Charles Henry Hull

“ The seventeenth century was less careful of the individual's rights than the nineteenth. In the second place the economics of Petty's proposal are altogether sound. People are wealth. They are, indeed, the chief component of the national capital. The people of Ireland are capital badly situated. Their efficiency will be increased by transplanting them, just as the efficiency of a factory might be by removing it to a better site. The idea is inconsiderate; but, granting Petty's premises, it is by no means absurd. ”

“ Wherein is held forth to all concerned in Ireland's good settlement the benefits the Irish Transplantation will bring to each of them in particular, and to the Commonwealth in general, being chiefly intended as an Answer to a scandalous, seditious Pamphlet, entitled [The great Case of Transplantation in Ireland discussed] . Composed and published at the request of several persons in eminent place in Ireland, to the end all who desire it, might have a true Account of the Proceedings that have been there in the business of Transplantation, both as to the rise, progress, and end thereof. ”

“ Merely to note that there must be a surplus before rent can be paid, advances the discussion no whit beyond the experience of every man who has contracted to pay rent. Granted the surplus, nothing is plainer than that the cultivator would retain it if he could. "It is," as Ricardo remarks, "one thing to be able to bear a high rent, and another thing actually to pay it." [10] What needs to be explained is not how the cultivator can pay rent, but why he must. Adam Smith observed that, "as soon as the land becomes private property, the landlord demands a share of almost all the produce." ”

“ The Natural and Political Observations made upon the Bills of Mortality, by Captain John Graunt, citizen of London, 1662, bear so intimate a relation to this third group of Petty's writings, and they are themselves of such importance in the history of statistics, that, if they were really written by Petty, as some assert, he should not be deprived of the credit which their author unquestionably deserves. ”

“ The corn rent of agricultural lands, he says, is determined by the excess of their produce over the expenses of their cultivation, those expenses being paid in corn. And the value of this excess, or the money rent, is measured by the amount of silver that a man working a free mine for the same period as the cultivator of the corn land will have left after meeting his expenses with a portion of the silver that he has secured. ”

“ If we turn to the history of political arithmetic in England, we find the influence of Petty alone as clear and decisive as was the joint influence of Petty and Graunt upon vital statistics. Davenant declared that Petty first began the application of this art to the particular objects of revenue and trade, in which he had as yet been followed by very few. ”

“ Title, 1 l., preface, 5 ll., pp. 1—102, 12o. —— Page 1 of England's Guide has this caption: " A Discourse of Trade. Being a Comparison between England and other parts of Europe, wherein the Incouragement of Industry is promoted in these Islands of Great Britain and Ireland." England's Guide to Industry is a surreptitious issue of Petty's Political Arithmetick. ”

“ Not only can each specific condemnation of some restriction upon trade be offset by a specific commendation of some other restriction, but, what is far more important, it is clear also that to represent Petty as an advocate of laissez-faire on principle is altogether to misrepresent him. ”

“ Bearing in mind that, according to Petty's view of the matter,—a view shared by seventeenth century economists generally,—rent is a criterion of prosperity and its rise the surest sign of growing wealth, we can see how his theory that high rents were directly due to dense population explains his advocacy of wholesale schemes of "transplantation" in order to increase the wealth and power of the State. ”

“ The income of individuals is, of course, less than their expenditure by the amount of their savings; but if that objection occurred to him at all, he probably thought that his distinction between potential and actual riches met it well enough. He therefore considered that expenditure measured income. Now income must flow either from property or from labor. The first step, then, is to determine the amount of expenditure; the second, to ascertain from what sources this expenditure is chiefly met. ”

“ Dublin: | Printed by Boulter Grierson, Printer to the | King's Most Excellent Majesty. | MDCCLXIX [1769] .
Pp. i—xxiv. 1—488, 8°. —— The Treatise of Taxes is reprinted from the edition of 1679 (6 c) , the Essays from that of 1699 (26 a) , the Political Anatomy from that of 1719 (24 b) .
[28.] ⁠Of making cloth with sheeps wool. In History of the Royal Society... By Thomas Birch... Vol. i.
London: Printed for A. Millar in the Strand. MDCCLVI [1756] . 4°.——Pp. 55—65.
[29.] ⁠The Elements of Ireland, and of its Religion and Policy, by Sir William Petty, Fellow of ye Royal Society, 1687. ”

“ For example, in the absence of a census he was forced to reckon the population of London, of England, and of Ireland. So far as London is concerned, he had as a basis certain facts—the number of burials and the number of houses—which bear some relation to the number of people. He then multiplied the number of burials by thirty, [4] satisfying himself by quoting Graunt's authority for that number. The result thus obtained he sought to confirm by multiplying the number of houses by a factor assumed to represent the average number of inhabitants to a house. ”

“ And in a contest with France, as he never tires of showing, England has all the natural advantages necessary to ultimate success.
The argument of the Political Arithmetick might almost be condensed, though at some risk of misrepresenting the author's temper, into the words of a not unknown verse, —
"We don't want to fight; but, by jingo, if we do,
⁠We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money, too." ”

