Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/252

 especially if allied with Holland, and imitating her commercial policy. A small country, he argues, and few people, may by their situation, trade, and policy be equivalent in wealth and strength to a far greater people and territory; and conveniences for shipping and water carriage particularly conduce thereto. These exist in England, owing to her extended coastline and admirable natural harbours, which ought always to secure for her a marked superiority at sea. He proves the great wealth of England by reference to the extreme ease with which she had been able to bear an increasing amount of taxation ever since the commencement of the century. He warns his readers against being dazzled by the splendours of the Court of Louis XIV., and taking those splendours to be a proof that the wealth of France was greater than that of England. They simply arose, he pointed out, from the King of France taking a large share of taxation out of the pockets of his people, and spending it in brilliant but unproductive expenditure at his Court and in military display. The material condition of France was, indeed, already a warning, and the growing misery of the people, crushed down by war and taxation, was a living commentary on the magnificence of Versailles. The policy of Colbert had been superseded by that of Louvois; and when, in September 1683, that great and at heart peaceful minister sank into the grave, a midnight and almost secret funeral alone protected his remains from the insults of the rabble, who, however unjustly, associated him with the distress of the country.

France, Sir William argued, by reason of perpetual obstacles interposed by nature, such as her inferior length of sea-board, could never be more powerful at sea than England and Holland combined. The people and territories of England are, he says, naturally as considerable for wealth and strength as those of France, and the impediments to her greatness arise from contingent causes which can be removed: the principal being an unwise commercial policy and the