Charles Henry Hull

“ While in the midst of that great argument, a chance reading of Graunt's book drew his attention to the constant relation subsisting between marriages, births, and burials. He recognized at once that this was but an admirable plan and management to keep the balance of mankind even; for, says he, "what can the maintaining throughout all ages and places of the proportions of mankind and all other creatures, this harmony in the generations of mankind, be but the work of One that ruleth the world?" ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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... ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Some individuals are not "superlucrators," and must be excluded. For example, there are twenty thousand churchmen in England, and over two hundred and seventy thousand in France. This quarter of a million of supernumerary clergymen, withdrawn out of the world, are adult and able-bodied persons, and consequently "equivalent to about double the same number of the promiscuous Mass of Mankind; ... wherefore the said Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand Churchmen (living as they do) makes the King of France's Thirteen Millions and a half to be less than Thirteen." ”

“ It is not necessary to pursue the contentions of the Political Arithmetick further, in order to see that the impediments of the greatness of France, such as paucity of ports, are natural and perpetual, while the impediments of England's greatness, being political, are but contingent and removable. ”

“ But, "Although it be very material to know the number of Subjects belonging to each Prince, yet when the Question is concerning their Wealth and Strength, It is also material to examine how many of them do get more than they spend and how many less." ”

“ This faith, which has been hitherto abundantly justified by the facts, is, of course, not logically incompatible with that form of the law of diminishing returns which is necessary to explain Ricardian rent. [18] But a man who has such faith is unlikely to hit upon the Ricardian formulation of the law. And Petty did not.
The device which played in Petty's theory of rent the place taken by diminishing returns in Ricardo's is clearly indicated in his calculation of the rent of the counties nearest London. ”

“ Similarly, the superiority of England in artisans employed upon shipping of all sorts, who likewise earn three times as much per capita as husbandmen, adds the equivalent of eighty thousand husbandmen more. Still further, the King of England's territories are, because of their coast line and deep rivers, "in effect but 12 miles from Navigable Water, the King of France's 65, ... upon which grounds it is clear that England can be supplied with all gross and bulky commodities of Foreign growth and Manufacture at far cheaper rates than France can be, namely, at about 4s. ”

“ Parallel with it goes the development of the German Universitäts-statistik from Conring to Achenwall and Schlözer, whose relations to English political arithmetic have not been fully worked out. So far as I can see, the German discipline was at no time superior to the English in any respect save in the possession of the name "statistics." ”

“ The remaining 25 millions must be due to labor. Now the people who perform this labor are as valuable as would be the fee of lands renting for what they earn; "for, although the Individiums of Mankind be reckoned at about 8 years' purchase, the Species of them is worth as many as Land, being in its nature as perpetual, for ought we know." ”

“ This done, taxation may be imposed, either directly upon the expenditure or upon the property which makes the expenditure possible, as administrative considerations may dictate. He assumes, accordingly, that the average of annual expenditure in England is £6 13s. 4d. per capita. No ground whatever is assigned for this assumption; and I cannot help suspecting that he reached it by guessing at a total annual expenditure of 40 million pounds and dividing that sum among an assumed population of 6 million people. ”

“ In the field of vital statistics the connection from Graunt to Süssmilch can be traced without a break. The extent to which Petty's Essays depend upon Graunt has been noted already. The next link in the chain is Edmund Halley's Estimate of the Degrees of Mortality of Mankind, which was published in 1693 in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. From this paper springs modern life insurance. ”

“ This title, too, has the advantage of characterizing for us the entire output of his second period of activity as an economic writer. The Political Anatomy and the Political Arithmetick are the forerunners, if not the direct ancestors, of eighteenth-century "statistics," the Staatenkunde of Achenwall and Schlözer.
The more numerous but briefer pamphlets of the third group were written, with one exception, [4] during such visits as he made to London, after 1682, to work for reforms in Ireland, and incidentally to enjoy the company of his friends in the Royal Society. ”