Page:Sir William Petty - A Study in English Economic Literature - 1894.djvu/97

98 he himself attained, he brings himself into close contact with the school of Adam Smith and Ricardo. McCulloch, in his "Literature of Political Economy," has already pointed out an anticipation of Ricardo's doctrine of price, which he had noticed in Petty. Petty quite as strongly as Ricardo insists that labor alone enters into price. Any attention to capital was almost entirely out of Petty's view, but in the "Verbum Sapienti" he expressly says that the stock of a nation is the result or effect of past labor. Again, as to rent, Petty would quite agree with Ricardo's definition of rent as the payment for indestructible powers of the soil.

Leaving these verbal likenesses out of the question, there is a distinct intellectual affinity between Petty and Ricardo. In both we see the results of a mathematically trained mind. They both aimed at applying the rigorous method of that science to the study of social phenomena. Both were men who had made large fortunes. In both their practical training had not been supplemented by the broadening influence of education. Petty, like Ricardo, regarded man solely as a labor unit. He, as well as Ricardo, is open to the reproach of dealing with human beings as if they were nothing more than algebraic symbols. Petty's very frank attempt to discover the value of each human being is only a crude example of that insensibility, which might find its parallel in Ricardo's more refined arguments. The differing conditions of their respective times naturally creates a divergence between them. Petty's political ideal was antagonistic to Ricardo. With Petty the vital question is how to make the State rich and powerful. Ricardo was purely