there is also another value merely accidental, or extrinsick, consisting of the Causes why a parcel of Land, lying near a good Market, may be worth double to another parcel, though of the same intrinsick goodness; which answers the Queries, why Lands in the North of England are worth but sixteen years purchase, and those of the West above eight and twenty. It is no less necessary to know how many People there be of each Sex, State, Age, Religion, Trade, Rank, or Degree, &c. by the knowledge whereof, Trade and Government may be made more certain and Regular; for if men knew the People, as aforesaid, they might know the consumption they would make, so as Trade might not be hoped for where it is impossible. As for instance, I have heard much complaint, that Trade is not set in some of the South-western and North-western parts of Ireland, there being so many excellent Harbours for that purpose; whereas in several of those places I have also heard, that there are few other Inhabitants, but such as live ex sponte creatis, and are unfit Subjects of Trade, as neither employing others, nor working themselves. Moreover, if all these things were clearly and truly known (which I have but ghessed at) it would appear, how small a part ... will feed or fatten more or less, then the same weight of other Hay.. This former I call a Survey or Inquisition into the intrinsick values of land, this latter of extrinsick or accidentall follows. . . . [Previously Petty had said, p. 30: "Lands intrinsickally alike near populous places will not onely yield more Rent for these Reasons, but also more years purchase then in remote places." He now begins his calculation of the extrinsic value of lands by a discussion of the relative values of gold and silver, and of the same coin at different times, and then proceeds to explain how, by reckoning with the price of labor, the produce of different lands and the cost of working them, their rents can be ascertained, and concludes, page 34] Against all this will be objected, that these computations are very hard if not impossible to make; to which I answer onely this, that they are so, especially if none will trouble their hands or heads to make them, or give authority for so doing: but withall, I say, that until this is done, Trade will be too conjectural a work for any man to employ his thoughts about. [The remarks about Ireland can be paralleled without exception by passages, too long to quote, from Petty's Political Anatomy of Ireland, written about 1672.] PAGE 16: If people be so few, of the People work upon necessary Labours and Callings, viz. how many Women and Children do just nothing, only learning to spend what others get; how many are meer Voluptuaries; and as it were meer Gamesters by Trade; how many live by puzling poor people with unintelligible Notions in Divinity and Philosophy; how many by perswading credulous, delicate, and litigious Persons, that their Bodies or Estates are out of Tune, and in danger; how many by fighting as Souldiers; how many by Ministries of Vice and Sin; how many by Trades of meer Pleasure or Ornaments; and how many in way of lazy attendance, &c. upon others: And on the other side, how few are employed in raising and working necessary Food and Covering; and of the speculative men, how few do study Nature and Things! The more ingenious not advancing much further than to write and speak wittily about these matters. as that they can live, Ex sponte Creatis, or with little labour, such as is Grazing, &c., they become wholly without Art. PAGE 9 : And moreover, if by accompt of the people, of their Land and other wealth, the number of Lawyers and Scriveners were adjusted, I cannot conceive how their should remain above one hundredth part of what now are. REFLECTIONS (1660). PAGE 139: I had rather learn and labour to get my own living, than by lying and loytering under the name of Preaching, to be a drone on other Mens. POLITICAL ARITHMETIC PAGE 38: I say, if the Stock of these Men should be diminished by a Tax, and transferred to such as do nothing at all, but eat and drink, sing, play, and dance; nay to such as study the Metaphysicks, and other needless Speculation... the Wealth of the Publick will be diminished. Not all of these parallels are of equal weight in our discussion. That on the westward movement of London is scarcely significant of a common authorship, John Evelyn having set the idea afloat in the preceding year.2 In like manner the talk about equalizing the parishes was apparently a current commonplace. On the other hand, the remaining parallels, especially the last, are doubtless important. In addition to these parallel passages, other similarities are pointed out. "The most noticeable thing in the first few 1 Written ca. 1676. 2 Evelyn's Fumifugium (1661), p. 16. pages of the Bills," says Dr. Bevan, "is the amount of space devoted to a description of different diseases. They are described with a familiarity and precision which only a physician could be expected to have."1 Upon a layman the discussions, in chapters two and three, of the similarities between rickets and liver-growth, and between the green sickness, stopping of the stomach, mother, and rising of the lights, undoubtedly make a learned impression. Whether they were, in fact, the discussions of a learned or of an ignorant man, a specialist in the history of English medicine before Sydenham could probably say. But one need not be a medical antiquarian to see that, in the most elaborate of these discussions, the one concerning rickets and liver growth, and indeed, throughout all the discussions of this sort, the method of the writer of the Observations is distinctly statistical, is marked, indeed, by considerable statistical acuteness, and is scarcely at all diagnostic or pathological, as a physician's method, nowadays