Page:Hull 1900 Petty's Place in the History of Economic Theory.djvu/16

322 weight, and measure grew upon him. The first group of his writings, therefore, exhibits greater variety of topic than the later ones, and is far more interesting to the student of economic theory. As he passed from the field of taxation, with its fascinating speculative problems, to the descriptive and comparative pamphlets of the second period, economic digressions became fewer and fewer, and he occasionally introduced information of trifling importance for no other apparent reason than that it could be given in numerical terms. In the third group he confined himself almost exclusively to questions of population, and, except in the Quantulumcunque concerning Money, added practically nothing of economic interest to these earlier books. It is, therefore, in the Treatise of Taxes that we must look for Petty's economic ideas. No English book before Hume better deserves the attention of the economist.

Roughly speaking, Restoration finance rather confirmed than introduced fiscal innovations. Pym's exercise was continued in fact, if not in form, by the hereditary and temporary excises granted to the crown; and the most productive parts of the Commonwealth's customs were reenacted, though with significant changes, by the Great Statute. On the negative side, too, the Restoration Parliament recognized what the Long Parliament had accomplished. The Court of Wards and Liveries and the royal rights of purveyance and pre-emption were not revived. But even the accustomed taxes had a new aspect now that they were no longer the exactions of "the usurper," and the addition of the poll tax and the hearth money introduced elements essentially new. Under the circumstances it is not surprising that taxes and contributions should have elicited Petty's first economic tract.

It would lead too far afield to canvass all the comments and suggestions which Petty makes upon the subject of