Page:Sir William Petty - A Study in English Economic Literature - 1894.djvu/98

469] . It must of course be remembered that in Petty's days the problem of distribution had as yet really not arisen. The revolution caused by machinery had not altered the face of the industrial world. Allowing for all this, it must, I think, be conceded that in a remarkable way Petty reproduces under a seventeenth century garb those features of Ricardo's work, which have exerted so potent an influence on English thought in this century. Finally, it is extremely curious to compare Petty's tendency towards using fictitious illustrations to explain a general principle, with Ricardo's employment of the same sort of help. Petty here deviates from the rule he had set himself, of always relying on accurate facts, and what is especially important to notice, in so doing he is overcome by the superior clearness and cogency of deductive reasoning, and, like Ricardo, gives to these illustrations the force of objective reality.

Only an enthusiastic person, whose studies have led him to exaggerate the object of his investigation, would be bold enough to speak of Adam Smith being anticipated by Petty. A treatise is different from a tract. Recognizing the wide divergence of aim, method and talent, it is nevertheless fair to point out that some of the principles which Smith used in elaborating his work are already existent in his predecessor. It is in itself important that Smith almost uses Petty's own words when he says that the real wealth of a country is the annual produce of its land and labor. When Dugald Stewart states that the great and leading object of Smith's speculation is "to illustrate the provision made by nature for a gradual and progressive augmentation in the means