Books: Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic
S >>
Sir William Petty >> Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 Transcribed from the Cassell & Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
ESSAYS ON MANKIND AND POLITICAL ARITHMETIC
Contents:
Introduction (by Henry Morley)
Another Essays
The stationer to the reader
The principal points of this discourse
Of the growth of the city of London
Further observation upon the Dublin bills
The stationer to the reader
A postscript to the stationer
Two essays in political arithmetic
To the king's most excellent majesty
An essay in political arithmetic
Five essays in political arithmetic
The first essay
The second essay
The third essay.
The fourth essay
The fifth essay
Of the people of England (by Gregory King)
INTRODUCTION.
William Petty, born on the 26th of May, 1623, was the son of a
clothier at Romsey in Hampshire. After education at the Romsey
Grammar School, he continued his studies at Caen in Normandy. There
he supported himself by a little trade while learning French, and
advancing his knowledge of Greek, Latin, Mathematics, and much else
that belonged to his idea of a liberal education. His idea was
large. He came back to England, and had for a short time a place in
the Navy; but at the age of twenty he went abroad again, and was
away three years, studying actively at Utrecht, Leyden, and
Amsterdam, and also in Paris. In Paris he assisted Thomas Hobbes in
drawing diagrams for his treatise on optics. At the age of twenty-
four Petty took out a patent for the invention of a copying machine.
It was described in a folio pamphlet "On Double Writing." That was
in 1647, in Civil War time, and although Petty followed Hobbes in
his studies, he did not share the philosopher's political opinions,
but held with the Parliament. In 1648 he added to his former
pamphlet a "Declaration concerning the newly invented Art of Double
Writing."
Samuel Hartlib, the large-hearted Pole, who in those days spent his
worldly means in England for the advancement of agriculture and of
education, and other aids to the well-being of a nation, had caused
Milton to write his letter on education, as has been shown in the
Introduction to the hundred and twenty-first volume of this Library,
which contains that Letter together with Milton's Areopagitica.
Young Petty's first published writing was a Letter to Hartlib on
Education, entitled "The Advice of W. P. to Mr. Samuel Hartlib for
the Advancement of some Particular Parts of Learning." This
appeared in 1648, when Petty's age was twenty-five, and its aim was
to suggest a wider view of the whole field of education than had
been possible in the Middle Ages, of which schools and colleges were
then preserving the traditions, as they do still here and there to
some extent. This pamphlet has been reprinted in the sixth volume
of the "Harleian Miscellany." William Petty wished the training of
the young to be in several respects more practical.
His own activity of mind caused him to settle at Oxford, where he
taught anatomy and chemistry, which he had been studying abroad. He
had read with Hobbes the writings of Vesalius, the great founder of
modern practical anatomy. In 1649 William Petty graduated at Oxford
as Doctor of Medicine, obtained a fellowship at Brasenose, and
practised. In 1650 he surprised the public by restoring the action
of the lungs in a woman who had been hanged for infanticide, and so
restoring her to life.
Dr. Petty now took his place at Oxford among the energetic men of
science who had been inspired by the teaching of Francis Bacon to
seek knowledge by direct experiment, and to value knowledge above
all things for its power of advancing the welfare of man. The
headquarters of these workers were at Oxford, and in London at
Gresham College.
In 1650 Petty was made Professor of Anatomy at Oxford, and it is a
characteristic illustration of his great activity of mind that he
was at the same time Professor of Music at Gresham College. Music
had then a high place in the Seven Sciences, as that use of
regulated numbers which expressed the harmonies of the created
world. The Seven Sciences were divided into three of the Trivium,
and four of the Quadrivium. The three of the Trivium concerned the
use of speech; they were Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic. The four of
the Quadrivium concerned number and measure; they were Arithmetic,
Geometry, Music; and Astronomy, which led up straight to God.
Advance to Music might be represented in the student's mind by his
reaching to a sense of the harmonious relation of all his studies,
which, so to speak, lived in his mind as a single well-proportioned
thought.
