“Such,” Smith concludes, “is the system of Dr. Mandeville, which once made so much noise in the world.” However destructive it might appear, he thought “it could never have imposed upon so great a number of persons, nor have occasioned so general an alarm among those who are friends of better principles, had it not in some respects bordered upon the truth.”89
Mandeville’s work originally consisted merely of a poem of 400 lines called “The Grumbling Hive: or Knaves Turn’d Honest,” which according to his own account was first published as a sixpenny pamphlet about 1705.90 In 1714 he reprinted it, appending a very much larger quantity of prose, under the title of The Fable of the Bees: Or Private Vices, Public Benefits; with an Essay on Charity and Charity Schools and a Search Into the Nature of Society. In 1729 he added further a second part, nearly as large as the first, consisting of a dialogue on the subject. The “grumbling hive,” which is in reality a human society, is described in the poem as prospering greatly so long as it was full of vice:—
“The worst of all the multitude
Did something for the common good.
This was the state’s craft, that maintain’d
The whole, of which each part complain’d:
This, as in music harmony,
Made jarrings in the main agree;
Parties directly opposite,
Assist each oth’r, as ’twere for spight;
And temp’rance with sobriety
Serve drunkenness and gluttony.
The root of evil, avarice,
That damn’d ill-natur’d baneful vice,
Was slave to prodigality,
That noble sin; whilst luxury
Employ’d a million of the poor,
And odious pride a million more:
Envy itself and vanity
Were ministers of industry;
Their darling folly, fickleness
In diet, furniture, and dress,
That strange ridic’lous vice, was made
The very wheel that turn’d the trade.
Their laws and clothes were equally
Objects of mutability;
For what was well done for a time,
In half a year became a crime;
Yet whilst they altered thus their laws,
Still finding and correcting flaws,
They mended by inconstancy
Faults which no prudence could foresee.
Thus vice nursed ingenuity,
Which join’d with time and industry,
Had carry’d life’s conveniencies,
Its real pleasures, comforts, ease,
To such a height, the very poor
Lived better than the rich before;
And nothing could be added more.”91
But the bees grumbled till Jove in anger swore he would rid the hive of fraud. The hive became virtuous, frugal and honest, and trade was forthwith ruined by the cessation of expenditure. At the end of the “Search into the Nature of Society” the author sums up his conclusion as follows:—
“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 the 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.”92
In a letter to the London Journal of 10th August, 1723, which he reprinted in the edition of 1724, Mandeville defended this passage vigorously against a hostile critic. If, he said, he had been writing to be understood by the meanest capacities, he would have explained that 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.”93
If we bear in mind Smith’s criticism of Hutcheson and Mandeville in adjoining chapters of the Moral Sentiments, and remember further that he must almost certainly have become acquainted with the Fable of the Bees when attending Hutcheson’s lectures or soon afterwards, we can scarcely fail to suspect that it was Mandeville who first made him realise that “it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” Treating the word “vice” as a mistake for self-love, Adam Smith could have repeated with cordiality Mandeville’s lines already quoted:—
“Thus vice nursed ingenuity,
Which join’d with time and industry,
Had carry’d life’s conveniencies,
It’s real pleasures, comforts, ease,
To such a height, the very poor
Lived better than the rich before.”
Smith put the doggerel into prose, and added something from the Hutchesonian love of liberty when he propounded what is really the text of the polemical portion of the Wealth of Nations:—
“The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principle, that it is alone and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations.”94
Experience shows that a general belief in the beneficence of the economic working of self-interest is not always
