340 A SEAMAN EQUALS THREE HUSBANDMEN. Sir W. Petty. ? 1077. their land is improved by building houses, ships, engines, dykes, wharfs, gardens of pleasure, extraordinary flowers and fruits; for dairy and feeding of cattle, for rape, flax, madder, &c.-the foundations of several advantageous manufactures. 3. Whereas the employment of other men is confined to their own country, that of seamen is free to the whole world; so as where Trade may, as they call it, be dead, here or there, now and then, it is certain that somewhere or other in the world, Trade is always quick enough, and provisions are always plentiful. The benefit whereof, those who command the shipping enjoy, and they only. 4. The great and ultimate effect of trade is not wealth. at large; but particularly abundance of silver, gold, and Silver, gold, jewels; which are not perishable, nor so mutable and jewels are as other commodities, but are wealth at all Wealth. times, and all places: whereas abundance of wine, corn, fowls, flesh, &c., are riches but hic et nunc. So as the raising of such commodities, and the following of such trade which does store the country with gold, silver, jewels, &c., is profitable before others. Universal But the labour of seamen and freight of ships are always of the nature of an exported commodity: the overplus whereof, above what is imported, brings home money, &c. sail for less 5. Those who have the command of the sea trade, Reasons why may work at easier freight with more profit the Hollanders than others at greater. For as cloth must be freight. cheaper made when one cards, another spins, another weaves, another draws, another dresses, another presses and packs; than when all the operations above mentioned are clumsily performed by the same hand: so those who command the trade of shipping, can build long slight ships for carrying masts, fir timber, boards, balks [beams or rafters], &c.; and short ones for lead, iron, stones, &c.; one sort of vessels to trade at ports where they need never lie aground, others where they must jump upon the sand twice every twelve hours: one sort of vessels and way of manning, in time of peace and for cheap gross [bulky] goods, another for war and precious commodities; one sort of vessels for the turbulent sea, Petty another for inland waters and rivers; one sort of vessels and rigging where haste is requisite for the maidenhead first sales] of a market, another where one-third or onefourth of the time makes no matter; one sort of masting and rigging for long voyages, another for coasting; one sort of vessels for fishing, another for trade; one sort for war for this or that country, another for burden only. Some for oars, some for poles, some for sails, and some for draught by men or horses. Some for the northern navigations amongst ice; and some for the South, against worms, &c. And this I take to be the chief of several reasons, why the Hollanders can go at less freight than their neighbours, viz., because they can afford a particular sort of vessels for each particular trade. I have shewn how Situation hath given them shipping, and how Shipping hath given them, in effect, all other trade; and how Foreign Traffic must give them as much Manufactures as they can manage themselves: and as for the overplus, make the rest of the world but as workmen to their shops. It now remains to shew the effects of their Policy superstructed upon these Natural Advantages, and not, as The Policy of some think, upon the excess of their understandings. Holland. I have omitted to mention, the Hollanders were, one hundred years since, a poor and oppressed people living in a country naturally cold, moist, and unpleasant; and were withal persecuted for their heterodoxy in religion. From hence it necessarily followed, that this people must labour hard, and set all hands to work; rich and poor, old and young must study the Art of Number, Weight, and Measure, must fare hard, provide for impotents and orphans out of hope to make profit by their labours; must punish the lazy by labour, and not by crippling them. I say, all these particulars (said to be the subtle excogitations of the Hollanders) seem to me but what could not almost have been otherwise. Liberty of Conscience, Registry of Conveyances, small Customs [import duties], Banks, Lumbards [pawnbrokers] and Law Merchant rise all from the same spring, and tend to the same As for Lowness of Interest, it is also a necessary effect of all the premisses, and not the fruit of their contrivance. sea. 342 TRADE VALUE OF LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE. [Sir W. Petty. ? 1677. Wherefore we shall only shew in particular the efficacy of each; and first of Liberty of Conscience. But before I enter upon these, I shall mention a practice almost forgotten, whether it referreth to Trade or Policy is Undermasting not material; which is the Hollanders' underof ships. masting and sailing such of their shipping as carry cheap and gross [bulky] goods, and whose sale doth not depend much upon the season. It is to be noted, that of two equal and like vessels, if one spreads 1,600 yards of like canvas, and the other 2,500, their speed is but as Four to Five: so as one brings home the same timber in four days as the other will in five. Now if we consider that although those ships be but four or five days under sail, that they are perhaps thirty upon the voyage: so as one is but one-thirtieth part longer upon the whole voyage than the other, though one-fifth longer under sail. Now if masts, yards, rigging, cables, and anchors do all depend upon the quantity and extent of the sails, and consequently hands also it follows that the one vessel goes at one-third less Charge, losing but one-thirtieth of the Time and of what depends there upon. Conscience, I now come to the first Policy of the Dutch, viz., Liberty of Liberty of Conscience: which I conceive, they grant upon these and the Rea- grounds; but keeping up always a force to maintain the common peace. sons thereof in Holland. 