Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/244

 and the best means of promoting the material improvement of the people are, therefore, constantly present to his mind in the discussions of the subject of population. Thus, for example, his plan for the transplantation to England of a large portion of the population of Ireland, was entirely based on the belief that the population would be increased and the standard of comfort raised by the accession of a large body of productive labourers.

In connection with this discussion he made a remarkable forecast of the growth westwards of the City of London. 'If great cities,' he says, 'are naturally apt to remove their seats, I ask which way? I say in the case of London, it must be westward, because the winds blowing near three fourths of the year from the west, the dwellings of the west end are so much the more free from the fumes steams and stinks of the whole easterly pyle; which, where seacole is burnt, is a great matter. Now if it follow from hence, that the palaces of the greatest men will remove westward, it will also naturally follow, that the dwellings of others who depend upon them will creep after them. This we see in London, where the noblemens ancient houses are now become halls for companies, or turned into tenements, and all the palaces are gotten westward; insomuch that I do not doubt but that five hundred years hence, the King's palace will be near Chelsea, and the old building of Whitehall converted to uses more answerable to their quality. For to build a new royal palace upon the same ground will be too great a confinement, in respect of gardens and other magnificencies, and withal a disaccommodation in the time of the work; but it rather seems to me, that the next palace will be built from the whole present contignation of houses, at such a distance as the whole palace of Westminster was from the city of London, when the archers began to bend their bows just without Ludgate, and when all the space between the Thames, Fleet Street, and Holborn, was as Finsbury-fields are now.' But this digression, he acknowledges, may prove a mere