Page:Sir William Petty - A Study in English Economic Literature - 1894.djvu/94

465] absenteeism. All this is familiar, but we look in vain for the peculiarities of Petty. There is no use made of statistical information; there are no attempts to interpret the facts in any but the ordinary way of intelligent observation. I can find nothing in Petty's works which induces me to believe that he owed anything to his temporary connection with Harrington's Club, in 1659. To a man of Petty's way of thinking Harrington's learned historical disquisitions would carry little weight. His political system was too speculative to find favor with the practical bent of Petty's intellect.

With Sir Joshua Child Petty can be more justly compared. They both were strongly practical men, but Petty's scientific acquirements place him on a level which Child, with his mercantile interests, never reached. Child, when he holds up Holland as a model, is only doing what every one did who was surprised at the rapid progress of that country in the seventeenth century. Sir William Temple approached this subject in a much more scientific spirit than either Petty or Child. In his "Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands," he shows that he appreciated the necessity of studying the unique position of Holland in the light of her historical development. In the very point where Child reveals superficial treatment by exaggerating the importance of a low rate of interest, Petty is immeasurably above him. Petty knows well enough that a low rate of interest is an effect and not the cause of industrial prosperity. Child indeed shows ability in his treatment of the balance of trade. He saw the impossibility of