ABSTRACT
Concurrent with sermons against misers, British poets and moral philosophers used them to assess the vices and virtues of eighteenth-century commercial society. Such poets as John Gay and Alexander Pope presented the unhappiness of misers as a warning against developing social norms that society rewarded the relentless pursuit of wealth. Moral philosophers, including Bernard Mandeville, Francis Hutcheson, and David Hume, presented misers as side-effects of commercial society. Whereas Mandeville embraced their expertise in accumulating capital as essential ingredients for the wealth of nations, Hutchison and Hume grimly acknowledged them as necessary evils in the otherwise beneficial rise of commerce. Against this backdrop, misers emerged as common characters in frequent debates over the relative merits of saving and spending over the course of the eighteenth century, a debate that titled to the side of saving by the century's end. To the extent that philosophers thought extreme saving should be reined in, they appealed to early education as a preventive, or urged tax reform to part misers with their money.
