for half a moment, with great address entrenches

himself behind the counter: here facing her, with a profound reverence

and modish phrase, he begs the favour of knowing her commands. Let

her say and dislike what she pleases, she can never be directly

contradicted: she deals with a 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 has

always before her a cheerful countenance, where joy and respect seem

to be blended with good humour, 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 pre-eminence of it over any thing he has in his

shop. By precept, example, and great application, he has learned

unobserved to slide into the inmost recesses of the soul, sound the

capacity of his customers, and find out their blind side unknown to

them: by all which he is instructed in fifty other stratagems to

make her over-value her own judgment as well as the commodity 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 no where 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 piece under such a price, but she has the power of talking

him out of his goods beyond any body he ever sold to: he protests that

he loses by his silk, but seeing that she has a fancy for it, and is

resolved 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 mean time,

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, to disown

her merit, and in some witty repartee retort the compliment, he

makes her swallow very contentedly, the substance of every thing he

tells her. The upshot is, that, with the satisfaction of having saved

ninepence per yard, she has bought her silk exactly at the same price

as any body else might have done, and often gives sixpence more than,

rather than not have sold it, he would have taken.

It is possible that this lady, for want of being sufficiently

flattered, for a fault she is pleased to find in his behaviour,

or perhaps the tying of his neckcloth, 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 any where 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 an 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 practised by the watermen, especially on

those whom, by their mien 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 an 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 any thing he can come at, while a fifth

or a sixth, who has scampered 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 offence 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, bawl out as if he was hundred yards off: He

is conscious that he makes no less noise when he is merry himself,

and is secretly pleased with their boisterous usages. The hawling

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 admires the Londoners for being so pressing in the offers of

their service to him, for the value of threepence 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 in

answer to a question himself is forced to ask first. This alacrity

in his behalf 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 water side.

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 any more, 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 praise-worthy 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 laboured 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

neighbour, 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 limits to his luxury;

the fickle strumpet that invents new fashions every week; the haughty

duchess that in equipage, entertainments, and all her behaviour, would

imitate a princess; the profuse rake and lavish heir, that scatter

about their money without wit or judgment, buy every thing 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 is the calamitous condition of human affairs,

that we stand in need of the plagues and monsters I named, to have all

the variety of labour performed, which the skill of men 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 ever 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,

labouring 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 neighbours,

and invents the most operose manufactures, 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 woolcombers, spinners, the weaver, the cloth worker, the scourer,

the dyer, the setter, the drawer, and the packer; but others that

are more remote, and might seem foreign to it; as the mill-wright,

the pewterer, and the chemist, which yet are all necessary, 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 colours! How

widely are the drugs, and other ingredients, dispersed through the

universe that are to meet in one kettle! Allum, indeed, we have of our

own; argol we might have from the Rhine, and vitriol from Hungary; all

this is in Europe; but then for saltpetre in quantity, we are forced to

go as far as the East Indies. Cocheneal, 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. While 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

labour, 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 expence, not 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 labours as so many

voluntary actions, belonging to different callings and occupations,

that men are brought up to for a livelihood, and in which every one

works for himself, how much soever he may seem to labour for others: If

we consider, that even the sailors who undergo the greatest hardships,

as soon as one voyage is 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 labour

of the poor is so far from being a burden and an imposition upon them,

that to have employment is a blessing, which, in their addresses 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 endeavours to appear what every body 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 accustom 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 labour is performed in the world,

to the maintenance of thousands of families that altogether depend on

two 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, not only that are

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 consists; 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 wherry to a first rate man of war;

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, oars, and every

thing 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, or the mariners,

waterman 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 befal nations on

the score of seafaring, and their commerce with strangers, the prospect

would be very frightful; and could we suppose a large populous island,

that should be wholly unacquainted with ships and sea affairs, but

otherwise a wise and well-governed people; and that some angel, or

their genius, should lay before them a scheme or draught, 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 denomination soever, 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 unskilfulness

of some, and the neglect and drunkenness of others; and should we

consider the losses of men and treasure 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 heart-aches 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, would it 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,

with their 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 foundered

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 masts that are

blown down, or forced to be cut and thrown overboard, the yards,

sails, and cordage of different sizes that are destroyed by 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, and every 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 teazing 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 unconscionable one;

yet where is the man who imagines not that he has a right to make

it? And therefore, as every one pretends to an equal claim to those

favours, 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 as strongly built, and the 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 every body 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 lading would always come safe ashore;

and hence it would follow, that three parts in four of the merchantmen

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 a great while yet. The sails

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's 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 and the

rope-yards. This general want of consumption would have such

an influence on the timber-merchants, and all that import iron,

sail-cloth, hemp, pitch, tar, &c. that four parts in 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 any thing 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 vermine, 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

merchandises are a considerable 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 Smyrna or Aleppo, and

every yard of them had been retailed on the grand Signior's dominions.

