Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/251

 religion were dealt with, without danger to the author. Therefore it was not till after the Revolution that the book was allowed to see the light, when it was published by the author's son, with a dedication to William III. 'What my father wrote,' so the dedication runs, 'was by him styled "Political Arithmetic" inasmuch as things of Government, and of no less concern and intent than the glory of the Prince and the happiness and greatness of the people, are by the ordinary rules of arithmetick brought into a sort of demonstration. He was allowed by all to be the inventor of this kind of instruction; where the perplexed and intricate ways of the world are explained by a very mean piece of science; and had not the doctrines of the Essay offended France, they had long since seen the light and had found followers, as well as improvements before this time, to the advantage perhaps of mankind.'

The author declares himself satisfied that England is in no deplorable condition, as some would have the world believe, notwithstanding trifling and temporary appearances to the contrary; and he undertakes to justify his belief. 'The method I take to do this,' he explains, 'is not very usual, for instead of using only comparative and superlative words, and intellectual arguments, I have taken the course (as a specimen of the political Arithmetic I have long aimed at) to express myself in terms of number, weight or measure, to use only arguments of sense, and to consider only such causes as have visible foundations in nature: leaving those that depend upon the mutable minds, opinions, appetites and passions of particular men, to the consideration of others: really professing myself as unable to speak satisfactorily upon those grounds, (if they may be called grounds), as to foretell the cast of a dye, to play well at tennis, bowls, or billiards, (without long practice), by virtue of the most elaborate conceptions that ever have been written "de projectilibus et missilibus" or of the angles of evidence and reflection.'

His special aim was to prove that the subservient policy pursued by Charles II. in his relations with France was not justified by any relative weakness on the part of England,