at any rate, would probably be. He enquires whether the same disease has been returned in different years under different rubrics; and he finds his answer by investigating the fluctuations from year to year in the number of deaths from each. Moreover, it is in the midst of these discussions of diseases that the variations in the number of those who died of rickets from year to year provokes this curious passage: Now, such back-startings seem to be universal in all things; for we do not only see in the progressive motion of wheels of Watches, and in the rowing of Boats, that there is a little starting or jerking backwards between every step forwards, but also (if I am not much deceived) there appeared the like in the motion of the Moon, which in the long Telescopes at Gresham Colledge one may sensibly discern. [Page 36.] De Morgan points out 2 the improbability that "that excellent machinist, Sir William Petty, who passed his day among the astronomers," should attribute to the motion of the moon in 1 Bevan's Petty, p. 46. 2 Budget of Paradoxes (1872), 68; Assurance Magazine, VIII, 167. her orbit all the tremors which she gets from a shaky telescope.1 Other peculiarities of the Observations which are held by Dr. Bevan to indicate Petty's authorship are the "references to Ireland derived apparently from personal observation," and the fact that "Hampshire, Petty's native county, is the only English county mentioned." 2 The latter argument might have been made much stronger for Petty. The author of the Observations bases many of his most interesting conclusions upon a comparison between the tables of London mortality and the "Table of a Country Parish." This country table is unquestionably based upon the parish register of the Abbey of St. Mary and St. Athelfleda, at Romsey, the church in which Petty's baptism is recorded and in which he lies buried.3 As for the two allusions to Ireland, on the other hand, they signify little or nothing. One of them is simply in connection with Graunt's belief (page 43), that deaths in child-bed are abnormally frequent "in these countries where women hinder the facility of their child-bearing by affected straightening of their bodies... what I have heard of the Irish women confirms me herein." The passage, it is obvious, no more indicates personal observation in Ireland than does the other,1 where the writer says, "I have heard . . . I have also heard" this and that about Ireland. Those who have agreed that Graunt was the author of the Observations, need not leave to their opponents the exclusive use of internal evidence. They, for their part, may first point 1 Mr. Hodge replies: "The paragraph objected to stands unaltered in the fifth edition, edited by Petty, and the question naturally arises, how came he to publish as an editor that which, it is asserted, he must have known to be so grossly absurd that it is impossible he could have published it as a writer?" (Assurance Magazine, VIII, 235, 236.) This is ingenious, but fallacious. The fifth edition is a reprint, not a revision. 2 Bevan's Petty, 46. 3 This fact has, I believe, escaped observation hitherto. A comparison of the transcript from the Abbey register contained in vol. iii of Dr. John Latham's Collections for a History of Romsey (British Museum Addl. MS. 26776, f. 14) with Graunt's table leaves in my mind no doubt that the "market town" Graunt describes is, in fact, the old town on the Test. 4 Quoted in full above, p. 120. out that there are considerable differences of language between Petty's works and Graunt's.1 Every one at all familiar with seventeenth-century English pamphlets has sympathized with Sir Thomas Browne's solicitude lest "if elegancy still proceedeth, and English pens maintain that stream, which we have of late observed to flow from many, we shall within few years be fain to learn Latin to understand English." Petty's Reflections and his Treatise of Taxes and Contributions are about the same size as the Observations. I have run through all three and counted the Latin words, phrases and quotations, excluding those which, like anno, per annum, per centum, are virtually English. The Reflections, in the 154 pages which are indisputably by Petty,2 contain at least twenty-four Latin phrases, the Treatise at least forty-two. The Observations show, aside from the sentiment on the title-page, but five Latin phrases; and of the five, three are within as many pages of the "Conclusion" (pages 97-99), in precisely the passage which exhibits the most conspicuous of all the parallels between the Observations and the Treatise. The supporters of Graunt may properly claim, in the second place and upon this they may insist, for it has not received adequate emphasis heretofore-that the statistical method of the Observations is greatly superior to the method of Petty's acknowledged writings upon similar subjects. Graunt exhibits a patience in investigation, a care in checking his results in every possible way, a reserve in making inferences, and a caution about mistaking calculation for enumeration, which do not characterize Petty's work to a like degree. To point out the differences in detail would require another paper as long as 1 Dr. Bevan (p. 44) would dissent: "It is difficult to discover any great diversity in style, language, or in any other point between the 'Bills' and Petty's authentic writings." 2 The letters ostensibly addressed to Petty were probably written by him, but, to be on the safe side, I excluded them. Fitzmaurice's Life of Petty also speaks (p. 92) of "the imaginary correspondent to whom the 'Reflections' are a reply." 3 Non, me ut miretur turba, laboro, Contentus paucis lectoribus. 4 Mr. Higgs has pointed out also (Economic Journal, no. 17, p. 72) that Graunt feared London was "too big," whereas Petty wished it still bigger. |