Pleasure of itself is not a vice. Having a garden, which we all
know to be perfectly innocent, is a great pleasure. At the same time, in
this state of being there are many pleasures vices, which however are so
immediately agreeable that we can hardly abstain from them. The
happiness of Heaven will be, that pleasure and virtue will be perfectly
consistent. Mandeville puts the case of a man who gets drunk in an
alehouse; and says it is a publick benefit, because so much money is got
by it to the publick. But it must be considered, that all the good
gained by this, through the gradation of alehouse-keeper, brewer,
maltster, and farmer, is overbalanced by the evil caused to the man and
his family by his getting drunk[854]. This is the way to try what is
vicious, by ascertaining whether more evil than good is produced by it
upon the whole, which is the case in all vice. It may happen that good
is produced by vice; but not as vice; for instance, a robber may take
money from its owner, and give it to one who will make a better use of
it. Here is good produced; but not by the robbery as robbery, but as
translation of property[855]. I read Mandeville forty, or, I believe,
fifty years ago.
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