ABSTRACT
This chapter shows some of the characteristics of ‘traditional’ humanist writing about trade, luxury and public morality: the rest belong to the new forms of economic writing that develop in the period. The pieces from Mandeville are the concluding lines of The Grumbling Hive, in which the ‘moral’ of the whole poem is laid out, and two of the prose ‘Remarks’, expanding and explaining points from earlier in the poem. Simplicity of Manners may be more easily preserved in a Republic than a Monarchy; but if once lost, may be sooner recovered in a Monarchy, the Example of a Court being of great Efficacy, either to reform or to corrupt a People. A private Family in difficult Circumstances, all Men agree, ought to melt down their Plate, walk on Foot, retrench the Number of their Servants, wear neither Jewels nor rich Cloaths, and deny themselves expensive Diversions.