In 1652 Dr. Petty was sent to Ireland as physician to the army of
the Commonwealth. While there his active mind observed that the
Survey on which the Government had based its distribution of
fortified lands to the soldiers had been "most inefficiently and
absurdly managed." He obtained the commission to make a fresh
Survey, which he completed accurately in thirteen months, and by
which he obtained in payments from the Government and from other
persons interested ten thousand pounds. By investing this in the
purchase of soldiers' claims, he secured for himself an Irish estate
of fifty thousand acres in the county of Kerry, opened upon it mines
and quarries, developed trade in timber, and set up a fishery. John
Evelyn said of him "that he had never known such another genius, and
that if Evelyn were a prince he would make Petty his second
councillor at least." Henry Cromwell as Lord Deputy in Ireland made
Petty his secretary.
Petty's Maps were printed in 1685, two years before his death, as
"Hiberniae Delineatio quoad hactenus licuit perfectissima;" a
collection of thirty-six maps, with a portrait of Sir William Petty,
a work answering to its description as the most perfect delineation
of Ireland that had up to that time been obtained. There is a
coloured copy of Petty's maps in the British Museum, and also an
uncoloured copy, with the first five maps varying from those in the
coloured copy, and giving a General Map of Ireland, followed by Maps
of Leinster, Munster, Ulster, and Connaught. There was afterwards
published in duodecimo, without date, "A Geographical Description of
ye Kingdom of Ireland, collected from ye actual Survey made by Sir
William Petty, corrected and amended, engraven and published by Fra.
Lamb." This volume gives as its contents, "one general mapp, four
provincial mapps, and thirty-two county mapps; to which is added a
mapp of Great Brittaine and Ireland, together with an Index of the
whole."
At the Restoration William Petty accepted the inevitable change, and
continued his service to the country. He was knighted by Charles
the Second, and appointed in 1661 Inspector-General of Ireland. He
entered Parliament. He was one of the first founders of the Royal
Society, established at the beginning of the reign of Charles the
Second; and the outcome of these scientific studies along the line
marked out by Francis Bacon, which had been actively pursued in
Oxford and at Gresham College. In 1663 he applied his ingenuity to
the invention of a swift double-bottomed ship, that made one or two
passages between England and Ireland, but was then lost in a storm.
In 1670 Sir William Petty established on his lands at Kerry the
English settlement at the head of the bay of Kenmare. The building
of forty-two houses for the English settlers first laid the
foundations of the present town of Kenmare. "The population,"
writes Lord Macaulay, "amounted to a hundred and eighty. The land
round the town was well cultivated. The cattle were numerous. Two
small barks were employed in fishing and trading along the coast.
The supply of herrings, pilchards, mackerel, and salmon, was
plentiful, and would have been still more plentiful had not the
beach been, in the finest part of the year, covered by multitudes of
seals, which preyed on the fish of the bay. Yet the seal was not an
unwelcome visitor: his fur was valuable; and his oil supplied light
through the long nights of winter. An attempt was made with great
success to set up ironworks. It was not yet the practice to employ
coal for the purpose of smelting; and the manufacturers of Kent and
Sussex had much difficulty in procuring timber at a reasonable
price. The neighbourhood of Kenmare was then richly wooded; and
Petty found it a gainful speculation to send ore thither." He
looked also for profit from the variegated marbles of adjacent
islands. Distant two days' journey over the mountains from the
nearest English, Petty's English settlement of Kenmare withstood all
surrounding dangers, and in 1688, a year after its founder's death,
defended itself successfully against a fierce and general attack.
Sir William Petty died at London, on the 16th of December, 1687, and
was buried in his native town of Romsey. He had added to his great
wealth by marriage, and was the founder of the family in which
another Sir William Petty became Earl of Shelburne and first Marquis
of Lansdowne. The son of that first Marquis was Henry third Marquis
of Lansdowne, who took a conspicuous part in our political history
during the present century.
Sir William Petty's survey of the land in Ireland, called the Down
Survey, because its details were set down in maps, remains the legal
record of the title on which half the land in Ireland is held. The
original maps are preserved in the Public Record Office at Dublin,
and many of Petty's MSS. are in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.
