Edmond George Petty-Fitzmaurice

“ He had sat at the head of the Council of State when, in April 1653, Harrison and Lambert announced the dissolution of the Long Parliament, and his own dismissal. 'Sirs,' he had said on that memorable occasion to the intruding officers, 'we have heard what you did at the House in the morning, and before many hours all England will hear of it. But, Sirs, you are mistaken to think that the Parliament is dissolved; for no power under Heaven can dissolve them but themselves. ”

“ That poor and decaying persons of England always went for Ireland, and that the rich of Ireland always spent their estates in England. That the price of land hath fallen in England, even since the prohibition of Irish cattle, but will more probably rise upon the Union. That this Union is a probable means to get the real sovereignty of the seas, and to undermine the Hollanders trade at sea, and both without war and bloodshed. That if either nation did or should lose by the Union, yet even the loser, in justice, equity, honour and conscience, ought to promote and accept it from the other. ”

“ In the world of theology a furious bigotry still held an almost undisputed sway. The idea that the choice lay not necessarily between blank negation on the one hand and either Puritanism or the Church on the other, that science and religion had relations, that there was a possible connection between the religions and philosophies of the ancient world and Christianity, and that Christianity itself must have existed before the New Testament had been written, were ideas which it was barely possible to hold anywhere, without danger to the property and person of those who asserted them. ”

“ It was no mean achievement for any writer in the seventeenth century to have discerned the great theoretic truth on which free trade depends; to have clearly realised that the highest wisdom did not consist in closing the ports or in prohibiting exports; to have been willing to welcome the arrival of foreign wealth, even if money had in the first instance to go abroad to fetch it ”

“ But when, owing to the firmness of Henry Cromwell, the disputes had at last been brought to some kind of at least superficial settlement, the work of distribution had to be entered upon. This was really a far more difficult matter than even the survey which preceded it. In the first, Dr. Petty had had mainly to contend with the natural difficulties of the country; in the second, whoever was entrusted with it would have to wrestle with the fiercest passions of the human heart, excited by greed and ambition. ”

“ The hope indeed of the scientific men and philosophers of the seventeenth century, especially of the school of Cambridge Platonists, which Sir William's old Oxford ally, Dr. Wilkins, had joined, was that the future of religion lay with a rational and unsectarian form of Christianity; and many of the founders of the Royal Society looked forward to establishing religion on a basis of evidence and reason. But these views, though boasting distinguished adherents in England, amongst the masses made no converts, and were equally distasteful to the Protestant and the Romanist theologians. ”

“ I do the more freely open my soul to you in the matter, because I see 'tis not for the vitalls that you contend, but for outward limbs and accessories, without which you can subsist with plenty and honor; and therefore to throw what you have quite away, or at least to put it in daily hazard, only to make it a little more than it is, is what you would condemn a thousand times over in another; and you would not think the reply sufficient, that there was plain right in the cause and justice of their side; for iniquities will abound and the world will never be reformed. ”

“ The Declaration states the King's unalterable resolution to grant freedom of conscience for ever to all his subjects, rendering merit, and not a compliance with the Test Act, the condition of the tenure of office; experience had shown the impossibility of constraining conscience, and that people ought not to be forced in matters of mere religion; and liberty of conscience would add to the wealth and prosperity of the nation, and give to it what Nature designed it to possess—the commerce of the world. ”

“ His wish, therefore, was that 'England and Ireland should be united by one Common Council, or Parliament, at the proportion of ten to one, without tests or embarassing oaths, and that there be a well grounded liberty of religion in these Kingdoms such as may be depended on.' [12]
'What is meant,' he asked, 'by Union between England and Ireland?' He answered: 'That the wealth of both peoples united will increase faster than of both distinct, and consequently that their revenue may also increase proportionally. That the Government of both united will be less expensive and more safe. ”

“ Sir William had escaped destruction; but, notwithstanding his tenacity, it was only after many suits and after surrendering much, that he succeeded in getting into actual possession of his property, even after his legal title had been recognised and in retaining it when he had once got into possession. The custom still was to farm out the royal revenues to the highest bidder, and the farmers of the Irish Revenue, of whom Sir James Shaen, now an avowed enemy, was the head, were not only a powerful, but an unscrupulous body. Every species of abuse and oppression arose in consequence. ”

“ It is hard at this distance of time to discover what amount of solid truth lay underneath the huge mass of half-insane imaginations which confused and distracted the public mind. The case of Sir William Petty's friend, Captain Graunt, affords an illustration of the absurdities which, even before the excitement of the Popish Plot, could be accepted as undoubted truth, if a Roman Catholic was concerned. ”

“ One of the most discreditable chapters in the career of Bacon is that of his efforts to maintain this practice, which like other abuses lingered on in Ireland when it had ceased to exist in England. 'I say nothing now,' Sir William writes to Southwell in May 1677, 'of Poems and Scales of Creatures; you see now what these Farmers are; how they abuse the Chancellors of both kingdoms; how they fly to prerogative for protection. They have done all that knaves and fools, and that sharks and beggars could devise to do; all is nought. ”

“ Now if things are so in England, that really there is no such security, but that all are more or less hazardous, troublesome or chargeable to make, I see no reason for endeavouring to limit usury upon time any more than that upon place.' But he seems to have conceived the possibility of a state of such absolute security that no 'damnum emergens' could exist, and any interest on a loan would consequently be unfair beyond the standard of interest on money fixed by the rent of land. ”

“ If the wealth of Holland sprang from a wise and enlightened policy, the principal impediments to England's greatness had their origin in defects of policy. The widely separated character of the territories belonging to the English Crown, with their different Governments and separate legislative powers, stands first; and he again advocates a union between England, Scotland, and Ireland, with a view to a uniformity of trade and customs. ”