1. They themselves broke with Spain to avoid the imposition of the Clergy. 2. Dissenters of this kind are, for the most part, thinking, sober, and patient men; and such as believe that labour and industry is their duty towards GOD: how erroneous soever their opinions be. 3. These people believing in the Justice of GOD; and seeing the most licentious persons to enjoy most of the world and its best things, will never venture to be of the same religion and profession with voluptuaries and men of extreme wealth and power, whom they think to have their portion in this world. 4. They cannot but know That no man can believe what himself pleases: and to force men to say they believe, Petty what they do not, is vain, absurd, and without honour to GOD. 5. The Hollanders knowing themselves not to be an infallible church, and that others had the same Scriptures for guides as themselves, and withal the same Interest to save their souls, do not think fit to make this matter their business; no more than to take bonds of the seamen they employ, not to cast away their own ships and lives. 6. The Hollanders observe that, in France and Spain, especially the latter, the Churchmen [Clergy] are about 100 to 1 to what they use or need; the principal care of whom, is to preserve Uniformity: and this they take to be a superfluous charge. 7. They observe where most endeavours have been used to keep Uniformity, there Heterodoxy hath most abounded. 8. They believe that if one-fourth of the people were heterodox, and that if that whole quarter should (by miracle) be removed; that, within a small time, one-fourth of the remainder would again become heterodox, some way or other it being natural for men to differ in opinion in matters above Sense and Reason; and for those who have less Wealth, to think they have the more Wit and Understanding, especially of the Things of GOD, which they think chiefly belong to the poor. 9. They think the case of the primitive Christians, as it is represented in the Acts of the Apostles, looks like that of the present Dissenters: I mean, externally. any country is Heterodox Moreover, it is to be observed that Trade doth not, as some think, best flourish under popular Govern- The trade of ments: but rather that Trade is most vigour chiefly manously carried on, in every State and Govern- aged by the ment, by the heterodox part of the same; and party. such as profess opinions different from what are publicly established. That is to say, in India, where the Mahometan religion is authorized; there the Banyans are the most considerable merchants. In the Turkish Empire, the Jews and Christians. At Venice, Naples, Leghorn, Genoa, and Lisbon; Jews and non-Papist merchantstrangers. But to be short, in that part of Europe where the Roman Catholic religion now hath, or lately hath had establishment, there three-quarters of the whole trade is 344 REGISTRIES OF TITLES TO LANDS & HOUSES. Sir W. Petty. ? 1577 in the hands of such as have separated from that Church: that is to say, the inhabitants of England, Scotland, and Ireland, as also those of the United Provinces, with Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, together with the subjects of the German Protestant Princes and the Hanse Towns, do, at this day, possess three-quarters of the Trade of the World. And even in France itself; the Huguenots are, proportionably, far the greatest traders. Nor is it to be denied, but that in Ireland, where the said Roman religion is not authorized: there, the professors thereof have a great part of the trade. From whence it follows, that Trade is not fixed to any species of Religion, as such: but rather, as before hath been said, to the heterodox part of the whole: the truth whereof appears also, in all the particular towns of greatest trade in England. All the Papists' seamen of Europe are scarce sufficient to man the King of England's Fleet. Nor do I find reason to believe, that the Roman Catholic seamen in the whole world, are sufficient to man effectually a Fleet equal to what the King of England now hath: but the non-Papist seamen can do above thrice as much. Wherefore he, whom this latter party doth affectionately own to be their head, cannot probably be wronged in his sea concernments by the other. From whence it follows, that for the Advancement of Trade, if that be a sufficient reason, indulgence must be granted in Matters of Opinion: though licentious actings, as even in Holland, be restrained by force. Lands and Houses. The second Policy, or help to trade used by the Hollanders, is the securing the Titles to Lands and Houses. For although Firm Titles to lands and houses may be called terra firma et res immobilis; yet the title unto them is no more certain than it pleases the Lawyers and Authority to make them. Wherefore the Hollanders do, by Registries and other ways of assurance, make the title as immoveable as the lands. For there can be no encouragement to industry, where there is no assurance of what shall be gotten by it; and where, by fraud and corruption, one man may take away, with ease and by a trick, and in a moment, what another has gotten by many years' extreme labour and pains. There hath been much discourse about the introducing |