Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/230

 become of the observation in the Preface. Elsewhere he points out the economic objections—which are universally true—against the prohibition of the sale of land to foreigners, because such sale would furnish the country with what it then most wanted, a circulating capital for trade; and then prudently adds that he can only suppose that 'the laws denying strangers to purchase' were made when 'the publick state of things was far different from what they now are.' But in what way they were different he does not even try to point out, and ends the sentence evidently with his tongue in his cheek.

His silence on the general policy of the Navigation Act may be traced to the same causes. No approval of the policy of this Act is to be found in the 'Treatise,' and no open disapproval, and yet the question must have constantly been present to his mind, and indeed prominently so. The interest which he took in the Irish branch of the subject has been related. The General Navigation Act had only just been passed when the 'Treatise on Taxes' appeared. That celebrated measure decreed that no goods of the growth, production, or manufacture of any country in Europe should be imported into Great Britain except in British ships, or in such ships as were the property of the people of the country in which the goods were produced, or from which they could only be, or most usually were, exported. The object of the Act was to destroy the Dutch carrying trade and promote the growth of a British mercantile marine, in other words, of 'shipping;' and as Sir William considered shipping the principal origin of the wealth of the Dutch, the aim of the Act, cæteris paribus, might have been supposed to be likely to command his approval for that reason. Husbandmen, seamen, soldiers, artisans and merchants, he had written, 'are the very pillars of any commonwealth; all the other great professions do rise out of the infirmities and miscarriages of these; now the seaman is three of these four. For every seaman of industry and ingenuity is not only a navigator but a merchant, and also