Page:William Petty - Economic Writings (1899) vol 1.djvu/50

xlii Since the "Political Arithmetick" was written in 1676, i.e., before Petty's own "Observations upon the Dublin Bills," this expression might be construed as a claim by Petty to a share in the authorship of the "Observations" of 1662. But reference to the Southwell and the Rawlinson manuscripts of the "Political Arithmetick" in the Bodleian Library, bearing Petty's autograph corrections, shows conclusively that he here intended to set up no such claim. Moreover, in a private letter, to his most intimate friend and relative, Sir Robert Southwell (August 20, 1681), Petty twice speaks of "Graunt's" and once of "our friend Graunt's" book.

In contrast with Petty's direct testimony to Graunt's authorship of the London "Observations" stands the title-page of his statistical firstling, the Dublin "Observations" (1683), which reads "By the Observator on the London Bills of Mortality ." This might be construed as claiming the London Observations for Petty, but an explanation at least equally plausible would make it a mere bookseller's trick of Mark Pardoe, the publisher, to commend the Dublin "Observations" to a public that had recently greeted a fifth edition of the London "Observations" with favour. The device, if such it were, appears to have failed, for Pardoe had sheets of the Dublin "Observations" still on hand in 1686, and when he reissued them, with additions, as a "Further Observation on the Dublin Bills," Petty's name appeared on the title-page, without any mention of the London "Observations." Nor did the change occur here alone. In the first (1683) edition of "Another Essay in Political Arithmetick. By Sir William Petty," the original Dublin "Observations" are advertised as "by the Observator on the London Bills of Mortality." In the second edition of the Essay, published in 1686, but before the "Further Observation," the advertisement of the original Dublin "Observations" reads; "By Sir William Petty ."

Contemporary testimony in favour of Graunt comes, thirdly, from the Royal Society and from various members of it. The circumstances of his election have been recounted in the preceding section. The opinion of the Society and of its historian as there