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WILLIAM PETTY, THE MULTIPLICATION OF MANKIND, AND DEMOGRAPHIC DISCOURSE IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 December 2017

PAUL SLACK
PAUL SLACK*
Affiliation:
Linacre College, Oxford
*
Linacre College, Oxford, ox1 3ja[email protected]
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Abstract

In the 1650s, after a century of increase, the population of England stopped growing. It was not to increase substantially again before 1750. Over the same interval, and not wholly coincidentally, scholars and theologians were trying to defend the orthodox account of how global population had increased since the Creation and must continue to do so, and the first political arithmeticians were trying to measure and analyse demographic change. This article seeks to throw fresh light on this many-sided discourse by examining William Petty's attempt to write an account of the multiplication of mankind, and the reasons why he failed to complete it. It focuses particularly on Petty's part in developing methods of measuring population density which highlighted the potential for future growth, and on the equally important demonstration by John Graunt that high and rising mortality in cities was hindering population growth in reality. As Petty's cousin Robert Southwell pointed out, Graunt's ‘rule of mortality’ was wholly incompatible with any coherent account of the future multiplication of mankind. At the end of this particular discourse, newly discovered facts about demography triumphed over the presuppositions of divinity.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 61 , Issue 2 , June 2018 , pp. 301 - 325
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

This article gives fuller consideration to a theme introduced in my ‘Plenty of people’: perceptions of population in early modern England (Stenton Lecture 2010, University of Reading, 2011), and I am grateful for comments from two anonymous referees which helped me to refine its development here. All pre-1800 works were published in London unless otherwise stated.

References

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6 Le journal des sçavans, 15 Mar. 1683, pp. 64–5. On the dispute about the populations of Paris and London, see Dupâquier, Jacques, ‘Londres où Paris? Un grand débat dans le petit monde des arithméticiens politiques (1662–1759)’, Population, 53 (1998), pp. 311–25Google Scholar.

7 Correspondence, pp. 147, 153, 155, 166, 176. In Petty's lists of his essays, written in 1685 and 1686, he refers first to ‘Growth of the people and multiplication of mankind’, and then to ‘Upon the multiplication of mankind’ with a separate entry for ‘An essay upon the growth of London’: Lansdowne, marquess of, ed., The Petty papers (2 vols., London 1927) (hereafter PP), ii, pp. 263, 266Google Scholar.

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45 Economic writings, ii, pp. 371–2. The actual acreage (37.3 million) was measured with approximate accuracy by Edmond Halley only in 1685. Graunt appears to have deduced acreage (accurately enough) from an area of 39,000 square miles which was much too low. He seems not to have known about Thomas Harriot's unpublished attempt at a similar calculation much earlier: Sokol, Barnett J., ‘Thomas Harriot – Sir Walter Ralegh's tutor – on population’, Annals of Science, 31 (1974), pp. 208–10Google Scholar.

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48 Ibid., i, p. 21; PP, i, p. 208, ‘Observations of England’ (which used population and acreage figures close to Graunt's). There has been much speculation about Petty's influence on Graunt's Observations, e.g. Glass, D. V., ‘John Graunt and his natural and political observations’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 19 (1964), pp. 78–89Google Scholar; Reungoat, Petty, pp. 33–42. The calculation of density per acre is a case where they must have talked about the methodology, while disagreeing about their conclusions; and it supports the view that Graunt indubitably had a mind of his own. See Pelling, ‘Far too many women?’, passim.

49 Economic writings, i, p. 217. In 1675, Southwell reported similar figures to the Royal Society: Thomas Birch, The history of the Royal Society of London (4 vols., 1756–7), iii, pp. 196–7.

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57 Economic writings, ii, p. 464. In 1801, it was 8.7 million.

58 John Houghton, A collection for the improvement of husbandry and trade, ed. Richard Bradley (4 vols., 1727–8), iv, pp. 10–17; Tanner, J. R., ed., Private correspondence and miscellaneous papers of Samuel Pepys, 1679–1703 (2 vols., London, 1926), ii, pp. 263–5Google Scholar.

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73 PP, ii, pp. 50–1, 54–5. There are similar notions in ‘Of doubling the people’ (1687): ibid., ii, pp. 55–7.

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80 Ibid., ii, pp. 393–4.

81 de Vries, Jan, European urbanization, 1500–1800 (London, 1984), p. 179Google Scholar. For a stimulating analysis of Graunt's contribution, to which I am greatly indebted, see Richard Smith, ‘John Graunt, the law of decline and the origins of urban historical demography’, Gresham College Lecture, 29 Nov. 2012 (transcript available at www.gresham.ac.uk, accessed 7 Mar. 2017).

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84 Ibid., i, p. 109 (the document in the footnote here should be dated 1687 not 1667); Slack, Invention of improvement, p. 117; PP, i, pp. 26, 38–40.

85 Economic writings, ii, pp. 471, 475.

86 Correspondence, p. 146.

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88 Ibid., ii, pp. 469–76.

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101 The only exception was Louis-Joseph Plumard de Dangeul, Remarks on the advantages and disadvantages of France and of Great-Britain with respect to commerce (1754), p. 191–2.

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107 Economic writings, i, p. 245.

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109 Economic writings, ii, p. 456; Correspondence, pp. 161–2.

110 British Library, Additional MS 72866, ‘Analysis populi’, fo. 53v, ‘Worke for the next parliament’, fo. 112; PP, i, pp. 37–40, 194.

111 Hinde, England's population, pp. 184–9; de Vries, Jan, ‘The economic crisis of the seventeenth century after fifty years’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 40 (2009), pp. 151–94, at pp. 160–1Google Scholar. It is ironic that the rule of mortality as Graunt defined it ceased to operate in England in the 1780s and 1790s, just before the date Petty predicted that London's growth must end: Wrigley, E. A., The path to sustained growth: England's transition from an organic economy to an industrial revolution (Cambridge, 2016), p. 93Google Scholar.

112 The fact that no manuscript copies of a ‘Multiplication’ essay have yet been discovered, in contrast to those of Petty's ‘Scale of creation’ (Lewis, Petty, pp. 83–4), suggests that the ‘essay’ circulating among his friends in the 1680s may have been little more than a list of scarcely connected propositions.

113 Above, at n. 13.

114 Economic writings, ii, p. 398.

115 The classic account is Wrigley, E. A., ‘A simple model of London's importance in changing English society and economy, 1650–1750’, Past and Present, 37 (1967), pp. 44–70Google Scholar.

116 Correspondence, p. 175.