Page:Sir William Petty - A Study in English Economic Literature - 1894.djvu/95

96 the welfare of a country by simply looking at the table of exports, and ingeniously pointed out the sources of error. In the controversy between the East India Company and its older rivals Petty had no share. In the dispute Child wrote as a partisan of the East India Company. Petty approved of trading companies, but he says nothing on the merits of either form of organization, joint stock or open companies.

Samuel Fortrey is once mentioned by name. With Fortrey's crude notion of estimating England's wealth by the quantity of coined money in the realm Petty disagreed. The controversy that arose over the supposed decadence of England called forth one of Petty's Essays on Political Arithmetic. He only notices the group of writers whom Fortrey represented to condemn their whole position as fallacious.

The economic works of Mun and Locke fall outside of Petty's lifetime. With Mun (Posthumous Treatise, 1662) there are resemblances. His reasons for allowing the export of money are re-echoed in Petty, and his proposal of a State treasure is virtually approved of by Petty's arguments. The many proposals for poor-law reform noticed in the first volume of Eden testify to the fact that Petty's own remarks on this topic are by no means original. In fact, whenever Petty takes up this question he betrays his acquaintance with More's great work, nor are his direct obligations to any other author so apparent.

In these respects where Petty touches the economic thought of his time, and where he reproduces it, he cannot be said to reveal his greatest strength. In the method which he adopted, in the way he