The merchant may break, and by him the clothier, the dyer, the packer,

and other tradesmen, the middling people, may suffer; but the poor

that were set to work about them can never lose. Day-labourers

commonly receive their earnings once a-week, and all the working

people that were employed, either in any of the various branches of

the manufacture itself, or the several land and water carriages it

requires to be brought to perfection, from the sheep's back, to the

vessel it was entered in, were paid, at least much the greatest part

of them, before the parcel came on board. Should any of my readers

draw conclusions in infinitum, from my assertions, that goods 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 caviller and

not worth answering: should it always rain and 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 as

necessary as the sunshine.

In what manner this blessing of fair winds and fine weather, would

affect the mariners themselves, and the breed of sailors, may be

easily conjectured from what has been said already. As there would

hardly one ship in 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 in six of the seamen we have might be spared,

which in this nation, most employments of the poor being overstocked,

would be but an untoward article. As soon as those superfluous seamen

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 inconveniency: 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, viz. 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

tranquillity 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 blest 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 neighbours, and value themselves upon their honour

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 every thing at rest and peace, and the more they will every

where 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 nature: this is certain, that the more extensive they

are, and the greater plenty we have of them, the more we save our

labour. But the necessities, the vices, and imperfections of man,

together with the various inclemencies of the air and other elements,

contain in them the seeds of all arts, industry and labours: 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 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 task-masters, necessity, avarice, envy, and ambition,

each in the class that belongs to him, keep the members of the society

to their labour, and make them all submit, most of them cheerfully,

to the drudgery of their station; kings and princes not excepted.

The greater the variety of trades and manufactures the more operose

they are, and the more they are divided in many branches, the greater

numbers may be contained in a society without being in one another's

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 have ever

paid their compliments to them; whereas the excellency of human thought

and contrivance, has been, and is yet no where 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 in morality as it is in nature, there is nothing so perfectly

good in creatures, that it cannot be hurtful to any one of the society,

nor any thing 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 neighbour. 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 sight, 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 forsooth 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 the 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 hoaning after him, melted with grief and tenderness:

in the mean while a British minister, who is to take care of the

Protestant interest in Germany, is riding post to Harwich, and in

violent haste to be at Ratisbone 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. If these people are not atheists, or very great reprobates,

they will all have some good thoughts before they go to sleep, and

consequently about bed-time, 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, 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 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.

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 ever I hear, that by following

this diversion I have given any to the intelligent 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 skilful politician, may be turned into public benefits.

A

VINDICATION

OF THE

Book, from the Aspersions contained in a Presentment of

the Grand Jury of Middlesex,

And an Abusive Letter to Lord C----

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 defence, he should know the whole 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 neighbouring

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 defence of the Christian Religion), than 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, endeavouring, by species pretences, to revive the Arian

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 endeavoured 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 colours, 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 encomiums made in their favour,

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, our duty to the Almighty, our love to

our country, and regard to our oaths, oblige us to present

as the publisher of a book, intituled the Fable of the Bees; or

Private Vices Public Benefits. 2d. Edit. 1723.

And also

as the publisher of a weekly paper, called the British Journal,

Numb. 26, 35, 36, and 39.

The Letter I complain of is this:

My Lord,

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, wherewith his Majesty's happy

government seems to be threatened by Catiline, under the name of

Cato; by the writer of a book, intituled, The Fable of the Bees,

&c. and by others of their fraternity, who are undoubtedly useful

friends to the Pretender, and diligent, for his sake, in labouring

to subvert and ruin our constitution, under a specious pretence 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 endured here. And this conviction will at once rid men's

minds of the uneasiness which this flagitious race of writers has

endeavoured 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 Briton 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 any thing 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 occasions 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 support it, 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. May

Heaven avert 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 every thing that looks like

encouragement or tendency to it; but they do also abhor and dread the

violence offered to Christianity itself, by our British Catilines,

who shelter their treacherous designs against it, under the false

colours of regard and good will 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 wont to bless or

blast a 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 pretence, 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 Rome was as remarkable for observing and promoting

natural religion, as new Rome has been for corrupting that which is

revealed. And as the old Romans did signally recommend themselves to

the favour 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

[8] of God's 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 any way affected by the point in debate;

not doubting that the people would determine in their favour, 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 to be called coram nobis? Why should not he 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 mens mouths and writings, as he does now, with loud,

tremendous 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 inveighed against the national profession and

exercise of religion; and endeavoured, 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 sown 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 Catiline

the confidence left to look any man in the face, after he hath spent

more confidence than most mens 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 the impotent do plainly receive more relief from them,

in proportion to their numbers and abilities, than from any the

same numbers of men under the same circumstances of fortune, who do

not concern themselves with charity schools, in any respect, but in

condemning and decrying them. I will meet Catiline 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 say. But I do not much depend upon his giving me the 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 behaviour, 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 every where a public nuisance, &c. What? Is

it owing to the charity schools, that servants are become so idle,

such rioting vermin, such a public nuisance; that women-servants turn

whores, and the men-servants robbers, house-breakers, and sharpers? (as

he says they commonly do). Is this owing to the charity schools? or,

if it is not, how comes he to allow himself the liberty of representing

these schools as a 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 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. O 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 neighbours, 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 Hounslow-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 to perform the

principal parts of it, or to bear constant labour 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 labour 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 the several counties, are proper judges of their several situations

and circumstances, and 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 manufactures; 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

effected 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 manufactures in the several places of the kingdom,

be so charitable as to employ the poor children for a certain number

of hours in every day, in the respective manufactures, 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 colourable,

