The Grumbling Hive

By Bernard Mandeville

Edited by Jack Lynch

The text is transcribed from the 1705 edition of The Grumbling Hive. A few short passages that are illegible in that edition are supplied from The Fable of the Bees (London, 1714). Original URL: http://newark.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/hive.html , that text is annotated here by colouring and type setting words (see table right).

THE

Grumbling Hive:

 OR,

K N A V E S

Turn'd HONEST.

Public Benefits marked green (when Colours On)

Webster Dictionary: Honesty: Date: 14th century, 1 obsolete : chastity 2 a : fairness and straightforwardness of conduct b : adherence to the facts : sincerity 3 : any of a genus (Lunaria) of European herbs of the mustard family with toothed leaves and flat disk-shaped siliques synonyms honesty, honour, integrity, probity mean uprightness of character or action. honesty implies a refusal to lie, steal, or deceive in any way. honour suggests an active or anxious regard for the standards of one's profession, calling, or position. integrity implies trustworthiness and incorruptibility to a degree that one is incapable of being false to a trust, responsibility, or pledge. probity implies tried and proven honesty or integrity.
 

Being numerous is a public blessing just like property rights, so the vice of Justice to murder say, two thieves for stealing a trifle consists of reducing numbers by two for the sake of the resulting enhancement of respect for property rights, and might, all in all, everything added and subtracted left and right, be a net-benefit to the public; I am happy to leave to the experts this balanced calculation of the benefit of this vice, but I suspect myself unlikely to be impressed by the outcome.

Remark F (And Virtue, who from Politicks...): People of a nation are interconnected in complicated chains of production and consumption, buying, selling, profiting form one another. Some are virtuous, some vicious, few know much about the moral sincerity of their business relations. One understandably concentrates on earning money and on what one buys, as a result of which virtue and vice fuel each other on markets which boost the public benefit. Continued in Remark G.

Noble: satiric, inverted comma's, Sin: Christian (!) synonym to Vice, Remark K (That Noble Sin): The Avaricious miser's hoarding reduces the amount of money in circulation, hence reduces spending, production, wealth, employment. By getting rich the miser impoverishes the nation. The prodigal's borrowing compensates the miser's hoarding and thus saves the economy from decline  ¹) . Remark L (whilst Luxury, Employed a Million of the Poor): Neither should the nation commit avarice in relation to other nations: luxury imports provide foreigners with money to buy our exports thus boosting our production and the employment of a million of the poor. Some fear that Luxury makes us unsuitable for war. But, (1) we have, and should maintain, plenty cannon fodder ignorant of luxury among our nation's poor. (2) a true Hermitage does not weaken more than a cheap gin, and (3) we seldom see French and Spanish officers among our enemy armies, much more elegantly dined, dressed, cut and trimmed than ourselves, display any lack of bravery. Remark M (And Odious Pride a Million more): By stretching our means to display Luxury we fuel our Pride: we suggest superiority over the crowd of fellow city dwellers, most of whom, little or not at all knowing you, have your appearance as the chief clue to your standing, influence and power [but go to Amsterdam]. This Luxury spending boosts the production and employment of the nation. Remark N (Envy itself and Vanity, where Ministers of Industry): The worst of not having a thing you desire is seeing another one owning it, thus we are even willing to suffer and strain ourselves preventing others to acquire it. We love to see proud people, preferably by their own pedantry, loose the object of their pride (as in seeing a preciously dressed person fall in a mud pool). Mandeville ends Remark N with another interesting, amusing and totally irrelevant digression on sexual love, jealousy and envy and how culture domesticated those passions by introducing lies and hypocrisies called virtue, so forcefully into an "adulterated appetite", that we even frequently loose sight of our original passions at work (more).

¹) A prodigal  paying  for his vice by borrowing, may indeed beneficially compensate avaricious hoarders by bringing money back in circulation, and so the vices of Avarice and Prodigality might occasionally add up to a zero public benefit at most, any imbalance to either side causing a public problem. The beneficial vice of the prodigal is to luxuriously  waste the borrowed money on, say, a man, a horse and a coach and and waste his own time as well by having himself be driven around, something the hoarder could have done, but was too avaricious for. Thus replacing the hoarder in spending, the prodigal saves business and employment from falling. Yet, another man could borrow the same money, hire the same man, buy the same horse and a plough to produce wheat with a profit, thus not merely saving business and employment from falling, but really making it rise, a true positive public benefit the prodigal could never achieve. Mandeville, no doubt like his aspired readership a man of candor and capacity, would surely be capable to eloquently unmask the borrowing frugal investor laying bare some kind of vice, after all, frugal investment is no charity, but would break his teeth on any attempt to unmask the particular vice Prodigality here. Mdv. does not consider the difference between prodigal spending, which never is a benefit and prevents a public loss at best, and the truly beneficial spending on investment and on the consumption of productive labour.  (See how Adam Smith scorns and shames the prodigals for harming the public benefit)

real: not what widely is hypocritically said is pleasure. Remark O (real Pleasures, Comforts, Ease): ...the serious part of the world, and the generality of wise men that have lived ever since to this day, agree with the Stoics...that there can be no true felicity in what depends on things perishable, that peace within is the greatest blessing, and no conquest like that of our passions; that knowledge, temperance, fortitude, humility, and other embellishments of the mind are the most valuable acquisitions; that no man can be happy but he that is good; and that the virtuous are the only capable of enjoying real pleasures. I could write twice as much about the blessings of poverty as Seneca [a  Stoic] did, for the tenth part of his estate ¹) , in the theory of this I am very perfect, but I am less sure about my practice, ... [in the poem]...I don't call things pleasures which men say are best, but such as they seem to be most pleased with...luxury peaks among power and high rank. Is this just the awareness of the otherwise modest and frugal potentate that his office needs pomp? No! A burgomeister of Amsterdam in his plain black suit, followed perhaps by one footman, is fully as much respected and better obeyed than a Lord Mayor of London with al his splendid equipage and a great train of attendance. Where there is a real power ²)  it is ridiculous to think that any temperance or austerity of life should ever render the person in whom that power is lodged contemptible in his office, from an emperor to the beadle of a parish .All hypocrisy!... the real pleasures of all men are worldly and sensual, if we judge from their practice

