Page:Sir William Petty - A Study in English Economic Literature - 1894.djvu/84

455] is equally necessary to remember that the whole system of financial administration—previously in a most crude state—was reorganized by Cromwell.

The fiscal point of view in the so-called mercantile system is too often ignored. The problem before the men of the seventeenth century was to provide for an increase of national income. The modern national state, with its enlarged sphere of activity, was struggling to supply its coffers by forms of assessment that had come down from the middle ages. The most direct way of accomplishing its purpose, with the smallest danger of exciting rebellion, seemed to be the adoption of the protective measures which we have already enumerated.

This brief review of the economic condition of England gives us a background for Petty's writings. They can only be understood and appreciated as interpreting the questions of his own day; and in the light of the questions of his own day they are most worthy of study.

There is another point of view—rather wider—from which we can regard his work. What place does he hold in the development of English economic literature, as a whole? Some answer to this question I have tried to give by using an arrangement in my paraphrase of his writings that might help us to seize the salient points. A more satisfactory answer can be made when we come to examine his method of thought in relation to his own age, and when we have traced its affinity to the system of Ricardo and Adam Smith.

We have seen from Petty's life that he was an avowed adherent of the new philosophy. He speaks with respect of its founder, Bacon. He had assisted