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
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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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    are disregarded, and the punctuation of the MS. is noted only where it gives the passage a meaning different from that of the printed version. All Petty’s corrections are noted. Among the remaining MSS. perhaps the most interesting is one endorsed “ Pettys PI. Arithmetic I take to be Corrected by Sr W1 himself having formerly seen a good deal of his Hand Writing,” now among the Rawlinson MSS. in the Bodleian Library1. The MS. is in two hands, that of the second copyist beginning with chapter five. Petty’s corrections are few compared with those in the South- well MS., and most of them are merely formal, such as changing “300,000” to “300 Thousand.” The more important variations marked R, are given in the foot notes. A transcript of the Political Arithmetick, presented by Willoughby, is in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin2 3. It contains no corrections by Petty. A transcript in quarto, made for Essex, is, or was, at Ashburnham Place, and the British Museum has, in addition to the Southwell MS., a com- paratively worthless copy, unintelligently abridged4. Besides these, a MS. of the Political Arithmetick was presented by Petty to the King5 and both Sir Joseph Williamson6 and Sir Peter Pett7 had MSS. of it. Manuscript copies of the Political Arithmetick being thus circu- lated among Petty’s friends, soon after its composition, they seem to have urged him to publish it at once. A letter to Southwell8 in reply to some such request was once in the possession of Thomas Thorpe, who described it as discussing the printing [reprinting] of the Treatise of Taxes, the Political Arithmetick, and the translation of the 104th psalm, “which Petty here expresses his reluctance to be printed9.” The unauthorized reprinting of the Treatise of Taxes in 167910 apparently convinced Petty that it was safer to have his books printed under supervision, for he subsequently wrote to Aubrey, 12 July, 1681, that he was not forward to print the Political Arithmetick but did wish that what went abroad might be compared with the copy in Southwell’s possession, which he had corrected in 1 Rawlinson MS. D 25. 2 MSS. E. 2 : 20. Fourth Kept. Hist. MSS. Com., 596 b. 3 Eighth Rept. Hist. MSS. Com , in. 39a. 4 Sloane MS. 2572. 5 Wood, Athena Oxon., 11. 810. G lb. 7 Pett, Happy future State, 106, 193. 8 Dated 5 Oct., 1678. 9 Thorpe, Cat. lib. MSS. bibl. Southwellianee, p. 403. 10 P. 4.