Chapter XIV: Preface (13)

Now your Lordship also sees the true cause of the satire, which is continually formed against the clergy, by Catiline and his confederates. Why should Mr. Hall's conviction and execution be any more an objection against the clergy, than Mr. Layer's against the gentlemen of the long robe? Why, because the profession of the law does not immediately relate to religion: and therefore Catiline will allow, that if any persons of that profession should be traitors, or otherwise vicious, all the rest may, notwithstanding the iniquity of a brother, be as loyal and virtuous as any other subjects in the King's dominions: but because matters of religion are the professed concern, and the employment of the clergy; therefore Catiline's logic makes it out, as clear as the day, that if any of them be disaffected to the government, all the rest are so too; or if any of them be chargeable with vice, this consequence from it is plain, that all or most of the rest are as vicious as the devil can make them. I shall not trouble your Lordship with a particular vindication of the clergy, nor is there any reason that I should, for they are already secure of your Lordship's good affection to them, and they are able to vindicate themselves wheresoever such a vindication is wanted, being as faithful, and virtuous, and learned, a body of men as any in Europe; and yet they suspend the publication of arguments in a solemn defence of themselves, because they neither expect nor desire approbation and esteem from impious and abandoned men; and, at the same time, they cannot doubt that all persons, not only of great penetration, but of common sense, do now clearly see, that the arrows shot against the clergy are intended to wound and destroy the divine institution of the ministerial offices, and to extirpate the religion which the sacred offices were appointed to preserve and promote. This was always supposed and suspected by every honest and impartial man; but it is now demonstrated by those who before had given occasion to such suspicions, for they have now openly declared, that faith, in the principal articles of it, is not only needless, but ridiculous, that the welfare of human society must sink and perish under the encouragement of virtue, and that immorality is the only firm foundation whereon the happiness of mankind can be built and subsist. The publication of such tenets as these, an open avowed proposal to extirpate the Christian faith and all virtue, and to fix moral evil for the basis of the government, is so stunning, so shocking, so frightful, so flagrant an enormity, that if it should be imputed to us as a national guilt, the Divine vengeance must inevitably fall upon us. And how far this enormity would become a national guilt, if it should pass disregarded and unpunished, a casuist less skilful and discerning than your Lordship may easily guess. And, no doubt, your Lordship's good judgment, in so plain and important a case, has made you, like a wise and faithful patriot, resolve to use your utmost endeavours in your high station, to defend religion from the bold attacks made upon it.

As soon as I have seen a copy of the bill, for the better security of his Majesty and his happy government, by the better security of religion in Great Britain, your Lordship's just scheme of politics, your love of your country, and your great services done to it, shall again be acknowledged by,

My Lord,

Your most faithful humble Servant;

Theophilus Philo-Britannus.

These violent accusations, and the great clamour every where raised against the book, by governors, masters, and other champions of charity schools, together with the advice of friends, and the reflection on what I owed to myself, drew from me the following answer. The candid reader, in the perusal of it, will not be offended at the repetition of some passages, one of which he may have met with twice already, when he shall consider that, to make my defence by itself to the public, I was obliged to repeat what had been quoted in the Letter, since the paper would unavoidably fall into the hands of many who had never seen either the Fable of the Bees, or the Defamatory Letter wrote against it. The Answer was published in the London Journal of August 10, 1723, in these words:

