Page:William Petty - Economic Writings (1899) vol 1.djvu/200



The Verbum Sapienti was first published in 1691 as a supplement to the Political Anatomy of Ireland (q.v.). In Petty's list of his own writings, however, the entry "Verbum Sapienti, and the value of People" stands opposite the year 1665, and the internal evidence makes it probable that the booklet was written in the latter part of that year. Thus Petty speaks of the continuance of the war with Holland, declared 14 March, 1665, "at the value of the last years Expence" as if the additional assessment beginning Christmas, 1665, were not yet gone into effect. Furthermore his assertion that 100,000 died of the plague looks like an exaggerated estimate made in advance of the yearly bill of mortality, upon whose publication in December, 1665, the official figures were seen to be but 68596. It may be, however, that Petty distrusted the official figures and purposely exceeded them. But by no hypothesis can we assign the Verbum Sapienti to a later date than July 1667, when the war closed.

A MS. of the Verbum Sapienti is contained in a volume preserved at the Public Record Office in Dublin, and called "Dr Petty's Register ." The copyist's title, fol. 10, is simply "Verbum Sapienti," but Petty's autograph index to the volume has "Verbum Sapienti Or a discourse about Taxes & ye Value of People," a title so similar to the memorandum mentioned in the preceding paragraph as to justify the assumption that we have in the Verbum Sapienti all that the entry quoted from Petty's list of his own writings calls for. Another MS. of the Verbum Sapienti very carelessly written is appended to a MS. of the Political Arithmetick in the British Museum. The latter portion of it is but a précis of Petty's argument. Sir Peter Pett had, before 1680, a MS. of both these tracts and it is not impossible that the present Sloane MS. is identical with that once in his possession. The Dublin MS. is not divided into chapters and its paragraphs are consecutively numbered throughout. Otherwise it is substantially similar to the printed text of 1691 here reproduced. Significant differences are indicated in the notes, the readings of the Dublin MS. being marked " D," those of the Sloane MS. "S."