Page:Hull 1900 Petty's Place in the History of Economic Theory.djvu/32

338 is met by showing, first, that silver is exported as bullion, the number of coins to the ounce being immaterial, and, secondly, that money is exported only when the merchant can get for it abroad goods of greater value. Full weight coinage, therefore, is alone advisable; and those States that have debased their coin "are like Bankrupt Merchants, who Compound for their Debts by paying 16s. 12s. or 10s. in the pound." Interest is "a Reward for forbearing the use of your own Money for a Term of Time agreed upon, whatever need yourself may have of it in the meanwhile"; and laws limiting interest are as ill-judged as those limiting the exportation of money or the rate of exchange, "for Interest always carrieth with it an Ensurance praemium which is very casual, besides that of Forbearance." These extracts will show the quality of the pamphlet, whose published price was twopence. It was worth the money.

  The notion is more or less prevalent that, in his general attitude towards industrial society, Petty was somehow a forerunner of Adam Smith, a "founder of political economy." What "political economy" may mean in this connection is not altogether clear; but it is, at any rate, something which an intelligent man may be expected to "know," and it appears to culminate in the dogmatic preaching of free trade. Tried by the free-trade shibboleth, Petty has been found to merit a condescending approval. "He is one of the first in whom we find a tendency to a view of industrial phenomena which was at variance with the then dominant mercantilistic ideas." He was "generally opposed to government interference with the course of industry," and contributed in his way, as did Dudley North's "most thorough-going and emphatic assertion of the free-trade doctrine against the system of