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Rh King James promptly appointed Petty's friend and admirer Pepys to examine the Treatise, but no steps were taken to execute its suggestions, and it was not even printed. The approach of the fatal disease of which Petty died three months later may well have prevented him from publishing the book himself, and when, in the years closely following the Revolution, the Political Arithmetick, the Political Anatomy of Ireland, and the Treatise of Naval Philosophy were finally printed, considerations of political expediency may have conspired with those based on the comparatively unfinished condition of the Treatise to deter his friends from giving it also to the world.

The Treatise is here reprinted from the Southwell or Nelligan MS. whose history has been already traced. Of that MS. it occupies folios 52–129, neatly written in a hand similar to that of the Southwell Political Arithmetick and corrected at a few points by Petty himself.