CH. 23

NOTES ON MERCANTILISM, ETC.

359

French silks on the ground that all purchasers of Frenchluxury goods created a livelihood for the poor, whereasthe miser caused them to die in distress. 1 In 1662Petty justified “entertainments, magnificent shews,triumphal arches, etc.”, on the ground that their costsflowed back into the pockets of brewers, bakers, tailors,shoemakers and so forth. Fortrey justified “excess ofapparel”. Von Schrotter (1686) deprecated sumptuaryregulations and declared that he would wish that dis-play in clothing and the like were even greater. Barbon(1690) wrote that “Prodigality is a vice that is pre-judicial to the Man, but not to trade. . . . Covetous-ness is a Vice, prejudicial both to Man and Trade.” 2In 1695 Cary argued that if everybody spent more, allwould obtain larger incomes “and might then livemore plentifully”. 3

But it was by Bernard Mandeville’ s Fable of the Beesthat Barbon’s opinion was mainly popularised, a bookconvicted as a nuisance by the grand jury of Middlesexin 1723, which stands out in the history of the moralsciences for its scandalous reputation. Only one manis recorded as having spoken a good word for it, namelyDr. Johnson, who declared that it did not puzzle him,but “opened his eyes into real life very much”. Thenature of the book’s wickedness can be best conveyedby Leslie Stephen’s summary in the Dictionary ofNational Biography :

Mandeville gave great offence by this book, in which acynical system of morality was made attractive by ingeniousparadoxes. . . . His doctrine that prosperity was increased byexpenditure rather than by saving fell in with many currenteconomic fallacies not yet extinct . 4 Assuming with the

1 Op. cit. vol. ii. p. 290. 3 Op. cit. vol. ii. p. 291.

3 Op. cit. vol. ii. p. 209.

4 In his History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century Stephen wrote

(p. 297) in speaking of “the fallacy made celebrated by Mandeville ” that“the complete confutation of it lies in the doctrine—so rarely understoodthat its complete apprehension is, perhaps, the best test of an economist—that demand for commodities is not demand for labour”.