He published in 1662 and 1685 a "Treatise of Taxes and
Contributions, the same being frequently to the present state and
affairs of Ireland," of which his view started from the general
opinion that men should contribute to the public charge according to
their interest in the public peace--that is, according to their
riches. "Now, he said, "there are two sorts of riches--one actual,
and the other potential. A man is actually and truly rich according
to what he eateth, drinketh, weareth, or in any other way really and
actually enjoyeth. Others are but potentially and imaginatively
rich, who though they have power over much, make little use of it,
these being rather stewards and exchangers for the other sort than
owners for themselves." He then showed how he considered that
"every man ought to contribute according to what he taketh to
himself, and actually enjoyeth."
In 1674 Sir William Petty published a paper on "Duplicate
Proportion," and in 1679 he published in Latin a "Colloquy of David
with his Own Soul." In 1682 he published a tract called
"Quantulumcunque, concerning Money;" and "England's Guide to
Industry," in 1686. From 1682 to 1687, the year of his death, Sir
William Petty was drawing great attention to the "Essays on
Political Arithmetic," which are here reprinted. There was the
little "Essay in Political Arithmetic, concerning the People,
Housings, Hospitals of London and Paris;" published in 1682, again
in French in 1686, and again in English in 1687. There was the
little "Essay concerning the Multiplication of Mankind, together
with an Essay on the Growth of London," published in 1682, and again
in 1683 and 1686. There was in 1683, "Another Essay in Political
Arithmetic concerning the growth of the City of London." There were
"Farther Considerations on the Dublin Bills of Mortality," in 1686;
and "Five Essays on Political Arithmetic" (in French and English),
"Observations upon the Cities of London and Rome," in 1687, the last
year of Sir William Petty's life. Other writings of his were
published in his lifetime, or have been published since his death.
He was in the study of political economy one of the most ingenious
and practical thinkers before the days of Adam Smith.
But the interest of those "Essays in Political Arithmetic" lies
chiefly in the facts presented by so trustworthy an authority.
London had become in the time of the Stuarts the most populous city
in Europe, if not in the world. This Sir William Petty sought to
prove against the doubts of foreign and other critics, and his
"Political Arithmetic" was an endeavour to determine the relative
strength in population of the chief cities of England, France, and
Holland. His application of arithmetic in the first of these essays
to a census of the population at the Day of Judgment he himself
spoke of slightingly. It is a curious example of a bygone form of
theological discussion. But his tables and his reasonings upon them
grow in interest as he attempts his numbering of the people in the
reign of James II. by collecting facts upon which his deductions
might be founded. The references to the deaths by Plague in London
before the cleansing of the town by the great fire of 1666 are very
suggestive; and in one passage there is incidental note of delay in
the coming of the Plague then due, without reckoning the change made
in conditions of health by the rebuilding. Nobody knew, and no one
even now can calculate, how many lives the Fire of London saved.
There was in Petty's time no direct numbering of the people. The
first census in this country was not until more than a hundred years
after Sir William Petty's death, although he points out in these
essays how easily it could be established, and what useful
information it would give. There was a census taken at Rome 566
years before Christ. But the first census in Great Britain was
taken in 1801, under provision of an Act passed on the last day of
the year 1800, to secure a numbering of the population every ten
years. Ireland was not included in the return; the first census in
Ireland was not until the year 1813.
Sir William Petty had to base his calculations partly upon the Bills
of Mortality, which had been imperfectly begun under Elizabeth, but
fell into disuse, and were revived, as a weekly record of the number
of deaths, beginning on the 29th of October, 1603; notices of
diseases first appeared in them in 1629. The weekly bills were
published every Thursday, and any householder could have them
supplied to him for four shillings a year. These essays will show
how inferences as to the number of the living were drawn from the
number of the dead. And even now our Political Arithmetic depends
too much upon rough calculations made from the death register. It
is seven years since the last census; we have lost count of the
changes in our population to a very great extent, and have to wait
three years before our reckoning can be made sure. The interval
should be reduced to five years.
Another of Sir William Petty's helps in the arithmetic of population
was the Chimney Tax, a revival of the old fumage or hearth-money--
smoke farthings, as the people called them--once paid, according to
Domesday Book, for every chimney in a house. Charles the Second had
set up a chimney tax in the year 1662; the statistics of the
collection were at the service of Sir William Petty. The tax
outlived him but two years. It was promptly abolished in the first
year of William and Mary.
