legal rate of interest, was first published, as already stated, in 1668, and re-published in 1690: the anonymous pamphlet attributed to him in defence of the East India Company appeared, as we have also mentioned above, in 1677. These works of Mun and Child, mistaken as the writers are in some of their leading principles, contain many incidental arguments and remarks of great value, and which must have materially helped to advance the science of which they treat, notwithstanding their fundamental errors, the principal work of Sir William Petty, besides his Political Arithmetic, which treats chiefly of the subject of population, is his "Quantulumcunque," a treatise on money, published in 1682, in which there are also many sound observations, though even he had not altogether emancipated himself, any more than his predecessors and contemporaries, from the false notion that there was something about gold and silver distinguishing them as articles of commerce from all other commodities. The first promulgation of perfectly sound views upon this subject was reserved for a date a few years beyond the close of the present period.
In 1655 Cromwell had appointed his son Richard, and many other lords of his council, judges, and gentlemen, together with about twenty merchants of London, York, Newcastle, Yarmouth, Dover, and other towns, "to meet and consider by what means the traffic and navigation of the Republic might be best promoted and regulated," and to make a report to him on the subject.[1] But the first permanent Board of Trade appears to have been that established, on the recommendation of Ashley, by Charles II., in 1668, under the name of the Council of Commerce, consisting of a president, vice-president, and nine other members, with regular salaries. The Earl of Sandwich was appointed the first president; and after his death, in the sea-fight of 1672, Ashley himself, now Earl of Shaftesbury and Lord Chancellor, was nominated as his successor in a new commission, in which the reasons for establishing the council were stated to be
- ↑ Thurloe's State Papers, iv. 177.
