Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/249

 desire to indulge; provided such indulgence may consist with the indemnity of the State; for no heterodox believer will desire to be tolerated longer than he keeps the public peace.' The system was that which Hobbes had laid down in theory, and Sully had applied in practice in France.

In the work on 'Political Arithmetic,' he states the doctrine of religious toleration in the boldest and broadest terms. 'They cannot but know,' he says, 'that no man can believe what himself pleases, and to force men to say they believe what they do not, is vain, absurd and without honour to God.' Dissenters, he shows, have been everywhere the principal creators of the trade and manufactures of their respective countries; even in Ireland, where, the Roman religion not being authorised, the professors thereof have a great part of the trade. 'The Hollanders were one hundred years since a poor and oppressed people, living in a country naturally cold, moist and unpleasant, and were withal persecuted for their heterodoxy in religion, and they were become the greatest trading and manufacturing people in the world.' He thought, however, that the Jews might 'well bear somewhat extraordinary; because they seldom eat and drink with Christians, hold it no disparagement to live frugally, and even sordidly among themselves, by which way alone they become able to undersell any other traders; and to elude the excise, which bears but according to mean expenses: as also other duties by dealing so much in bills of exchange, jewels, and money; and by practising of several frauds with more impunity than others, and by their being at home everywhere and yet nowhere, being become responsible almost for nothing.'

With his keen eye for abuses, Sir William had observed the inequality of the distribution of the revenues of the Church, and the determination of the beneficiaries not to reform these and other evils. He had seen how frequently small parishes had large revenues, and large parishes small revenues; and, pursuing his favourite statistical methods, he had arrived at the conclusion that, by a redistribution of parochial areas and