The interest taken at home and abroad in these calculations of
Political Arithmetic set other men calculating, and reasoning upon
their calculations. The next worker in that direction was Gregory
King, Lancaster Herald, whose calculations immediately followed
those of Sir William Petty. Sir William Petty's essays extended
from 1682 until his death in 1687. Gregory King's estimates were
made in 1689. They were a study of the number population and
distribution of wealth among us at the time of the English
Revolution, and the unpublished results were first printed in a
chapter on "The People of England," which formed part a volume
published in 1699 as "An Essay upon the Probable Methods of making a
People Gainers in the Balance of Trade, by the Author of the Essay
on Ways and Means." The volume was written by a member of
Parliament in the days of William and Mary, who desired to apply
principles of political economy to the maintenance of English wealth
and liberty. It has been wrongly scribed to Defoe; and its
suggestion of the plan a trading Corporation for solution of the
whole problem of relief to the poor who cannot work, and relief from
the poor who can, might indeed make another chapter in Defoe's
"Essay on Projects." The chapter, which gives the Political
Arithmetic of Gregory King, with such comment and suggestions as
might be expected from a liberal supporter of the Revolution, and
with this suggestion of a Corporation, is in itself a complete
essay. It follows naturally upon the Political Arithmetic of Sir
William Petty in close sequence of time, and in carrying a like
method of inquiry forward until it reaches a few more conclusions.
I have, therefore, added it to this volume. It seems, at any rate,
to show how Sir William Petty's books, of which the very small size
grieved the stationer, had a large influence on other minds; his
figures bearing fruit in a new search for facts and careful
reasoning on the condition of the country at one of the most
critical times in English history.
H. M.
THE STATIONER TO THE READER
The ensuing essay concerning the growth of the city of London was
entitled "Another Essay," intimating that some other essay had
preceded it, which was not to be found. I having been much
importuned for that precedent essay, have found that the same was
about the growth, increase, and multiplication of mankind, which
subject should in order of nature precede that of the growth of the
city of London, but am not able to procure the essay itself, only I
have obtained from a gentleman, who sometimes corresponded with Sir
W. Petty, an extract of a letter from Sir William to him, which I
verily believe containeth the scope thereof; wherefore, I must
desire the reader to be content therewith, till more can be had.
The extract of a letter concerning the scope of an essay intended to
precede another essay concerning the growth of the City of London,
&c. An Essay in Political Arithmetic, concerning the value and
increase of People and Colonies.
The scope of this essay is concerning people and colonies, and to
make way for "Another Essay" concerning the growth of the city of
London. I desire in this first essay to give the world some light
concerning the numbers of people in England, with Wales, and in
Ireland; as also of the number of houses and families wherein they
live, and of acres they occupy.
2. How many live upon their lands, how many upon their personal
estates and commerce, and how many upon art, and labour; how many
upon alms, how many upon offices and public employments, and how
many as cheats and thieves; how many are impotents, children, and
decrepit old men.
3. How many upon the poll-taxes in England, do pay extraordinary
rates, and how many at the level.
4. How many men and women are prolific, and how many of each are
married or unmarried.
5. What the value of people are in England, and what in Ireland at
a medium, both as members of the Church or Commonwealth, or as
slaves and servants to one another; with a method how to estimate
the same, in any other country or colony.
6. How to compute the value of land in colonies, in comparison to
England and Ireland.
7. How 10,000 people in a colony may be planted to the best
advantage.
8. A conjecture in what number of years England and Ireland may be
fully peopled, as also all America, and lastly the whole habitable
earth.
9. What spot of the earth's globe were fittest for a general and
universal emporium, whereby all the people thereof may best enjoy
one another's labours and commodities.
10. Whether the speedy peopling of the earth would make
(1) For the good of mankind.
(2) To fulfil the revealed will of God.
(3) To what prince or State the same would be most advantageous.
11. An exhortation to all thinking men to solve the Scriptures and
other good histories, concerning the number of people in all ages of
the world, in the great cities thereof, and elsewhere.
12. An appendix concerning the different number of sea-fish and
wild-fowl at the end of every thousand years since Noah's Flood.
13. An hypothesis of the use of those spaces (of about 8,000 miles
through) within the globe of our earth, supposing a shell of 150
miles thick.
