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XLVIII. Bernard Mandeville on Gin
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Dr. Bernard Mandeville in reissuing in 1714 the doggerel verses which he had first published in 1705 under the title, The Grumbling Hive: Or, Knaves Turn'd Honest, added extensive prose remarks and a provocative title, The Fable of the Bees: Or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits, but he failed to stir a ripple of protest in English complacency, or even to attract attention by his bold thinking. In 1723, publishing his materials once more with extensive additions, by which he had industriously doubled the bulk of his book, Mandeville at last received his reward in the storm of abuse which burst about his head. He was recognized as the disturber of every acceptable idea which good men then took for granted. The Fable of the Bees became notorious. It was read widely in English and translated into French and German. Throughout the century it was thought to merit discussion, and if possible, vigorous refutation by the men in Europe distinguished for either piety or intelligence. By many readers Mandeville was held to be a monster of impiety, a low rogue too vile to be counted human.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1939
References
1 F. B. Kaye, ed., The Fable of the Bees (Oxford, 1924), i, cxvi. Kaye names John Dennis, William Law, Reimarus, Hume, Berkeley, Hutcheson, Godwin, Holberg, John Brown, Fielding, Gibbon, Diderot, Holbach, Rousseau, Malthus, James Mill, Mackintosh, Kant, Adam Smith, Warburton, John Wesley, Herder, Montesquieu, Hazlitt, and Bentham.
2 Kaye, i, xxii-xxiv.
3 Kaye, i, 86.
4 Kaye, i, 86.
5 See Kaye, i, 92.
6 Kaye, i, 89–91. Cf. A Dissertation Upon Drunkenness (1708), pp. 12–13 and 14–16. Professor C. A. Moore has called my attention to Mandeville's appropriation of this material for Remark G, and has suggested that I consider the question of the authorship of the anonymous pamphlet of 1708. He has very generously lent a photostatic reproduction of the original at the British Museum.
7 See Kaye, i, 385–386. Cf. Kaye, ii, 23, n. 3. Kaye quotes from The Comedian, or Philosophic Enquirer. Numb. IX (1733) the anecdote about the burning of The Fable in which there was an attempt to win credit for the story on the authority of “a Bookseller in Pater-noster-row.”
8 A Dissertation Upon Drunkenness (1708), pp. 13–14.
9 An Essay on Charity and Charity-Schools, Kaye, i, 287. Cf. i, 194, 248, and also, ii, 351.
10 For a discussion of Mandeville's revision of his text see particularly Kaye, i, xxxiii–xxxvii, and xxxv, n. 1, n. 2, n. 3, n. 4.
11 Kaye, i, 118. Cf. ii, 335: “But all this while we must have Sailors ...”
12 Kaye, ii, 345. Cf. Luanda's Female Taller No. 52: “Collonell Worthy own'd killing a Man with a Sword was a great Sin, yet thought, that Drinking him to Death, which was so common, was no ways inferior to it; and that he believ'd, that more were killed by the Gluttony and Drunkenness of one Lord Mayor's Day in the City of London only, than by Duelling in a whole Twelvemonth throughout Great Britain,”
13 A Dissertation Upon Drunkenness (1708), p. 26.
14 Kaye, i, 340.
15 A Dissertation Upon Drunkenness (1708), pp. 28–29. Cf. Kaye, ii, 13.
16 Cf. Female Tatler No. 111; The Virgin Unmask'd (1709), pp. 127–128; both passages quoted, P. B. Anderson, “Splendor out of Scandal: the Lucinda-Artesia Papers in The Female Tatler,” PQ, xv (1936), 294–295.
17 The possible source is actual observation of Dutch customs, but Mandeville often draws on Sir William Temple. See The Works of Sir William Temple (London, 1814), I, 143. See also Kaye, i, 165; 185–191.
18 A Dissertation Upon Drunkenness (1708), p. 29.
18a Ibid., p. 2.
19 Ibid., pp. 21–22.
20 Ibid., p. 5.
21 Ibid., p. 16.
22 Ibid., pp. 18, 24.
23 Ibid., pp. 3–4.
24 Ibid., p. 6.
25 Kaye, i, 61–63.
26 Kaye, i, 160.
27 Kaye, ii, 272–283. He approves Addison's Spectator No. 112 on the English Sunday as a similar exercise.
28 See Kaye, i, 141, n. 2: “This passage particularly enraged William Law, who devoted all section 5 of his Remarks upon ... the Fable (1724) to an attempted demonstration that certainty is not incompatible with hope. The reason for his agitation will be clear when it is recollected that the words ‘certain hope’ occur in the Order for the Burial of the Dead.”
29 The last paragraph of Remark O made a telling distinction between ritual and actual experience, between the theory and the practise of virtue, Kaye, i, 168: “If you ask me where to look for those beautiful shining Qualities of Prime Ministers, and the great Favourites of Princes that are so finely painted in Dedications, Addresses, Epitaphs, Funeral Sermons and Inscriptions, I answer There, and no where else.... This has often made me compare the Virtues of great Men to your large China Jars: they make a fine Shew, and are Ornamental even to a Chimney; one would by the Bulk they appear in, and the Value that is set upon 'em, think they might be very useful, but look into a thousand of them, and you'll find nothing in them but Dust and Cobwebs.”
30 Kaye, i, 368.
31 Kaye, i, 108. Mandeville is impressed by the uniformity of the words of Christians saying the Lord's Prayer and by the diversity of social circumstances leading to an amazing diversity in the real prayers of men whose lips are forming the same words.
32 Kaye, i, 238.
33 As evidence of his persistent dislike and scrutiny of the liquor trade note the comment on lawyers in Female Taller No. 66: “... they make a considerable Body of the Nation, a great many of 'em are very Rich, and the whole causes a vast Consumption; they are beneficial to the Publick, not so much for their Goodness as their Bulk, like Brewer's Horses that draw more with their Weight than they do with their Mettle.”
34 An Enquiry into the Causes of the Frequent Executions at Tyburn (1725), pp. 21–23, gave his most vivid picture of the dispensing and drinking of gin as an essential part of the sordid procession from Newgate to Tyburn: “No modern Rabble can long subsist without their darling Cordial, the grand Preservative of Sloth, Jenem, that infallible Antidote against Care and frugal Reflexion; which, being repeated, removes all Pain of sober Thought, and in a little Time cures the tormenting Sense of the most pressing Necessities. The Traders, who vent it among the Mob on these Occasions, are commonly the worst of both Sexes, but most of them weather-beaten Fellows, that have mis-spent their Youth. Here stands an old Sloven, in a Wig actually putrify'd, squeez'd up in a Corner and recommends a Dram of it to the Goers-by: There another in Rags, with several Bottles in a Basket, stirs about with it, where the Throng is the thinnest, and tears his Throat with crying his Commodity; and further off, you may see the Head of a third, who has ventur'd in the Middle of the Current, and minds his Business, as he is fluctuating in the irregular Stream: Whilst higher up, an old decrepit Woman sits dreaming with it on a Bulk; and over against her, in a Soldier's Coat, her termagant Daughter sells the Sots-Comfort with great Dispatch.... Tho' before setting out, the Prisoners took care to swallow what they could to be drunk, and stifle their Fear; yet the Courage that strong Liquors can give, wears off, and the Way they have to go being considerable, they are in Danger of recovering, and, without repeating the Dose, Sobriety would often overtake them: For this Reason they must drink as they go; and the Cart stops for that Purpose three or four, and sometimes half a dozen Times, or more, before they come to their Journey's End.”