ABSTRACT
The interval between Locke and Hume is better lled up by the philosophers than by the economists. Bishop Berkeley, the most important philosopher, was one of the most important economists. Yet this last is little to say. Berkeley always took up the subject of economnics rather from a desire to carry out a particular reform than to gain truth for its own sake in this region; and his eco nomical writings are suggestive rather than systematic. The eects on English society of the South Sea Scheme and kindred speculations impressed him deeply, and led to his Essay towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain (1721). He took too gloomy a view of the decadence of England; and his own suggestions are not far in advance of current economics. He proposes, for example, a bounty on children, and the conscation of half the estates of those who die unmarried. His Alciphron1 (1732) contains, besides an attack on free thinkers generally, a reply to “the wickedest book that ever was,” namely, Mandeville’s Gambling Hive: or, Knaves Turned Honest (1714), expanded (1723) into the Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Public Benefits.2 In the course of this reply he points out some obvious economical sophisms of Mandeville; and he gives at some length his own ethics and political philosophy. He had already given a sketch of these in his sermon Passive Obedience on the Principles of the Law of Nature (1712), which is largely a criticism of Locke’s Civil Government. The ethics are a “theological Utilitarianism,” such as we meet again in Abraham Tucker, Paley, and Malthus. The political philosophy adds nothing new to the points of controversy; and his remarks on subjects connected with economics are always most valuable when they are elicited, not by authors and theories, but by pressing social questions of the day. In his Journal of a Visit to Italy (1717) he is careful to notice the economical features of country and people; and in the Querist (1735-37), he deals with the condition of Ireland, as he has seen it and known it, and with the improvements in it which he and his friend Prior hoped to make by the promotion of arts and sciences and a National Bank. The Querist is the happiest of his economical writings, and adds to the admiration which all philosophical students have felt towards “one whom the wicked are not worthy even to praise.” But Berkeley rendered no such service to the political philosophy of Locke as he rendered
to the metaphysics of that author. In this region the “dry light” of the less enthusiastic Hume will help us further.
