At the same time, the rest of us, in our role as subjects, are acting too. Our duty is to obey and look as though we mean it. Runciman glosses it thus: "It is not hypocrisy to pretend to be something one is not; indeed, in certain circumstances, that is the definition of loyalty." So we are all humbugs now and then, rulers and ruled alike; that is what the safety of the state requires. But this gives us a hidden liberty; we can mutter under our breath. As Hobbes says in Behemoth: "Hypocrisy hath this great prerogative above other sins, that it cannot be accused" - by which he means "proved". For Hobbes, all this is true of democracies just as it is of monarchies and aristocracies. As Runciman points out, this doesn't mean Hobbes is some sort of democrat. It is just that any type of regime relies on absolute sovereign power to function successfully.

For those of a tender sensibility, Mandeville's Fable of the Bees is even more shocking than Leviathan. John Wesley wrote in his journal in 1756: "Till now I imagined there had never appeared in the world such a book as the works of Machiavel. But Mandeville goes far beyond it." The "Man-devil" was even wickeder than "old Nick" because he actively celebrated hypocrisy, arguing that society depended on greed, pride and avarice to keep the economy humming. One thinks of Harold Macmillan discouraging a health campaign against smoking on the grounds that this would badly damage Treasury revenues.According to Mandeville, nowhere was this clearer than in Oliver Cromwell, "a vile wicked Hypocrite who, under the cloak of Sanctity broke through all Human and Divine laws to aggrandise himself". Yet, "In the Midst of his Villainies, he was a Slave to Business; and the most disinterested Patriot never watched over the Public Welfare, both at Home and Abroad, with greater Care and Assiduity, or retrieved the fallen Credit of a Nation in less time than this Usurper. But all for himself."