“ M [orley] . Reprinted from the 1699 edition of the Several Essays, with the omission of the Political Arithmetick, for which is substituted (pp. 133—192) an account "Of the people of England. Founded upon the calculations of Gregory King, Lancaster Herald, and forming part of 'An essay [by Charles Davenant] upon the probable methods of making a people gainers in the balance of trade,' published in 1699." There is also an issue with the imprint London, Paris, New York and Melbourne.
[27.] ⁠Tracts; | chiefly relating to | Ireland. | Containing: | I. A Treatise of taxes and contri-|butions. ”

“ Out of his discussion of taxes proceeds his treatment of rent, the "mysterious nature" of which he thinks it well to explain before talking too much about its taxation. There have been intimations that Petty held a "correct" theory of rent. [6] It is well, therefore, to see just what his theory is. It is, first of all, a theory of agricultural rent. Accordingly, he distinguishes between "the natural and genuine Rent of Lands" [7] and their rent in gold or silver, between the "corn rent" and "money rent." ”

“ London, | Printed by John Martyn, Printer to the | Royal Society, at the Sign of the Bell in St. Paul's | Church-yard. MDCLXXVI [1676] .
1 l., recto blank, verso, order of Royal Society to print, title 1 l., epistles dedicatory, 9 ll., index, 6 ll., preface 3 ll., pp. 1—150, and two folding tables not included in the pagination, 8o.——According to Dr Campbell and James Milne this edition was prepared by Petty.
The Natural and political observations were also reprinted by Dr W. Heberden in his Collection of the yearly bills of mortality, 1759. See no. 13 b of the bibliography of Petty. ”

“ The neatness with which industrial facts can be represented by the use of mathematical terms, integral, symbolic, or graphic, carries undeniable advantages for purposes of analysis. It helps to keep ideas distinct and uniform. It throws light upon their possible permutations and combinations. But this very neatness has its dangers. The mistakes of political arithmetic may be repeated by sociological geometry and economic calculus. ”

“ I answer, so much as the money which another single man can save within the same time, over and above his expence, if he imployed himself wholly to produce and make it; viz., Let another man go travel into a Country where there is Silver, there Dig it, Refine it, bring it to the same place where the other man planted his Corn, Coyne it, &c. the same person, all the while of his working for Silver, gathering also food for his necessary livelihood, and procuring himself covering &c. I say the Silver of the one must be esteemed of equal value with the Corn of the other." Treatise of Taxes, 24-25 ”

“ Thus, protesting that the suggestion is but "a jocular and perhaps ridiculous digression, which I desire men to look upon rather as a Dream or Resvery than a rational proposition," he calculates in the Political Arithmetick that, if the people of Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland were all transplanted to England, the resultant rise in rents and in year's purchase would so enrich that kingdom that it could afford to buy the lands and fixtures of its neighbors and to pay the expense of importing their persons and movables. ”

“ Interest is "a Reward for forbearing the use of your own Money for a Term of Time agreed upon, whatever need yourself may have of it in the meanwhile"; and laws limiting interest are as ill-judged as those limiting the exportation of money or the rate of exchange, "for Interest always carrieth with it an Ensurance praemium which is very casual, besides that of Forbearance." ”

“ Many of them evince an entire disregard for the wishes and interests of individuals. In short, if we understand mercantilism to consist, broadly speaking, in a tendency to force the transition from local to national economic coherence by means of governmental interference with the activities of individuals in business, then Petty was one of the most extreme among English mercantilists. ”

“ On the contrary, he not only assumed, like the political disciple of Hobbes that he was, that the government is justified in doing anything whereby the national wealth will be increased, but he was unwearying in devising schemes, sometimes legislative, sometimes administrative, for that end. ”

“ Süssmilch himself says that die göttliche Ordnung in den Veränderungen des menschlichen Geschlechtes first became clear to him while he was reading Derham's book; and he thereupon sent to England for the writings of Graunt and Petty, which were mentioned by Derham, and was in large part guided by them in producing his famous work. In view of these facts it is clear that the German historians of statistics are mistaken in making Süssmilch the father of vital statistics. [12] The true beginnings of the science are to be found in the Observations on the Bills of Mortality of London. ”

“ His line of argument is ingenious. He first proves, by the example of Holland, that a small country and few people may, by their situation, trade, and policy, be equivalent in wealth and strength to a far greater people and territory. ”

“ Petty's theory of value, like his theory of rent, is developed incidentally to the discussion of taxation. It is an uncompromising quantity-of-labor theory. "Let a hundred men work ten years upon Corn, and the same number of men, the same time, upon Silver; I say that the neat proceed of the silver is the price of the whole neat proceed of the Corn, and like parts of one the price of like parts of the other... ”

“ An investigator may fancy his problem solved when it is merely restated in a new form. The new and neater form may be a step toward eventual solution. Achieved solution it generally is not.
The influence of the statistical method, as exemplified in Graunt's Observations and in Petty's writings, can be traced in two directions. One springs primarily from Graunt, flows through Petty's Essays, and leads, as has already been said, to modern vital statistics: the other proceeds from Petty's Political Arithmetick through Davenant and Gregory King to Arthur Young and Chalmers. ”