CH. 23

NOTES ON MERCANTILISM, ETC.

361

Like those of Thebes , were rais’d by Play,

Are to be let . . .

The Building Trade is quite destroy’d,

Artificers are not employ’d;

No limner for his Art is fam’d,

Stone-cutters, Carvers are not nam’d.

So “The Moral” is:

Bare Virtue can’t make Nations liveIn Splendour. They that would reviveA Golden Age, must be as free,

For Acorns as for Honesty.

Two extracts from the commentary which followsthe allegory will show that the above was not withouta theoretical basis:

As this prudent economy, which some people call Saving ,is in private families the most certain method to increase anestate, so some imagine that, whether a country be barren orfruitful, the same method if generally pursued (which theythink practicable) will have the same effect upon a wholenation, and that, for example, the English might be muchricher than they are, if they would be as frugal as some oftheir neighbours. This, I think, is an error . 1

On the contrary, Mandeville concludes:

The great art to make a nation happy, and what we callflourishing, consists in giving everybody an opportunity ofbeing employed; which to compass, let a Government’s firstcare be to promote as great a variety of Manufactures, Artsand Handicrafts as human wit can invent; and the second toencourage Agriculture and Fishery in all their branches, thatthe whole Earth may be forced to exert itself as well as Man.It is from this Policy and not from the trifling regulations ofLavishness and Frugality that the greatness and felicity ofNations must be expected; for let the value of Gold and Silverrise or fall, the enjoyment of all Societies will ever depend uponthe Fruits of the Earth and the Labour of the People; bothwhich joined together are a more certain, a more inexhaustible

1 Compare Adam Smith, the forerunner of the classical school, whowrote, “What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarcebe folly in that of a great Kingdom”—probably with reference to the abovepassage from Mandeville.