"De Augmentis," the excessive number of books that were being sent forth. Whether he read the classic writers whom he mentions may be uncertain. It is interesting to see that he selects from Aristotle three books, which Hobbes himself recommends as alone valuable. In his printed works the only important names we find are those of Bacon, Des Cartes, and Sir Thomas More.
His deficiencies of character and intellect he is always ready to reveal. There is no hypocrisy. He has great self-confidence. Whether we find him publishing a list of cheap experiments for the use of the Dublin Society, or whether we find him estimating the value of each individual, he never assumes an apologetic tone.[1]
Apart from his value as an economist, Petty must be given a high place among the political writers of his age. His remarks are generally judicious. He interprets clearly the meaning of what he saw about him. His digression on the growth of London is a proof of his shrewdness in foretelling the continued westward progress of that city. Equally far-sighted is he, when he indicates the probability of the separation of the American colonies from the mother country (263). As an authority on Ireland his value is testified by the respect with which he meets from those who have handled Irish history. His argu-
- ↑ A characteristic trait was, we hear, the cause of his failure in the experiments of ship-building, which gave him so much disappointment in his later years. "The cause of the tenderness (of the boat) was an endeavor, besides to introduce a new principle, to make a small passage boat of twelve feet broad, yet enough to carry horses, hoping to have gotten some small matter thereby to have defrayed the charges." From a letter quoted in a life of Petty in "Biographia Brittannia."