Whereas, in the Evening Post of Thursday July 11, a presentment was inserted of the Grand Jury of Middlesex, against the publisher of a book, intituled, The Fable of the Bees; or, Private Vices, Public Benefits; and since that, a passionate and abusive Letter has been published against the same book, and the author of it, in the London Journal of Saturday, July 27; I think myself indispensably obliged to vindicate the above said book against the black aspersions that undeservedly have been cast upon it, being conscious that I have not had the least ill design in composing it. The accusations against it having been made openly in the public papers, it is not equitable the defence of it should appear in a more private manner. What I have to say in my behalf, I shall address to all men of sense and sincerity, asking no other favour of them, than their patience and attention. Setting aside what in that Letter relates to others, and every thing that is foreign and immaterial, I shall begin with the passage that is quoted from the book, viz. "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 this 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." These words, I own, are in the book, and, being both innocent and true, like to remain there in all future impressions. But I will likewise own very freely, that, if I had wrote with a design to be understood by the meanest capacities, I would not have chose the subject there treated of; or if I had, I would have amplified and explained every period, talked and distinguished magisterially, and never appeared without the fescue in my hand. As for example; to make the passage pointed at intelligible, I would have bestowed a page or two on the meaning of the word Evil; after that I would have taught them, that every defect, 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. Is there a trade or handicraft but what supplies us with something we wanted? This want certainly, before it was supplied, was an evil, which that trade or handicraft was to remedy, and without which it could never have been thought of. Is there an art or science that was not invented to mend some defect! Had this latter not existed, there could have been no occasion for the former to move it. I say, p. 236. "The excellency of human thought and contrivance has been, and is yet nowhere more conspicuous, than in the variety of tools and instruments of workmen and artificers, and the multiplicity of engines, that were all invented, either to assist the weakness of man, to correct his many imperfections, to gratify his laziness, or obviate his impatience." Several foregoing pages run in the same strain. But what relation has all this to religion or infidelity, more than it has to navigation or the peace in the north?

The many hands that are employed to supply our natural wants, that are really such, as hunger, thirst, and nakedness, are inconsiderable to the vast numbers that are all innocently gratifying the depravity of our corrupt nature, I mean the industrious, who get a livelihood by their honest labour, to which the vain and voluptuous must be beholden for all their tools and implements of ease and luxury. "The short-sighted vulgar, in the chain of causes, seldom can see farther than one link; but those who can enlarge their view, and will give themselves leisure of gazing on the prospect of concatenated events, may, in a hundred places, see good spring up, and pullulate from evil, as naturally as chickens do from eggs."

The words are to be found p. 46. in the Remark made on the seeming paradox; that in the grumbling hive,

The worst of all the multitude
Did something for the common good.

Where, in many instances, may be amply discovered, how unsearchable Providence daily orders the comforts of the laborious, and even the deliverances of the oppressed, secretly to come forth, not only from the vices of the luxurious, but likewise the crimes of the flagitious and most abandoned.

Men of candour and capacity perceive, at first sight, that in the passage censured, there is no meaning hid or expressed that is not altogether contained in the following words: "Man is a necessitous creature on innumerable accounts, and yet from those very necessities, and nothing else, arise all trades and employments." But it is ridiculous for men to meddle with books above their sphere.

The Fable of the Bees was designed for the entertainment of people of knowledge and education, when they have an idle hour which they know not how to spend better: it is a book of severe and exalted morality, that contains a strict test of virtue, an infallible touchstone to distinguish the real from the counterfeited, and shows many actions to be faulty that are palmed upon the world for good ones: it describes the nature and symptoms of human passions, detects their force and disguises; and traces self-love in its darkest recesses; I might safely add, beyond any other system of ethics: the whole is a rhapsody void of order or method, but no part of it has any thing in it that is sour or pedantic; the style, I confess, is very unequal, sometimes very high and rhetorical, and sometimes very low, and even very trivial; such as it is, I am satisfied that it has diverted persons of great probity and virtue, and unquestionable good sense; and I am in no fear that it will ever cease to do so while it is read by such. Whoever has seen the violent charge against this book, will pardon me for saying more in commendation of it, than a man, not labouring under the same necessity, would do of his own work on any other occasion.

