into a sort of Demonstration, He was allowed[1] by 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,
Shelborne[2].||
- ↑ Cf. Davenant, Works, i. 128.
- ↑ 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.
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 remedied 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, i. 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."
