Page:William Petty - Economic Writings (1899) vol 1.djvu/109

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The Preface.

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force of any subdolous whisperings in the Ears of His Majesty.

6. His good acceptance of all ingenious endeavours, shall make the wise men of this Eastern England be led by his Star into Ireland, and there present him with their choicest advices, who can most judiciously select and apply them.

Lastly, this great Person takes the great Settlement in hand, when Ireland is as a white paper, when there sits a Parliament most affectionate to his Person, and capable of his Counsel, under a King curious as well as careful of Reformation; and when there is opportunity, to pass into Positive Laws whatsoever is right reason and the Law of Nature.

Wherefore by applying those Notions unto Ireland, I think I have harped upon the right string, and have struck whilest the Iron is hot; by publishing them now, when, if ever at all, they be useful. I would now advertise the || world, that I do not think I can mend it, and that I hold it best for every mans particular quiet, to let it vadere sicut vult; I know well, that res nolunt male administrari^[1], and that (say I what I will or can) things will have their course, nor will nature be couzened: Wherefore what I have written, (as I said before) was done but to ease and deliver my self, my head having been impregnated with these things by the daily talk I hear about advancing and regulating Trade, and by the murmurs about Taxes, &c. Now whether what I have said be contemned or cavilled at, I care not, being of the same minde about this, as some thriving men are concerning the profuseness of their Children; for as they take pleasure to

↑ This is a favourite quotation with Petty. It occurs in his Discourse of Duplicate Proportion (1674, see note to Dedication of Polit. Arith.), and in his letter to Southwell, 2 June, 1686, Fitzmaurice, 274. In the modified form "Ingenia solent res nolunt male administrari," it is the motto of his Speculum Hiberniae. Brit. Mus. Addl. MS. 21, 128, f. 38. Sir Josiah Child (loc. cit.) apparently considered Petty the author of it. But Sir Peter Pett, who declares it a sentence of late (1680) much in vogue and one which he had heard some men living falsely vouched for the author of, traces it to Bede's Axiomata Philosophica [Migne, xc. 1023] and to Aristotle's Metaphysica, [xii. 10, ed. Schwegler (1847), i. 258]. Pett, Happy future State of England, 250.

[1] This is a favourite quotation with Petty. It occurs in his Discourse of Duplicate Proportion (1674, see note to Dedication of Polit. Arith.), and in his letter to Southwell, 2 June, 1686, Fitzmaurice, 274. In the modified form "Ingenia solent res nolunt male administrari," it is the motto of his Speculum Hiberniae. Brit. Mus. Addl. MS. 21, 128, f. 38. Sir Josiah Child (loc. cit.) apparently considered Petty the author of it. But Sir Peter Pett, who declares it a sentence of late (1680) much in vogue and one which he had heard some men living falsely vouched for the author of, traces it to Bede's Axiomata Philosophica [Migne, xc. 1023] and to Aristotle's Metaphysica, [xii. 10, ed. Schwegler (1847), i. 258]. Pett, Happy future State of England, 250.

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