Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/213

sovereignty of the State, and therefore, however little he may have intended or foreseen it, of the sovereignty of Parliament as the final depositary of the power of the State in England. More indirectly, he was the father of the school of political thought which came on the Continent to be known as that of doctrinaire or authoritative liberalism, as distinct from democracy pure and simple, which has always had a tendency to break up into local anarchy. What Hobbes laid down in theory, Petty sought to apply in practice. The 'Treatise on Taxes' is continually occupied with the wide sphere of the proper powers of the State; with the benefits which an enlightened administration can confer on all its subjects both by removing the disabilities which shackle and impair their energies, and also by the positive development of the resources of the country through a thorough reform of the system of taxation; and by the activity of the State being extended into many as yet neglected directions, including that of education, including naval and commercial knowledge. Petty's own connection with Ireland tended to develop the natural tendencies of his mind. He evidently saw in it, like Cromwell, 'a clean paper' for experiments in government which in England might be impossible owing to the accumulated weight of historical prejudice and the power of vested interests,^[1] especially as his own estimate of the capacities of the native population, if given a fair opportunity, was high. It was this order of ideas which made him the natural enemy of the great Irish nobles of the Rebellion, and also of the existence of separate Parliaments and of all ecclesiastical privileges. Improved communications both in England and Ireland, and between them, was one of the principal weapons he relied on to attain his objects. He wished 'every year to make 50 miles of new navigable river in the most advantageous places,' and that 'there might not be a step of bad way upon all the great nine roads to London,'^[2] and then it would cease to be said that 'the English in Ireland growing poor and discontented degenerate into Irish; and, vice versâ,

1. Ludlow's Memoirs, i. 246.
2. 'An Opinion of what is possible to be done,' 1685. Nelligan MS., British Museum.