ABSTRACT
Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees (1729). The Augustan satirist Bernard Mandeville, reflecting upon the commercial
prosperity of Holland and England, did not believe that the Protestantism of these states could explain their economic prominence in Europe. Rather, he was sure that the love of gain characteristic of such commercial societies could be traced to the exercise of natural human passions, since “all Human Creatures have a restless Desire of mending their condition”. In making these claims Mandeville’s intention was to disparage the views of eminent contemporaries, such as Sir William Petty, Sir William Temple, Joseph Addison, and Daniel Defoe, for whom Dutch wealth was in various ways related to Protestant religious practices efficacious to trade, by contrast with the Catholicism which in part explained the declining riches of Spain and Portugal.
