insufficiently and absurdly managed, he obtained a contract, dated 11th December, 1654, for performing the said admeasurement, by which he gained above 9000l.; "which," he adds, "with the 500l. above mentioned, my salary of 20s. per diem, the benefit of my practice, together with 600l. given me for directing an after-survey of the adventurers' land, and 800l. more for two years' salary as Clerk of the Council, raised me an estate of about 13,000l. in ready and real money, at a time when, without art, interest, or authority, men bought as much land for ten shillings in real money as in this year, 1685, yields ten shillings per annum rent above his majesty's quit-rents." With part of this money he bought soldiers' debentures, with the produce of which he afterwards bought lands in Ireland that produced him a rental, Aubrey says, of 18,000l. a year, of the greater part of which however he was deprived after the Restoration by the Court of Nocents, or Innocents, which found that many of the persons to whom the lands had originally belonged had not taken part in the rebellion of 1641, and consequently that the lands were not forfeited. Petty, we suppose, would get back his purchase-money; but that would be a scanty compensation. And possibly even that might be withheld, on the plea that he had no claim except against the defunct illegal government. another portion of his 13,000l. he bought the Earl of Arundel's house and garden in Lothbury, London, and erected upon their site the buildings forming Tokenhouse-yard, which however were for the most part destroyed some years afterwards by the Great Fire. It was Henry Cromwell who gave him his place of Clerk of the Council in 1657, having already on his first coming over as Lord-Lieutenant, two years before, made him his secretary.

With

He returned to England early in 1659. It is affirmed to have been again by the interest of his friend the LordLieutenant of Ireland that he was returned for the borough of West Looe, in Cornwall, to the parliament called by Richard Cromwell, which met on the 27th of January in that year. He had not yet taken his seat when, on the 25th of March, six articles of impeachment were exhibited against him by Sir Hierome Sankey, member for Woodstock, for his proceedings in connexion with the distribution and allotment of Irish forfeited lands; upon which he was summoned to attend the House that day month. He made his appearance on the 19th of April, and the charges were discussed on the 21st; but, the parliament being suddenly dissolved on the day day following, no decision was come to. In a letter to Thurloe, then principal secretary of state, dated the 11th of April, Henry Cromwell writes in terms which strongly show how high Petty stood in his regard. "I have heretofore," he says, "told you my thoughts of Dr. Petty, and am still of the same opinion; and, if Sir Hierome Sankey do not run him down with numbers and noise of adventurers, and such other like concerned persons, I believe the parliament will find him as I have represented. He has curiously deceived me these four years if he be a knave." Aubrey affirms that Petty and Sankey, whom he calls one of Oliver's knights, and who, he says, was wont to preach at Dublin, " printed one against the other;" and Petty did publish a folio pamphlet in 1659, entitled 'A Brief of Proceedings between Sir Hierome Sankey and the author, with the State of the Controversy between them; and another in 1660, in octavo, entitled 'Reflections upon some Persons and Things in Ireland, by Letter to and from Dr. Petty; with Sir Hierome Sankey's Speech in Parliament.' Aubrey adds-" The knight had been a soldier, and challenged Sir William to fight with him. William is extremely short-sighted, and, being the challengee, it belonged to him to nominate place and weapon. He nominates, for the place, a dark cellar, and the weapon to be a great carpenter's axe. This turned the knight's challenge into ridicule, and so it came to nought." The breaking up of the parliament, however, did not save Petty. He returned to Ireland immediately; but, notwithstanding the continued friendship and protection of the Lord-Lieutenant, steps were taken to prosecute him by the English government, and he was removed

Sir

from all his public employments. The Restoration, however, came before anything could be done; and Petty hastened to make friends with the new government, which he seems to have had no difficulty in doing, although he had figured as one of the members of Harrington's republican Rota Club, which had continued to meet at Miles's Coffee-House, in New Palace Yard, down to so recent a date as the 21st of February in this same year. But Petty, who had come over again to England in the latter part of 1659, had returned to Ireland soon after Christmas, and he was still there when the Restoration took place. Aubrey says, that, when he soon after came back to England, "he was presently received into good grace with his majesty, who was mightily pleased with his discourse." Having resigned his professorship in Gresham College on the 8th of March, 1661, he was on the 19th of the same month made one of the commissioners of the Court of Claims relating to the Irish estates; and on the 11th of April he received the honour of knighthood, together with the grant of a new patent constituting him Surveyor-General for Ireland. Aubrey even affirms that he received a patent creating him an Irish peer by the title of Earl of Kilmore; which," it is added, "he stifles during his life to avoid envy, but his son will have the benefit of the precedency." This, however, is perhaps only a dream of the gossiping antiquary; who subjoins, in a note written after Petty's death, " I expected that his son would have broken out a lord or earl, but it seems that he had enemies at the court at Dublin, which out of envy obstructed the passing of his patent."