“ While insisting on the advantages of an increased population, Petty had, however, not failed to grasp the fact that, in order that an increase of population may not be injurious, there must be a corresponding increase in the efficiency of labour and in wealth. The internal prosperity of the country and the best means of promoting the material improvement of the people are, therefore, constantly present to his mind in the discussions of the subject of population. ”

“ The maggots had eaten out the guts of the Commonwealth, as Henry Cromwell and Dr. Petty had foreseen. The noble lines in which Milton in after-years lamented the fall of the Republic, the injustice of man, and the inequality of fate, were the dirge of an ideal existing in his own mind, rather than of the reality of existing things. By 1660 the magnates of the Commonwealth were sleeping the sleep of death in Henry VII.'s chapel, from which their corpses were soon to be rudely torn. ”

“ For such a candid and unimpassionate company as that was, and for such a glorious season, what could have been a fitter subject to pitch upon than natural philosophy? To have been always tossing about some theological question would have been to have made that their private diversion, the excess of which they themselves disliked in the public. ”

“ Concerning alliances, that is lofty Marriages, I sett down with the Greek posey of my Romsey Schoolmaster King, which is in English: "he that is Married according to himself is well Married:" that is to say in parity or proportion of parts, person, parentage, and fortune. The common opinion of the world shall be my rule. I will not sweat to make my Daughter a fortune nor to be honey for Drones. ”

“ Sir William Petty no more advocated a policy hostile to French than to Dutch trade, and would gladly have seen a good understanding between the two nations. For that reason probably he was stigmatised by Davenant as being necessarily a supporter of the French policy of Charles II., on the assumption that everybody must be on one side or the other, and either wish to ruin France or destroy Holland, in order thereby to enrich England. ”

“ Sir William, as usual, stood firmly by his own view of law and right and determined to fight out the issue, notwithstanding all the wise saws and sermons of Sir Robert on the wisdom of compromise. So the battle went on more fiercely than ever. 'I love peace,' he writes to Southwell, 'but will not buy it on base terms.' 'We are like a cat in a cupboard,' says Lady Petty, 'and must leap forth. We are now in a close fight with the farmers: lend us your prayers.' [32]
His position at the Admiralty was another cause of trouble, That position, he had by this time discovered, was no bed of roses. ”

“ His own observations of the habits of the clothworkers in England and of the Irish peasantry compelled him, however reluctantly, to the opinion that the general standard of living was as yet too low to make high daily wages of any advantage to the labourer, because of their tendency at once to reduce their hours and be content with wages just sufficient to support existence at a very low level of material civilisation. ”

“ As a greater profit he thought could be gained by manufacture than by husbandry, and by merchandise than by manufacture, he argued that the great object of English policy should be to promote shipping—which was the mother of trade, and therefore of manufactures and of inventions—and to raise revenue by taxing the manufactured article, and not the raw import. ”

“ But, Lord, Cousin, to what a magnitude will the Statutes both of England and Ireland swell, if they grow at this rate. How hard will it be for our lives, liberties, limbs, and estates to be taken away upon Statutes which we can never remember nor understand. ”

“ And this most frequently happened from those who, trusting to the sharpness of their own wits, would first attaque me with jeers, but being replied upon beyond their expectations, and deservedly laught at by the standers-by, would grow angry, and reek their revenge at other weapons, like gamesters; who—out of the high opinion they have that fortune is bound to favour them—venture to play, but when they find it otherwise, snatch up their stakes, and betake themselves to scurrility and violence. ”

“ The founders of great religions, even in the bygone eras of the world's history, have never themselves been the founders of great States. From the nature of the case it is almost impossible it should be otherwise, because they draw their ideas from a sphere excluding the compromises, the inequalities, and even the injustices, which, in secular affairs, have too often to be accepted as the conditions of the existence of government. ”

“ Political economy, in the modern acceptation of that term, may be seen just beginning to struggle into a bare existence as a separate branch of science in the pages of the writers of the earlier part of the seventeenth century. Economics, in the sense in which they were understood by the authors of antiquity, were concerned with those practical questions only which affected the finances of the State. In the Middle Ages even such limited inquiries could hardly find a natural place in a society which, outside the limits of the towns, was almost entirely based on the idea of personal service. ”

“ That neither the prerogative of King nor the privilege of Peers, or of either House of Parliament in either kingdom, need to be lessened hereby. That there may be different laws, even in any of the parts of either kingdom if need be, notwithstanding the Union. That for want of a Union, even the Protestant and English interest of Ireland may, as it formerly hath done, in time degenerate, be estrayed, and rebel. That as Wales is an example of the good effects of a Union, so will Ireland be to Scotland, New England, and the other of his Majesty's out-territories. ”

“ They notoriously exercised spiritual jurisdiction in Ireland, and an occult temporal power also, by influencing the justices of the peace of their own religion, so much so that in some parts of the country no Roman Catholic could be convicted, and crime went unpunished, as it was practically impossible for an English and a Protestant settler to live; for the priests had, as Sir William puts it, 'a militia' of their own, consisting of 'the divested persons,' who roamed about the country, and were far stronger than any armed force which the regular Government could oppose to them. ”

“ As for complaints, the Poor ever complained against the Rich; one endeavoured to cheat or oppress the other; and those out of power did ever find fault with those that are arm'd with it. Trading was ever dead among the Lazy and Ignorant; nor is it any more than good luck for the Ingenious and Industrious to thrive, or for the Innocent to be punished as malefactors. But if you would have me pitch upon the partialitys which may diminish our grievances in Ireland, I shall shortly do it as well as I can; and, I hope, without reflection on any person in power or envy of his preferment ”