  ¹) We fail to see Mdv. claiming that Poverty and Simple Robust "Stoic" Happiness, like water, gain value wherever they get scarce, and Mdv. does not deal here  (he does so elsewhere) with the fact that on the other hand the really poor are honest by ignorance, have no material means to spend virtuously, and hence no reason to favour some theory of virtue over another.
 

  ²) Real power: The burgomeister of Amsterdam and his close allies, indeed most of them richer than the Mayor of London, had their capital invested in real estate, the Dutch United East India Company and - contrary to Mdv.'s idea of public benefit: a prudent gold and silver reserve. They did make sure everybody knew and feared their riches, simply a method used to advertise "real power" different from visibly surrounding yourself with luxury, and more beneficial to the growth of wealth (later that century the Dutch commercial elite nevertheless started to get a liking for luxury and this - pace Mdv - dragged the Dutch economy. See also my comments consumption versus investment and luxury and prodigality versus investment.

Bad people had formerly caused public benefits. The thug who formerly broke the bakers' house, created employment by spending his booty and forcing the baker to take measures to better lock and secure his property. In the Chapter A Search into the Nature of Society: not only bad people, even bad ships did so, by boosting spending and employment on repair, maintenance and replacement much better than good ships. Now, by Jove, all these benefits are gone:  But does Mandeville see that the thug, by the act of Jove now shifting his profession to tailoring or shoe making, enables the baker to attend to his bread and invest his money in profitable business satisfying real needs? Would not such a concentration of labour on production instead of stealing from each other make a stronger nation able to sustain higher numbers enabling it to make mince meat of even stronger enemies? It is not at all by abolishing crime but by reducing investment that the Hive goes down. (see also consumption versus investment) The "bad-ship-good-commerce" argument was later amusingly used by Bastiat, reacting to the proposal of Bordeaux to not lead the first railway Paris-Madrid through town, and instead make terminals at both sides of it, because this would stimulate the commerce of the city. Bastiat proposed to follow this reasoning neatly to its very end: to build a negative railway along the entire route (none at all, that is), which would be the cheapest investment and the most beneficial to all commerce between Paris and Madrid!

Remark Q (for frugally, They now lived on their Salary): Frugality is hard to impose on people as a pure virtue. It comes spontaneously if you make them poor but that is not beneficial to the nation. Better make them rich: install equal property rights, and civilize them, which means: teach them all sorts of sophisticated vices and hypocrisy. For the Dutch, frugality is generally speaking their interest ¹) , but Dutch sailors returning home are encouraged to spend years of wages in a few weeks and hurry back on board for the next trip. If you teach the simple and poor to save, they will use the balance remaining to reduce labour time, the very source of national wealth, and enjoy leisure. By frugally hoarding  money, that is, gold and silver, you reduce demand on markets, hence block the use of the fruits of the Earth and of labour, more real treasures than the gold of Brazil and the silver of Peru.

¹) Mdv. does not explain the curious interest Dutch would and Londoners would not have in frugality. In fact frugality arose as a high priority protestant virtue, with the effect that money was not consumed but invested in businesses (more wages to be spent produce more goods to be sold) and thus boosted the growth of the Dutch national production and wealth (more: luxury and prodigality versus investment).

Remark T (to live Great, Had made her Husband rob the State): ...  a considerable proportion of what the prosperity of London and trade in general, and consequently the honour, strength, safety, and all the worldly interest of the nation consist in, depends entirely on the deceit and vile stratagems of women ... few of [whom] scruple to employ even the most tender minutes of wedlock to promote a sordid interest ... clothes, furniture of all sorts, equipages, jewels ... a vast article in trade ... the loss [of which] would be a greater calamity to such a nation as ours, than it is possible to conceive any other, a raging pestilence not excepted. Digression: I lay down as the first principle of all societies ... duty of every member ... to be good, virtue ought to be encouraged, vice discountenanced, the laws obeyed, and the transgressors punished ... but ... since the fall of Adam ... no society [big or small] can be raised onto such a rich and mighty kingdom, or so raised, subsist in their wealth and power for any considerable time, without the vices of man ... Now I cannot see what immorality there is in ... teaching ... the difference between such action as proceed from a victory over the passions, and those that are only the result of a conquest which one passion obtains over another: that is, between real and counterfeited virtue ... What hurt do I do man if I make him more known to himself than he was before? I write among the few that can think abstractly and have their minds elevated above the vulgar. If I have shown the way to worldly greatness, I have always without hesitation preferred the road that leads to virtue, involving breakdown of printing presses, melting the founds, burn all books in public hands except the Bible, knock down foreign trade, prohibit all commerce with strangers ... restore to the clergy, the King and the barons their ancient privileges ... build new churches and convert all the coin you have into sacred utensils.[& cet.]. The epicure might object there may be a middle ground. Mandeville then suggests by a  parable of a crypto Christian society that exactly this middle ground is the most brutally and treacherously vicious hypocrisy.

          The M O R A L.