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Political Arithmetick.
East-India Company, is worth above Three |[6]| Millions; where the French as yet have little or nothing.
The exportations of France and Holland is as 5 to 21.The value of the Goods exported out of France into all Parts, are supposed Quadruple to what is sent to England alone; and consequently in all about Five Millions[1], but what is exported out of Holland into England is worth Three Millions; and what is exported thence into all the World besides, is sextuple to the same.
The Revenues of France.The Monies Yearly raised by the King of France, as the same appears by the Book intituled (The State of France) Dedicated to the King, Printed Anno 1669. and set forth several times by Authority[2], is 82000000 of French Livers,- ↑ This estimate, again alluded to on p. 297, is much less than Fortrey's figures of English imports out of France, quoted on p. 309. The well known "Scheme of the trade at present carried on between England and France," dated 1674, made the total English imports from France £1,136,150, as against total exports to France of only £171,021. Reprinted Somers' Tracts, viii. 30—31, and Parl. Hist., iv. appendix, p. cxvii. When printed in King's British Merchant, 29 November, 1674, this estimate was said to have been calculated as exactly as possible, in obedience to the commands of the commissioners for the treaty with France, by sundry London tradesmen. Merchant, 1721 ed., vol. i. p. 181. But in vol. ii. p. 407 the same figures are said to be taken from a report of Sir George Downing, commissioner of customs, to the Privy Council, dated 9 March, 1675. Whatever their true source, the figures were known at the time when Petty wrote and may have some connection with his estimate of imports at "not above one million two hundred thousand pounds per annum" (p. 297). The Mercator alleged that the calculation as printed by the British Merchant was disingenuous, the exports being those of 1668, the year after Colbert's great Increase of the French duties, while the imports were those of 1674. Taking its figures, apparently, from Davenant's Report to the Commissioners for Stating the public Accounts (Works, v. 353), the Mercator of 26—28 May, 1713 gives its own estimate for 1668—69, imports £541,584, exports £108,699.
- ↑ The present State of France: containing the Orders, Dignities and Charges of that Kingdom, Written in French [by Nicolas Besongne] and faithfully Englished. London. 1671. 12°. I can find no English edition of 1669, but L'état de la France, ou l'on voit tous les Princes, Ducs & Pairs was printed at Paris by Jean Rinom in 1669. The English State says that the taxes and subsidies amount in the whole to 50,359,208 livres. "It is not to be doubted that during the late disorders there were many insolvents, for wch reason this Estimat was not of the last year, but of the years before: in the year 1648 his Majesty by his Declaration remitted the fifth part of the said taxes, but since the said declaration has been revoked, and the taxes advanced above a third." P. 457—458. De l'état present de la France [par Paul Hay du Chastelet]. À Cologne [? Amsterdam, see Weller, Falsche und fingirte Druckorte, II. 25], 1672, was not set forth by authority.
