Page:Hull 1900 Petty's Place in the History of Economic Theory.djvu/27

Rh recognized with a clearness of vision unparalleled in his time that the contest was already world-wide, and that the whole strength of Britain must be called into play. He was accordingly the first to propose the legislative union of Ireland with England, and also the earliest of imperial unionists. He saw, too, that the struggle was not a matter for one parliament or one reign. Various opponents had succeeded one another upon the continental side of the board,—Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands. Who should close the contest he could no more foresee than we can decide to-day whether the last player against Britain shall be Russia or America. But his prescience of the immediate future was extraordinary. Earlier than any of his contemporaries he discerned that the day of the Netherlands was passed. His thesis, supported with increasing vigor from the Treatise of Taxes, in 1662, to the Five Essays, written a quarter of a century later, is that England must find her rival for the trade of the world to the south, no longer to the north, of the Scheldt. And in a contest with France, as he never tires of showing, England has all the natural advantages necessary to ultimate success.

The argument of the Political Arithmetick might almost be condensed, though at some risk of misrepresenting the author's temper, into the words of a not unknown verse, — "We don't want to fight; but, by jingo, if we do,

We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money, too."