169 



I must not exhaust your patience by going on to explore so wide 

 a field as that on which I have just entered. The subject is one to 

 which justice cannot be done without a much more ample discussion 

 than would be convenient on an occasion like the present. All that 

 I shall say besides may be comprised in a very few words. In 

 composing his ' Essays ' on what is now called Political Economy, we 

 may presume that David Hume's mind was influenced by the same 

 considerations as when he composed those other Essays to which 

 I have alluded ; and it is not too much to say that these researches 

 of Hume's may be regarded as having, more than anything besides, 

 contributed to lay the foundation of that vast science which has been 

 since developed through the labours of Adam Smith and Homer, 

 and of others who are still alive among us. 



At the same time, in giving this credit to Hume, we must not over- 

 look what is due to one of our own body, and an original Fellow of the 

 Royal Society. Sir William Petty contributed several papers to the 

 * Philosophical Transactions/ In an early part of his life he had been 

 engaged in giving lectures on Anatomy and on Chemistry at Oxford ; 

 and his mind having been thus prepared he entered on the con- 

 sideration of other subjects, such as taxation and trade as affecting 

 the material prosperity of nations, and social statistics. His ' Discourse 

 on Political Arithmetic ' seems to have been the last result of his 

 labours, it having been first published after his death, by his son, 

 Lord Shelburne. In his Preface to this Discourse he thus expresses 

 himself (and I quote the passage because it will serve to show how in 

 these later investigations his mind was influenced by those in which 

 he had been previously engaged) : " The method I take to do this is 

 not very usual : for, instead of using only comparative and superla- 

 tive words, and intellectual arguments, I have taken the course (as a 

 specimen of the political arithmetic I have long aimed at) to express 

 myself in terms of number, weight, or measure ; to use only arguments 

 of sense, and to consider only such causes as have visible foundations 

 in Nature." 



It would be easy to adduce from other sciences analogous illustra- 

 tions of the proposition which I have ventured to advance. Com- 

 pare the natural theology of Derham, Paley, and the Bridgewater 

 Treatises, all founded on the observation of natural phenomena, with 

 the speculations of the ancient philosophers, or with the abstractions 



