Page:William Petty - Economic Writings (1899) vol 1.djvu/52

xliv against Anglesey, and among them England's growth in population. In the course of the discussion Pett alludes four times to the London "Observations," but without mentioning the name of either Petty or Graunt:

If any of our monkish historians... had given the world rational estimates of the numbers of... the males then between the years of 16 and 60 [from the military returns] ... we might now easily by the help we have from the Observator on the Bills of Mortality conclude, what the entire number of the people then was. [Page 91.]

'T is very remarkable that in the Code Louys which he [Louis XIV.] published in April, 1667, he made some ordinances with great care for the registring the christenings and marriages and burials, in each Parish... having perhaps been informed by his ministers that many political inferences, as to the knowing the number of people and their encrease in any state, are to be made from the bills of mortality, on the occasion of some such published about 3 years before by the Observator on the Bills of Mortality in England. [Pages 248—249.]

It must be acknowledged that the thanks of the age are due to the Observator on the Bills of Mortality, for those solid and rational calculations he hath brought to light, relating to the numbers of our people: but such is the modesty of that excellent author that I have often heard him wish that a thing of so great publick importance to be certainly known, might be so by an actual numbering of them.... Mr James Howel... saith, that in the year 1636... the Lord Mayor of London... took occasion to make a cense of all the people and that there were of men, women and children, above 7 hundred thousand that lived within the barrs of his jurisdiction alone... and... more now... But I am to suspect that there was no such return in the year 1636... and do suppose that Mr Howel did in that point mistake... partly because I find it mentioned by the curious Observator on the Bills of Mortality, p. 113 and 114 [of the 1676 ed.] that anno 1631, ann. 7 Caroli. the number of men, women and children in the several wards of London and liberties ... came in all to but 130178, and finally because the said curious Observator (for that name I give that author after My Lord Chief Justice Hales [sic] hath given or adjudged it to him in his Origination of Mankind) having by rational calculations proved that there dyes within the Bills of Mortality a thirtieth part, or one in thirty yearly, and that there dies there 22000 per annum.... If there were there according to Howel a million and a half people, it would follow that there must dye but 1 out of 70 per annum. [Pages 112-113.]

We are told by the Observator on the Bills of Mortality, that anxiety of mind hinders Breeding, and from sharp anxieties of divers kinds hath the Protestant Religion rescued English minds. [Page 119.]