Bourgeois Deeds: How Capitalism Made Modernity 1700-1848

Something evidently happened in the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries. The first voice of theorizing in English is Addison: “With The Spectator the voice of the bourgeois,’ Basil Willey declares, “is first heard in polite letters, and makes his first decisive contribution to the English moral tradition.” Addison was “the first lay preacher to reach the ear of the middle-classes,” though it would seem that for the less high-brow middling sort Defoe scoops him by a decade or so. “The hour was ripe for a rehabilitation of the virtues [against Restoration cynicism], and [Addison and Steele] were the very men for the task.”³²⁰ Decades later, incidentally, the Dutch return the favor of the Addisonian project, under the heading of “Spectatorial Papers” in explicit imitation and against a perceived corruption of the bourgeois virtues—French manners, effeminate men, nepotism, and sleeping late.³²¹

LOFTIS ARGUMENT. Loftis has argued that the 18^th-century theatre testifies to a new admiration for the bourgeoisie. While commending Loftis for his energy in research the economist Jacob Viner offered "the simpler hypothesis. . . that as soon as merchants came to the theatre in sufficient numbers the dramatists would provide fare which would retain them as customers." Viner thus appeals to the Rise of the Bourgeoisie in its simplest economistic form—not as a rise in prestige originating in the superstructure but a rise in sheer numbers originating in the base. It is a cruder form of the Clark Hypothesis. Viner may be right about the 18^th century. [counter evidence in Loftis/] But in general the relation between actual and implied audience is not so simple. [look into Wayne Booth's thinking on just this point.] Shakespeare flattered his aristocratic and especially his royal audiences, but his actual audience contained numerous merchants of London [check in Shake. literature; also % of population that was merchant; ask John Huntington]. The director of Wall Street (DDDD) assaulted financial capitalism, but many a financial capitalist liked the movie [check in Wall Street Journal; Financial Times]

George Lillo, in his play at the dawn of bourgeois power, has his ideal of the London merchant, Thorowgood, assert that “as the name of merchant never degrades the gentleman, so by no means does it exclude him.”³²² Lillo lays it on thick. In the same scene Thorowgood on exiting instructs his assistant to “look carefully over the files to see whether there are any tradesmen’s bills unpaid.” One can smile from an aristocratic height at the goody-goody tendencies of bourgeois virtues. But after all, in seriousness, is it not a matter of virtue to pay one’s tailor? What kind of person accepts the wares of tradesmen and then refuses to give something in return? No merchant he.

Here: long section on Lillo’s,The London Merchant. Exact parallel with Simon Eyre in its annual performance
For a century and a half before 1848, then, between the decline of sacred holiness called religion and the rise of profane holiness called socialism and profane faith called nationalism, even advanced thinkers were well-disposed towards merchants and manufactures. Voltaire wrote in 1733, “I don’t know which is the more useful to the state, a well-powdered lord who knows precisely when the king gets up in the morning. . . or a great merchant who enriches his country, sends orders from his office to Surat or to Cairo, and contributes to the well-being of the world.” And later Samuel Johnson: “There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.” And later still, in 1844, on the eve of the Great Conversion against capitalism among American and other scholars, Emerson: “There are geniuses in trade, as well as in war. . . . Nature seems to authorize trade, as soon as you see the natural merchant. . . . The habit of his mind is a reference to standards of natural equity and public advantage; and he inspires respect, and the wish to deal with him, both for the quiet spirit of honor which attends him, and for the intellectual pastime which the spectacle of so much ability affords.”
There is no unified idea of "gentleman" that would apply without strain or self-contradiction to 1600, 1700, and 2007. The idea of honest dealing does not come from "gentlemen" in the 1600 definition, that is, from proud aristocrats sneering at the very idea of paying off their tailors.  On the contrary, the meaning of "gentleman" shifts radically, in England especially after 1832/1867.  The idea of honest dealing comes from merchants and tradesmen, such as Quakers insisting on fixed prices instead of bargaining, not ever from the gentry and the aristocrats. 

Adam Smith admired honesty, sincerity, candor in a way quite foreign to Shakespearean England, and bordering on the wild enthusiasm for such Romantic qualities of faithfulness to the Self in Wordsworthian England. In the Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759, 1790) he writes:

Frankness and openness conciliate confidence. We trust the man who seems willing to trust us. . . . The great pleasure of conversation and society . . . arises from. . . a certain harmony of minds, which like so many musical instruments cannot be obtained unless there is a free communication of sentiments and opinions. . . . The man who indulges us in this natural passion, who invites us into his heart, who, as it were, sets open the gates of his breast to us, seems to exercise a species of hospitality more delightful than any other.

TMS, VII.iv.28, p. 337

An Othello or an Hamlet who opened the gates of his breast would invite a fatal wound, and even in the comedies it was prudent to dissimulate.

Be careful: I am used to claiming that the mkt always existed. If so, why not always sense of responsibility? So it's not The Mkt tout court. People were involved in markets from the Dark Ages on. It was a new sense of. . . what? Adventure? Projectors? Maybe a new sense that it was all right to be a market person, or an acceptance of market outcomes as just. Some societies, and certainly big parts of many societies, were dominated by mercantile values: one thinks of the Phoenecians or their offshoot Carthage; the overseas Chinese, or indeed the overseas Japanese before they were forbidden to return; or Jews such as Jesus of Nazareth, with his parables of merchants and makers. There's something new in Holland c. 1600 and especially in England c. 1700 and Scotland and British North America c. 1750 and Belgium c. 1800.
Chapter 16:

For Example, a Bourgeois England Loved Measurement
Back to some coherence!
One countable piece of evidence that bourgeois values were becoming dominate in England in the 17^th and 18^th centuries is the new, dominate role of counting in giving evidence. It is assuredly modern. The pre-modern attitude—which survives now adays in many a non-quantitative modern—shows in a little business between Prince Hal and Sir John Falstaff. The scene is fictional early 15^th century. 1 Henry IV was written in London in 1597. Either date will do.

Hal disguised in stiffened cloth had been the night before one of the merely two assailants of Falstaff and his little gang of three other thieves. Falstaff had in fact after token resistance fled in terror, as his confederates did. One of them, Gadshill, and poor old Jack, re-count the episode to Prince Hal:

FALSTAFF: A hundred upon poor four of us.

PRINCE: What, a hundred, man?

FALSTAFF: I am a rogue if I were not at half-sword with a dozen of them, two hours together.

GADSHILL: We four set upon some dozen—

FALSTAFF [to the PRINCE: Sixteen at least, my lord.

GADSHILL: As we were sharing [the loot], some six or seven fresh men set upon us.