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 of his country, can think this proper and just view of

the charity schools, liable to any just weighty objection, or refuse to

contribute his endeavours to improve and raise them to that perfection

which is proposed in them. In the mean time, 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, and

swearing, and stealing, 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 in 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

shop-keepers, 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

your Lordship, that this affirmation is in fact directly false, which

is an 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 traitors 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 a key to Catiline's talk, that he has been fully convinced,

that the children in the charity schools are bred up to be traitors.

My Lord, if any one 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 licence 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, &c. Catiline explodes

the fundamental articles of faith, impiously comparing the doctrine

of the blessed Trinity to fee-fa-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 labour 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 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 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 levelled 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 greatest instruments of religion and

virtue, one of the firmest bulwarks against Popery, one of the best

recommendations of this people to the Divine favour, and therefore

one of the greatest blessings to our country of any thing 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 an objection against the clergy, than Mr. Layer's against the

gentlemen 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 traitors,

or otherwise vicious, all the rest may, notwithstanding 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 wheresoever such a vindication is

wanted, being as faithful, and virtuous, and learned, a body of men

as any in Europe; and yet they suspend the publication of arguments

in a solemn defence 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, an open

avowed 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 casuist less skilful

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 endeavours 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 clamour every where 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 defence by itself to the

public, I was obliged to repeat what had been quoted in the Letter,

since the paper would unavoidably 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 10, 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, intituled, 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 27; 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 defence of it 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 favour of them, than their patience and

attention. Setting aside what in that Letter relates to others, and

every thing that is foreign and immaterial, I shall begin with the

passage that is quoted from the book, viz. "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 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." 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 there 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 that consequently, the greater variety there was

of wants, the larger number of individuals might find their private

interest in labouring 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 latter not existed,

there could have been no occasion for the former to move it. I say,

p. 236. "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." Several foregoing pages run in the same

strain. But what relation has all this to religion or infidelity,

more than it has to 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 labour, to which the vain and voluptuous must be

beholden for all their tools and implements of ease and luxury. "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 pullulate from evil,

as naturally as chickens do from eggs."

The words are to be found p. 46. 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 unsearchable

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 flagitious

and most abandoned.

Men of candour 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: "Man is a necessitous

creature on innumerable accounts, and yet from those very necessities,

and nothing else, arise all trades and employments." 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, an infallible touchstone

to distinguish the real from the counterfeited, 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, detects their

force 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 any thing in

it 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 unquestionable 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 labouring under the same necessity, would do of his own work on

any other occasion.

The encomiums upon stews complained of in the presentment are no

where 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 honour 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: "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." I give my reasons why I think it

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 published this with a 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 inviting, 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

any 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, Apage vulgus. But

as nothing (I say, p. 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 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

(p. 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 virtue ought to be encouraged, vice discountenanced,

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, p. 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 not to be misconstrued than myself: mind p. 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 by so saying,

I bid men be vicious, any more than I bid them be quarrelsome or

covetous, when I affirm, that the profession of the law could not be

maintained in such numbers and splendour, if there was not abundance

of too selfish and litigious people." A 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. It is an 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, I protest that it has been

with the utmost sincerity, what I have declared 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, to be the lot and

portion of the poor, and that to divert their children from useful

labour till they are fourteen or fifteen years old, is a wrong method

to qualify them for it when are they 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 in 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, "Or some other

place of worship, I would not have the meanest of a parish that

is able to walk to it, be absent on Sundays," I have these words:

"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 labour; 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 and

example, they ought to be encouraged to it from their very infancy:

the wilful neglect of it ought to be counted scandalous; and if

downright compulsion to what I urge might seem too 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." If the arguments I have made use of are not

convincing, I desire they may be refuted, and I will acknowledge it as

a favour in any one that shall convince me of my error, without ill

language, by showing me wherein I have been mistaken: but calumny,

it seems, is the shortest way of confuting 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 patience. 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. "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 atheistical wretch." For

this reason, it cannot be thought, that it was a great surprise to

me, when in that extraordinary letter to Lord C. I saw myself called

"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 an

enormity, that it cried for the vengeance of Heaven." 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 endeavours 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 offence 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, "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 skilful politician, may be turned into public benefits." 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 the Fable of the Bees, and presented

by the grand jury of Middlesex to the judges of the King's Bench,

there is to be found the least title of blasphemy or profaneness,

or any thing 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 I never

design 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 adversaries shall be pleased to appoint.

The Author of the Fable of the Bees.

THE

FABLE OF THE BEES.