prohibitions," to lay "the foundations of a new and more rational doctrine than that of the mercantilists."[1] Such views of Petty are due, I think, rather to the influence of Roscher[2] than to an exhaustive examination of Petty's writings. Travers Twiss, who reviewed the development of economics only four years before Roscher, and was properly anxious to commend his countrymen by showing that they had cherished the enlightened views of Smith and Ricardo a century or more in advance, mentions Petty's writings three times;[3] but even with the help of McCulloch he finds in them no such "able statement of the true principles of commerce" as North's Discourses upon Trade contained.[4] Roscher, therefore, may be credited with originating, and Kautz[5] with promptly adopting, the idea that Petty, North, and Locke constituted a sort of free-trade triumvirate. The grouping seem to me of doubtful propriety.
Petty is a copious and vivacious writer, abounding in comment and digression. He is primarily interested in taxation, not in trade,—a sort of an English cameralist. When he does turn his attention to trade, we find that he has progressed far enough beyond the cruder expedients of mercantilism to condemn restrictions on the export of coin,[6] and even to suggest that a nation may have too much money; "for Money is but the Fat of the Body politick, whereof too much doth as often hinder its Agility as too
- ↑ J. K. Ingram on Petty, Encyclopædia Britannica, xix. 358 (1885); also, Ingram's History of Political Economy, 47-53, reprinted from Encyclopædia Britannica.
- ↑ Zur Geschichte der englischen Volkswirthschaftslehre im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, Leipzig, 1851, in Abhandlungen der k. sächs. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, 3er Bd.
- ↑ View of the Progress of Political Economy since the Sixteenth Century (1847) pp. 64, 87, 164.
- ↑ Ibid., 83.
- ↑ Die geschichtliche Entwickelung der Nationalökonomie (1860), § 46: " Die anti-merkantilistische Richtung und die Anfänge der wissenschaftlicheren Nationalökonomie in England," pp. 308-317.
- ↑ Writings, i. 57, 58, 87; ii. 440, 445, 446.
