Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/246

 equilibrium between production and consumption is necessary, and that without an increase of demand, which the State itself in his opinion may wisely stimulate and direct into proper channels by taxation, no improvement or increase of wealth was possible; and that it was the absence of this feeling of the need of the higher wants of civilisation which constituted one of the chief causes of the poverty of the population of that island. 'There are in Ireland,' he says, '160,000 nasty cabbens, in which neither butter nor cheese, nor linen, yarn, nor worsted can be made to the best advantage, chiefly by reason of the soot and smoaks annoying the same, as also for the narrowness and nastiness of the place, which cannot be kept clean nor safe from beasts and vermin, nor from damps and musty benches, of which all the eggs laid or kept in those cabbens do partake. Wherefore to the advancement of trade, the reformation of these cabbens is necessary.'

Other passages show that he attached the greatest importance in theory to the division of labour, which he had already himself applied so successfully in practice during the survey. 'Cloth,' he says, 'must be cheaper made, when one cards, another spins, another weaves, another draws, another dresses, another presses, and packs, than when all the operations above mentioned are clumsily performed by the same hand;' and he argues that the division of labour, applied to the shipbuilding trade, is one of the reasons of the superiority of Holland at sea to France, because it enables the Dutch to build the exact sort of ship required for the circumstances of each particular branch of trade and navigation, and to charge less for freight and maritime insurance. 'The gain,' he argues, with reference to the trade of London, 'which is made by manufacture will be greater as the manufacture itself is greater and better. For in so vast a city manufactures will beget one another, and each manufacture