The encomiums upon stews complained of in the presentment are no where in the book. What might give a handle to this charge, must be a political dissertation concerning the best method to guard and preserve women of honour and virtue from the insults of dissolute men, whose passions are often ungovernable: As in this there is a dilemma between two evils, which it is impracticable to shun both, so I have treated it with the utmost caution, and begin thus: "I am far from encouraging vice, and should think it an unspeakable felicity for a state, if the sin of uncleanness could be utterly banished from it; but I am afraid it is impossible." I give my reasons why I think it so; and, speaking occasionally of the music-houses at Amsterdam, I give a short account of them, than which nothing can be more harmless; and I appeal to all impartial judges, whether, what I have said of them is not ten times more proper to give men (even the voluptuous of any state) a disgust and aversion against them, than it is to raise any criminal desire. I am sorry the Grand Jury should conceive that I published this with a design to debauch the nation, without considering, that, in the first place, there is not a sentence nor a syllable that can either offend the chastest ear, or sully the imagination of the most vicious; or, in the second, that the matter complained of is manifestly addressed to magistrates and politicians, or, at least, the more serious and thinking part of mankind; whereas a general corruption of manners as to lewdness, to be produced by reading, can only be apprehended from obscenities easily purchased, and every way adapted to the tastes and capacities of the heedless multitude and unexperienced youth of both sexes: but that the performance, so outrageously exclaimed against, was never calculated for either of these classes of people, is self-evident from every circumstance. The beginning of the prose is altogether philosophical, and hardly intelligible to any that have not been used to matters of speculation; and the running title of it is so far from being specious or inviting, that without having read the book itself, nobody knows what to make of it, while, at the same time, the price is five shillings. From all which it is plain, that if the book contains any dangerous tenets, I have not been very solicitous to scatter them among the people. I have not said a word to please or engage them, and the greatest compliment I have made them has been, Apage vulgus. But as nothing (I say, p. 138) would more clearly demonstrate the falsity of my notions than that, the generality of the people should fall in with them, so I do not expect the approbation of the multitude. I write not to many, nor seek for any well-wishers, but among the few that can think abstractly, and have their minds elevated above the vulgar." Of this I have made no ill use, and ever preserved such a tender regard to the public, that when I have advanced any uncommon sentiments, I have used all the precautions imaginable, that they might not be hurtful to weak minds that might casually dip into the book. When (p. 137.) I owned, "That it was my sentiment that no society could be raised into a rich and mighty kingdom, or so raised subsist in their wealth and power for any considerable time, without the vices of man," I had premised, what was true, "That I had never said or imagined, that man could not be virtuous as well in a rich and mighty kingdom, as in the most pitiful commonwealth:" which caution, a man less scrupulous than myself might have thought superfluous, when he had already explained himself on that head in the very same paragraph which begins thus: "I lay down, as a first principle, that in all societies, great or small, it is the duty of every member of it to be good; that virtue ought to be encouraged, vice discountenanced, the laws obeyed, and the transgressors punished." There is not a line in the book that contradicts this doctrine, and I defy my enemies to disprove what I have advanced, p. 139, "That if I have shown the way to worldly greatness, I have always, without hesitation, preferred the road that leads to virtue." No man ever took more pains not to be misconstrued than myself: mind p. 138, when I say, "That societies cannot be raised to wealth and power, and the top of earthly glory, without vices; I do not think, that by so saying, I bid men be vicious, any more than I bid them be quarrelsome or covetous, when I affirm, that the profession of the law could not be maintained in such numbers and splendour, if there was not abundance of too selfish and litigious people." A caution of the same nature I had already given towards the end of the Preface, on account of a palpable evil inseparable from the felicity of London. To search into the real causes of things, imports no ill design, nor has any tendency to do harm. A man may write on poisons, and be an excellent physician. Page 235, I say, "No man needs to guard himself against blessings, but calamities require hands to avert them." And lower, "It is the extremities of heat and cold, the inconstancy and badness of seasons, the violence and uncertainty of winds, the vast power and treachery of water, the rage and untractableness of fire, and the stubbornness and sterility of the earth, that rack our invention, how we shall either avoid the mischiefs they produce, or correct the malignity of them, and turn their several forces to our own advantage a thousand different ways." While a man is inquiring into the occupation of vast multitudes, I cannot see why he may not say all this and much more, without being accused of depreciating and speaking slightly of the gifts and munificence of heaven; when, at the same time, he demonstrates, that without rain and sunshine this globe would not be habitable to creatures like ourselves. It is an out-of-the-way subject, and I would never quarrel with the man who should tell me that it might as well have been let alone: yet I always thought it would please men of any tolerable taste, and not be easily lost.

My vanity I could never conquer, so well as I could wish; and I am too proud to commit crimes, and as to the main scope, the intent of the book, I mean the view it was wrote with, I protest that it has been with the utmost sincerity, what I have declared of it in the Preface, where you will find these words: "If you ask me, why I have done all this, cui bono? And what good these notions will produce? Truly, besides the reader's diversion, I believe none at all; but if I was asked, what naturally ought to be expected from them? I would answer, That, in the first place, the people who continually find fault with others, by reading them would be taught to look at home, and examining their own consciences, be made ashamed of always railing at what they are more or less guilty of themselves; and that, in the next, those who are so fond of the ease and comforts of a great and flourishing nation, would learn more patiently to submit to those inconveniences, which no government upon earth can remedy, when they should see the impossibility of enjoying any great share of the first, without partaking likewise of the latter."

