Page:PettyWilliam1899EconomicWritingsVol2.djvu/159

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464
Another Essay.

good Accounts of the people in several of them) to be now upon the Face of the Earth[1], will within the next 2000 Years so increase as to give one |17| Head for every two Acres of Land in the Habitable part of the Earth. And then, according to the Prediction of the Scriptures, there must be Wars and great Slaughter, &c.

Wherefore, as an Expedient against the above-mentioned difference between 10 and 1200 Years, we do for the present, and in this Countrey admit of 360 Years to be the time wherein the People of England do double, according to the present Laws and Practice of Marriages.

Now, if the City double its People in 40 Years, and the present Number be 670 Thousand, and if the whole Territory be 7 Millions 400 Thousand, and double in 360 Years, as aforesaid; then by the underwritten Table it appears, that Anno 1840, the People of the City will be 10718880, and those of the whole Country but 10917389, which is but inconsiderably more. Where-|18|fore it is Certain and Necessary that the Growth of the City must stop before the said Year 1840: And will be at its utmost height in the next preceding Period, Anno 1800, when the Number of the City will be Eight times its present Number, viz. 5 Millions 359 Thousand. And when (besides the said Number) there will be 4 Millions 466 Thousand to perform the Tillage, Pasturage, and other Rural Works Necessary to be done without the said City, as by the following Table, viz .

Annis. Burials People in
London.
People in
England.
1565 2568 77040 5526929
As in the
former
Table.
1605 5135
1642 11883
1682 22331 669930 7369230
1722 44662
1762 89324
1802 178648 5359440 9825650
1842 357296 10718880 10917389 |19|
  1. Petty's learned men have not been identified. In 1685 Isaac Vossius estimated the population of the world at 500 millions, a number which Bayle ridiculed as too large: Vossii variorum observationum liber, 68; Bayle, Nouvelles