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TO THE KING'S Most Excellent MAJESTY 1 . - Sir William Petty, The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty, vol. 1 [1662]

Edition used:

The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty, together with The Observations upon Bills of Mortality, more probably by Captain John Graunt, ed. Charles Henry Hull (Cambridge University Press, 1899), 2 vols.

Part of: The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty, 2 vols.

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TO THE
KING'S
Most Excellent
MAJESTY1 .

SIR,

WHilest every one meditates some fit Offering for Your Majesty, such as may best agree with your happy Exaltation to this Throne; I presume to offer, what my Father long since writ, to shew the weight and importance of the English Crown.

It was by him stiled Political Arithmetick2 , in as much as things of Government, and of no less concern and extent, than the Glory of the Prince, and the happiness and greatness of the People, are by the Ordinary Rules of Arithmetick, brought into a sort of Demonstration. He was allowed1by all, to be the Inventor of this Method of Instruction; where ‖ the perplexed and intricate ways of the World, are explain'd by a very mean peice of Science; and had not the Doctrins of this Essay offended France, they had long since seen the light, and had found Followers, as well as improvements before this time, to the advantage perhaps of Mankind.

But this has been reserved to the felicity of Your Majesty's Reign, and to the expectation which the Learned have therein; and if while in this, I do some honor to the Memory of a good Father, I ‖ can also pay Service, and some Testimony of my Zeal and Reverence to so great a King, it will be the utmost Ambition of

SIR,

Your Majesty's Most Dutiful and Most Obedient Subject,

Shelborne2 .

[1]R and S have the following original dedication to Charles II. (from S):

To the Kings most Excellent Majestie

May it please your majte.

As few dare venture their Discretions wholly to Disparage Arithmetick, So few doe think much practice of it very necessary in matters of State, otherwise then in what concerns the Revenue. I have therefore for the Sake of severall Young Noblemen who are now fitting themselves for your Majtes Service adventured to shew the vse of comon and easie computations in the ten Political conclusions mentioned in this Treatise, And doe now humbly beg your Majtes Pardon, for having presumed to practice a Vulgar Art upon Matters of so high a nature, and so much beyond my owne calling and Capacity. But since whatever is firm and high must have low and euen foundations, I hope I have done no incongruous thing, nor what your Majte will blame, being the Candid Endeavours of

[2]Petty appears to have been the inventor of this famous phrase. It occurs in the following passage, quoted because it throws light on Petty's conception of his new science, “My Lord Ogle being now about to carve a significant figure upon my Lord his Son, by his careful Education of him, I thought it a service to his Lordship, as well as an expression of my Thanks for his former Endeavours, to call upon him, not only to instruct my Lord his Son in some Mathematicks, but also to store and stock him with variety of Matter, Data and Phænomena, whereupon to exercise the same; since Lines & Numbers without those, are but like Lute-strings without a Lute or Hand. For, my Lord, there is a Political Arithmetick and a Geometrical Justice to be yet further cultivated in the World; the Errors and Defects whereof, neither Wit, Rhetoric, nor Interest can more than palliate, never cure. For, Falsity, Disproportion, and Inconsistence cannot be rectified by any sermocinations, though made all of figurate and measured periods, pronounced in Time and Cadence, through the most advantageous organs; much less by Grandisonous or Euphonical Nonsense, farded with formality; no more than vicious Wines can be remidied with Brandy and Honey, or ill Cookery with enormous proportions of Spice and Sugar: ‘Nam Res nolunt male administrari.’ Epistle to the Duke of Newcastle prefixed to Petty's Discourse of Duplicate Proportion (1674). This has been considered the earliest use of the term “Political Arithmetick.” S.Bauer, History of Political Arithmetic, in Palgrave's Dict. of Polit. Economy, 1. 56. Petty, however, had devised the phrase at an earlier date. He employed it in a letter to Lord Anglesea, 17 December, 1672 (Life, 158), and in his preface (p.244) he describes the book as “a Specimen of the political Arithmetick I have long aimed at.”

[1]Cf. Davenant, Works, 1. 128.

[2]Charles, Sir William Petty's eldest surviving son, born 1673, was created Baron of Shelburne in the peerage of Ireland in 1688 and died in 1696.