Selected quad for the lemma: book_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	discourse_n	letter_n	treatise_n	2,074	5	9.6816	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A46458	A letter from a gentleman in the country to his friend in the city, touching Sir William Petty's posthumous treatise entituled, Verbum sapienti, or, The method of raising taxes in the most equal manner, &c.	H. J., Gentleman in the country.	1691 (1691)	Wing J15; ESTC R8924	15,963	21

A LETTER FROM A GENTLEMAN IN THE COUNTRY TO HIS Friend in the City TOUCHING Sir WILLIAM PETTY's Posthumous Treatise ENTITULED Verbum Sapienti Or The Method of Raising Taxes in the most equal Manner c. Licensed and Entered according to Order London Printed by G. C. for William Miller at the Gilded Acorn in St. Paul's Church-yard where Gentlemen and others may be furnished with School-Books and most sorts of Acts of Parliament Kings Lord Chancellors Lord Keepers and Speakers Speeches and other sorts of Discourses and State-Matters as also Books of Divinity Church Government Humanity Sermons on most Occasions Blank Funeral-Tickets c. 1691. A LETTER FROM A Gentleman in the Country TO HIS Friend in the City c. SIR IN Obedience to your Command I have diligently perused Sir William Petty's ingenious Treatise Entituled Verbum Sapienti c. And shall offer you my Sense of it with the utmost Brevity which the real weight and marvellous variety of Matter admits I cannot enough commend the Learned Author's Scope and Design to give us a perfect State of our chiefest Publick Concernments and that at a time when we seemed so much to need it Or as in another Case he is pleased himself to term it Our Political Anatomy Wherein if any Mistakes or Omissions there seem to be without doubt the Merit of so noble an Enterprise makes more than double Amends In magnis voluisse sat est I may likewise without Complement to him affirm it is the first considerable Essay of this nature which I have seen or heard of and therefore treading in an unbeaten Path he cannot Err but very pardonably so as to challenge our Thanks rather than incur our Censure Nor will it I hope be any blemish or derogation to so great a Master of Political Measures as Sir William Petty is reputed If one who 't is like would never himself have thought of a Performance so useful to the Publick nor could to be sure had he luckily stumbled on it have acquitted himself therein half so well yet standing as it were upon his Shoulders should pretend in some things to see farther now than he at the time he wrote could do For indeed we rightly say Bernardus non videt omnia And a known Maxim tells us Facile est nonnihil inventis addere This Apology premised I shall with your Patience take the Treatise it self in pieces and cursorily examine it Chapter by Chapter both to give his important Discoveries their due Commendation and note his seeming defects In his short but Solid Introduction he gives us a general yet excellent View of our dangerous not to say monstrous Disproportions in point of Taxing Wisely withal insinuating how light and even infensible our Burthens equally charged would be which yet by many long continued Inequalities have oft-times proved so heavy sometimes insupportable Whereof I shall only say if herein at all he Err it is sufficiently on the modester and safer side in rather palliating than aggravating our Misconduct on that behalf In his First Chapter he presents us a kind of Particular or Rentall of our Estate Examining as it were with Boccaline our real Weight Therein yielding us a fair Occasion of Enquiry how the Parts agree with the Total and whether he hath left out nothing or nothing very material It is not my business here to contest with him the just Values of the several Branches specified in his Catalogue Rather I shall take his Account thereof de bene esse as equally probable with others which I have met with of the same kind though different enough and some of them much greater than his Such Measures being at best Conjectural and therefore so various as hardly two of ten exactly or to any purpose agree But I doubt it will appear he hath unhappily overseen divers personal Profits and Revenues in themselves as considerable as most of those he hath inserted perhaps more easie clear and certain viz. Professions Offices Above all Interest of Money Which though they do not I grant improve or enlarge our Fund indeed I could wish they did not at least some of them much impair it yet where the principal Aim is professed to be an equal Apportionment of our Publick Contributions ought to have been placed in the first Rank and surely should be charged to the full The rather in my Judgment for the very doubtful Advantage if not indeed the manifest Prejudice and Incumbrance which some of them are but too apt to bring us The discursive part of his Second Chapter is very useful and indeed curious In shewing us how Industry Co-operates wlth Nature for our comfortable Subsistence and in what Proportions to each other Our Earnings he seems to rate with his wonted Modesty However the mean Estimate he gives them cannot I think but imply they are capable of a large and easie Advancement In the Third Chapter he computes and compares the yearly Charges of the Kingdom with its Revenues as succinctly yet fairly and probaly as ever yet I heard them stated In his Fourth he teaches us how a Million per Annum at which he seems considerately enough to reckon our whole ordinary Expences may be raised with the least Oppression or Burthen Wherein no doubt he were happy even to some Exactness could we but admit the Ground-work which he laid in his First Chapter to be free from all Exceptions The Argument of his Fifth Chapter although it may seem notional and at the first sight abrupt is very Pertinent and Substantial Supposing Six Millions only to be the ready Coin or running Cash of England he enquires Whether it suffice for the Circulations or Revolutions of a thriving Trade and easily resolves it in the Affirmative Thereby acquainting us That 't is not the Species or Quantity but the due Circulation of Money which ought to be considered Since although we had much less yet fairly Circulating we should find no lack of it or had we much more it would but stagnate without a Regular Distribution In which respect by the way methinks it rather resembles our Blood than our Fat Now this will lead us to a farther necessary Search what it is which thus obstructs this due Circulation Wherein 't will I think appear that the annual Profits or Rents of Land being the Source as it were of all our Payments or current Dealings in Trade if instead of the nimble Returns by our Author supposed the most and even the best of our Country Tenants be above a Year behind with their Rents others at least twice or thrice as long Too many totally insolvent Abundance of our greatest Farms at the same time either lying waste or being in the Tenure of hinderly idle or ignorant Owners to little or no Account whereby probably Land-Rents are now one with another in most Countries two or three Years in Arrear and a great part of them in a manner Desperate If all this I say appear as surely it doth and that