Although he was not made a peer, however, Petty was made a member of parliament, being returned this same year to the Irish House of Commons for the borough of Eniscorthy. All the forfeited lands in Ireland of which he had been possessed on the 7th of May, 1659, were confirmed to him by the Act of Settlement passed in 1662. Upon the foundation of the Royal Society in July, 1662, he was elected one of the first council; and when the College of Physicians obtained its new charter the following year, his name was published in the list of the Fellows, although he had now left off practice. It was soon after this date that he first produced his famous invention of a double-bottomed ship to sail against wind and tide, which in July, 1664, made a successful passage from Dublin to Holyhead and back again, but was lost in a violent storm on a third attempt to cross the Irish Sea. The idea continued to occupy him for some years; but he was obliged to admit at last that he could make nothing of it. It appears, in fact, that although the new species of ship performed wonders against wind and tide, before the wind it refused to move at all. Such is stated to have been one of its defects-as if more would not have been superfluous.

In 1667, on Trinity Sunday, Sir William Petty married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Hardress Waller, of Castletown, in the county of Limerick, Knight, and widow of Sir Maurice Fenton, Bart., described by Aubrey as "a very beautiful and ingenious lady, brown, with glorious eyes." He afterwards, he tells us, set up iron-works and pilchard-fishing in Kerry, and opened the lead-mines and timber-trade in the same county; by all which operations, together with some advantageous bargains, and by living under his income, he in course of time greatly increased his fortune.

It was during the remaining portion of his life that most of his literary performances were published, and probably for the greater part executed. Though none of them are of great magnitude, their number is considerable. The principal are- A Treatise of Taxes and Contributions,' 4to., London, 1662, 1667, 1685, 1690 (for the first time with the author's name), and 1769; a Latin Hexameter Poem entitled 'Colloquium Davidis cum anima sua De Magnalibus Dei' (a paraphrase of the 104th Psalm), folio, London, 1679, under the name of Cassid. Aureus Minutius; Quantulumcunque, concerning Money,' 4to., 1682; 'An Essay in Political Arithmetic concerning the Growth of the City of London,' 8vo., London, 1682, 1686, and 1769; Observations upon the Dublin Bills of Mortality in 1681, and

the State of that City,' 8vo., London, 1683, 1686, and 1769; Maps of Ireland,' folio, 1685; 'Two Essays in Political Arithmetic, concerning the People, Housing, Hospitals, &c. of London and Paris, 8vo., London, 1687; Five Essays in Political Arithmetic,' 8vo., London, 1687. He also contributed several papers to the Philosophical Transactions. And among other works of his writing not published till after his death were, Political Arithmetic, or a Discourse concerning the Extent and Value of Lands, People, Buildings, &c., as the same relates to every Country in general, but more particularly to the Territories of his Majesty of Great Britain, and his Neighbours of Holland, Zealand, and France,' 8vo., 1690, 1755, and 1769; 'The Political Anatomy of Ireland, 8vo., London, 1691, 1719, and 1769 (in which two latter editions it is entitled 'A Political Survey of Ireland'); and Verbum Sapienti, or An Account of the Wealth and Expense of England,' drawn up in 1666, and printed along with the last in all the editions.

Petty's Quantulumcunque, where he ventures into the region of what is now called Political Economy, contains some ingenious and sound remarks, but it does not show that he had seen much farther into the true nature of money than his contemporaries. His reputation is not so much that of a political economist as of a political arithmetician. By Political Arithmetic is meant that subdivision of Political Economy which is occupied with the calculation of the mere numerical results of the powers and principles that regulate the progress of society. It comprehends what we now call Statistics, but only as its substratum or basis, or as furnishing the data for its operations and conclusions, which have for the most part a reference rather to the future than to the present. Even in this field Petty must be considered as rather an ingenious than a very wise or profound speculator. But his views are sometimes curious and interesting from their very boldness, not to say extravagance and absurdity. One of his most remarkable tracts is his 'Essay in Political Economy concerning the Growth of the City