Volume 1

The economic writings of Sir William Petty together with the Observations upon the bills of mortality, more probably by Captain John Graunt / edited by Charles Henry Hull.

Petty, William, Sir, 1623-1687.

Date:: 1899

Credit: The economic writings of Sir William Petty together with the Observations upon the bills of mortality, more probably by Captain John Graunt / edited by Charles Henry Hull. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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$The Scots are Presbyterians, and the Irish, Papists. But the English are above 100,000 legal Protestants or Con- formists, and the rest are Presbyterians, Independants, Anabaptists and Quakers. Of the Families. Such as have no fix’d Hearths, are Such as have but one Chimney Such as have more than one Of Smoaks. The Single-Smoak-houses, are ut supra [Note to last line of p. 141 :] S has, ‘ Of the people there are:— Of Papists 800000 ) Of Non-Papists 300000 \ The editors of the 1691 and 1719 eds., by an obvious blunder, made the total 2,200,000. Neither here nor elsewhere does Petty make use of the returns of the census taken in 1659, though it is probable that he once had the figures of that enumeration for nearly the whole of Ireland. The population at that time has been calculated at 500,091, of whom about one fifth were Englishmen or Scotsmen. Hardinge in Trans. R. I. Acad., xxiv., Antiquities, 317—328. If these figures are correct, Petty unquestionably overestimated the population of Ireland, both here and when, at a later date, he increased his estimate to ‘about 1,200,000 people’ and ‘ near 300,000 hearths,’ and still later to 1,300,000. Polit. Arith., chap. II, and the Treatise of Ireland. Subsequent investigations have thrown but little additional light upon the correctness of his figures. The next estimate is for the year 1696. Calculating from the poll tax returns in three counties and in the city of Dublin, Capt. South set the population of Ireland at 1,034,102. ‘An Account of the Number of People in Ireland,’ Philos. Trans., 1700, no. 261, vol. xxii., p. 520. Nearly a century later Mr G. P. Bushe, commissioner of revenue, published in the Trans, of the R. I. Academy, in.. Science, 145—155, his ‘Essay towards ascertaining the Population of Ireland.’ Bushe points out that the returns of hearth money before 1686 were very defective, 200,000 houses being added by Ormond’s reform in that year. He thinks that the houses must have been more numerous in 1672 than Petty makes them, and intimates that Petty’s calculation of the population also is too small. But Thomas Newsham, an investigator quite as careful as Bushe, is of the contrary opinion. “Whether Sir William Petty overrated the population of Ireland in 1672, it is impossible now to determine. That he did not underrate it we may consider as certain.” An Historical and Statistical Inquiry into the Progress and Magnitude of the Population of Ireland (1805), P* 89. 200000 English ^ 100000 Scots r 1IOOOOO.’ 800000 Irish / 160,000 24,000 16,000 184,000$