Interests and Rights in Bernard Mandeville’s Fable Of the Bees and Trenchard and Gordon’s Cato’s Letters

This chapter examines the way in which political thinkers and political actors in early eighteenth-century England responded to the challenges produced by the Financial Revolution as it ushered in new economic institutions such as the system of public credit, joint-stock companies and chartered banks. The South Sea Bubble of 1720 provides the context for both Trenchard and Gordon’s Cato’s Letters and the publication of a new, expanded edition of Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees. This chapter argues that Mandeville and Cato’s Letters represent two discrete aspects of classical liberalism with Mandeville articulating an interest-based version that eschews natural rights discourse and Cato’s Letters exemplifying the rights-based account of Lockean liberalism demonstrating deep suspicion toward the form of self-interest associated with the collusion of political and economic power. Mandeville’s premise “Private vices, Public benefits” suggests a rudimentary framework for a system of the natural harmony of economic interests.