Page:Sir William Petty - A Study in English Economic Literature - 1894.djvu/20

391] is such a vast quantity of turf, so they would improve their rents, set poor men on work and the city should be served with fuel cheaper. Sir William knew prima facie this project could not succeed. Said he: "If you will make an order to hinder the bringing in of coals by foreign vessels, and bring it in vessels of your own, I approve of it very well. But for your supposition of the cheapness of the turf, it is true it is cheap on the place, but consider carriage, consider the yards that must contain such a quantity for respective houses; these yards must be rented. What will be the charge?"

Memoranda: About 1665 he presented to the Royal Society a discourse of his in manuscript of building of ships, which the Lord Brounker (then president) took away and still keeps, saying, "It was too great an arcanum of state to be commonly perused;" but Sir William told me that Dr. Robert Wood has a copy of it, which he himself hath not.

Sir William Petty died at his house in Piccadilly (almost opposite to St. James' Church), on Friday, 16th day of December, 1687, of a gangrene in his foot, occasioned by the swelling of the gout, and is buried with his father and mother in the church at Rumsey, in Hampshire. My Lady Petty was declared Baroness of Shelborne and her eldest son Baron of the same, a little before the coming in of the Prince of Orange.