The first impression of the Fable of the Bees, which came out in 1714, was never carped at, or publicly taken notice of; and all the reason I can think on, why this second edition should be so unmercifully treated, though it has many precautions which the former wanted, is an Essay on Charity and Charity Schools, which is added to what was printed before. I confess, that it is my sentiment, that all hard and dirty work, ought, in a well-governed nation, to be the lot and portion of the poor, and that to divert their children from useful labour till they are fourteen or fifteen years old, is a wrong method to qualify them for it when are they grown up. I have given several reasons for my opinion in that Essay, to which I refer all impartial men of understanding, assuring them that they will not meet with such monstrous impiety in it as reported. What an advocate I have been for libertinism and immorality, and what an enemy to all instructions of youth in the Christian faith, may be collected from the pains I have taken on education for above seven pages together: and afterwards again, page 193, where speaking of the instructions the children of the poor might receive at church; from which, I say, "Or some other place of worship, I would not have the meanest of a parish that is able to walk to it, be absent on Sundays," I have these words: "It is the Sabbath, the most useful day in seven, that is set apart for divine service and religious exercise, as well as resting from bodily labour; and it is a duty incumbent on all magistrates, to take a particular care of that day. The poor more especially, and their children, should be made to go to church on it, both in the fore and the afternoon, because they have no time on any other. By precept and example, they ought to be encouraged to it from their very infancy: the wilful neglect of it ought to be counted scandalous; and if downright compulsion to what I urge might seem too harsh, and perhaps impracticable, all diversions at least ought strictly to be prohibited, and the poor hindered from every amusement abroad, that might allure or draw them from it." If the arguments I have made use of are not convincing, I desire they may be refuted, and I will acknowledge it as a favour in any one that shall convince me of my error, without ill language, by showing me wherein I have been mistaken: but calumny, it seems, is the shortest way of confuting an adversary, when men are touched in a sensible part. Vast sums are gathered for these charity schools, and I understand human nature too well to imagine, that the sharers of the money should hear them spoke against with any patience. I foresaw, therefore, the usage I was to receive, and having repeated the common cant that is made for charity schools, I told my readers, page 165. "This is the general cry, and he that speaks the least word against it, is an uncharitable, hard-hearted, and inhuman, if not a wicked, profane and atheistical wretch." For this reason, it cannot be thought, that it was a great surprise to me, when in that extraordinary letter to Lord C. I saw myself called "profligate author; the publication of my tenets, an open and avowed proposal to extirpate the Christian faith and all virtue, and what I had done so stunning, so shocking, so frightful, so flagrant an enormity, that it cried for the vengeance of Heaven." This is no more than what I have already expected from the enemies to truth and fair dealing, and I shall retort nothing on the angry author of that letter, who endeavours to expose me to the public fury. I pity him, and have charity enough to believe that he has been imposed upon himself, by trusting to fame and the hearsay of others; for no man in his wits can imagine that he should have read one quarter part of my book, and write as he does.

I am sorry if the words Private Vices, Public Benefits, have ever given any offence to a well-meaning man. The mystery of them is soon unfolded, when once they are rightly understood; but no man of sincerity will question the innocence of them, that has read the last paragraph, where I take my leave of the reader, "and conclude with repeating the seeming paradox, the substance of which is advanced in the title page; that private vices, by the dexterous management of a skilful politician, may be turned into public benefits." These are the last words of the book, printed in the same large character with the rest. But I set aside all what I have said in my vindication; and if, in the whole book called the Fable of the Bees, and presented by the grand jury of Middlesex to the judges of the King's Bench, there is to be found the least title of blasphemy or profaneness, or any thing tending to immorality or the corruption of manners, I desire it may be published; and if this be done without invective, personal reflections, or setting the mob upon me, things I never design to answer, I will not only recant, but likewise beg pardon of the offended public in the most solemn manner: and (if the hangman might be thought too good for the office) burn the book myself, at any reasonable time and place my adversaries shall be pleased to appoint.

The Author of the Fable of the Bees.

THE
FABLE OF THE BEES.