14. What may be the meaning of glorified bodies, in case the place
of the blessed shall be without the convex of the orb of the fixed
stars, if that the whole system of the world was made for the use of
our earth's men.
THE PRINCIPAL POINTS OF THIS DISCOURSE
1. That London doubles in forty years, and all England in three
hundred and sixty years.
2. That there be, A.D. 1682, about 670,000 souls in London, and
about 7,400,000 in all England and Wales, and about 28,000,000 of
acres of profitable land.
3. That the periods of doubling the people are found to be, in all
degrees, from between ten to twelve hundred years.
4. That the growth of London must stop of itself before the year
1800.
5. A table helping to understand the Scriptures, concerning the
number of people mentioned in them.
6. That the world will be fully peopled within the next two
thousand years.
7. Twelve ways whereby to try any proposal pretended for the public
good.
8. How the city of London may be made (morally speaking)
invincible.
9. A help to uniformity in religion.
10. That it is possible to increase mankind by generation four
times more than at present.
11. The plagues of London is the chief impediment and objection
against the growth of the city.
12. That an exact account of the people is necessary in this
matter.
OF THE GROWTH OF THE CITY OF LONDON: And of the Measures, Periods,
Causes, and Consequences thereof
By the city of London we mean the housing within the walls of the
old city, with the liberties thereof, Westminster, the Borough of
Southwark, and so much of the built ground in Middlesex and Surrey,
whose houses are contiguous unto, or within call of those
aforementioned. Or else we mean the housing which stand upon the
ninety-seven parishes within the walls of London; upon the sixteen
parishes next without them; the six parishes of Westminster, and the
fourteen out-parishes in Middlesex and Surrey, contiguous to the
former, all which, 133 parishes, are comprehended within the weekly
bills of mortality.
The growth of this city is measured. (1) By the quantity of ground,
or number of acres upon which it stands. (2) By the number of
houses, as the same appears by the hearth-books and late maps. (3)
By the cubical content of the said housing. (4) By the flooring of
the same. (5) By the number of days' work, or charge of building
the said houses. (6) By the value of the said houses, according to
their yearly rent, and number of years' purchase. (7) By the number
of inhabitants; according to which latter sense only we make our
computations in this essay.
Till a better rule can be obtained, we conceive that the proportion
of the people may be sufficiently measured by the proportion of the
burials in such years as were neither remarkable for extraordinary
healthfulness or sickliness.
That the city hath increased in this latter sense appears from the
bills of mortality represented in the two following tables, viz.,
one whereof is a continuation for eighteen years, ending 1682, of
that table which was published in the 117th page of the book of the
observations upon the London bills of mortality, printed in the year
1676. The other showeth what number of people died at a medium of
two years, indifferently taken, at about twenty years' distance from
each other.
The first of the said two tables.
A.D. 97 16 Out Buried Besides of Christened
Parishes Parishes Parishes in all the Plague
1665 5,320 12,463 10,925 28,708 68,596 9,967
1666 1,689 3,969 5,082 10,740 1,998 8,997
1667 761 6,405 8,641 15,807 35 10,938
1668 796 6,865 9,603 17,267 14 11,633
1669 1,323 7,500 10,440 19,263 3 12,335
1670 1,890 7,808 10,500 20,198 11,997
1671 1,723 5,938 8,063 15,724 5 12,510
1672 2,237 6,788 9,200 18,225 5 12,593
1673 2,307 6,302 8,890 17,499 5 11,895
1674 2,801 7,522 10,875 21,198 3 11,851
1675 2,555 5,986 8,702 17,243 1 11,775
1676 2,756 6,508 9,466 18,730 2 12,399
1677 2,817 6,632 9,616 19,065 2 12,626
1678 3,060 6,705 10,908 20,673 5 12,601
1679 3,074 7,481 11,173 21,728 2 12,288
1680 3,076 7,066 10,911 21,053 12,747
1681 3,669 8,136 12,166 23,971 13,355
1682 2,975 7,009 10,707 20,691 12,653
According to which latter table there died as follows:-
THE LATTER OF THE SAID TWO TABLES
There died in London at the medium between the years -
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8