Page:William Petty - Economic Writings (1899) vol 1.djvu/38

xxx solaced himself with a journey into Kerry, and presently with a renewal of the experiments that had occupied his mind some twenty years before. He built a new double bottom and was active in the establishment of the Dublin Philosophical Society, for which he wrote several papers.

News of the accession of James II. caused Petty to return to London in the early summer of 1685. The new occupant of the royal office had been not less gracious to him than was his predecessor, and Petty fancied the time now ripe to secure for Ireland the adminstrativeadministrative [sic] reforms on which his heart was set. His plans for the revision of the farm and for the establishment, under his own supervision, of an Irish statistical office seemed for a time to be going well, and he attributed undue importance to the interviews which the King granted him upon this and other Irish matters. It was not until later that he appreciated the extent to which, under the new regime, his own personal interests were being drawn to his disadvantage into the larger currents of public affairs. Among the policies which, from time to time, were indistinctly indicated by the vacillations of James II., that looking towards independence of Louis XIV. and the resumption by England of a leading place in the affairs of Europe appealed to Petty with peculiar force. Ten years before, in the "Political Arithmetick," he had argued England's material fitness for such a place, and had proved, to his own satisfaction at least, that in wealth and strength she was potentially, if not actually, as considerable as France. He now reverted to the same theme, writing a series of essays, in order, by the methods of his political arithmetick, to demonstrate to the satisfaction of the King that London was the greatest city in the world. These efforts excited some attention among the curious, both at home and abroad, but they produced no traceable effect upon the policy of James II.

Petty appears to have realized that independence of France demanded harmony at home, and to have welcomed James's