Page:William Petty - Economic Writings (1899) vol 1.djvu/65

Rh most active correspondence. His business affairs, his domestic afflictions, his political aspirations, every act and thought of his last twenty years found a reflection in the hundreds of letters which he showered upon his faithful cousin. It was the life-long habit of that much-enduring man to preserve every scrap of writing that came into his possession, and though he did not hesitate to reprove Petty's aggressive self-confidence, he had nevertheless an unusually high regard for all that his outspoken kinsman said or did. Soon after the completion of the "Political Arithmetick," of which Petty gave him a copy in MS., Southwell wrote of "an ebony cabinet wherein I keep as in an archive all the effects of your pen; for I look on them as materials fit for those I would take most care of and hope they will hand them over with like estimation ." During Petty's contest for the farm of the Irish revenues Southwell asked for the papers he had delivered in, "for I shrine up all and premise that in after times I shall be resorted to for your works as Mr Hedges is for the true Opobalsamum ." Four years later he renewed the assurance of his care: "as to your fifty years' adventures I have them and keep them more preciously than Caesar's commentaries "; and within a fortnight after Petty's death he set out to secure such MSS. of his friend as were not already in his possession, writing to Pepys the 23rd December, 1687, for a paper which Petty had lately