The politics of consumption and England's happiness in the later seventeenth century

English Historical Review

Volumn 122, Issue 497, 2007, Pages 609-631

  Slack, Paul ^a  

^a LINACRE COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 41949103094     PISSN: 00138266     EISSN: 14774534     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/ehr/cem090     Document Type: Review

References (251)

1. See, for example, J. Appleby, 'Consumption in Early Modern Social Thought', in J. Brewer and R. Porter (ed.), Consumption and the World of Goods (London, 1993), 162-73;
2. Luxury in the Eighteenth Century. Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods, ed. M. Berg and E. Eger (London, 2003);
3. T. H. Breen, The Market Place of Revolution. How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (Oxford, 2004);
4. L. L. Peck, Consuming Splendour. Society and Culture in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge,- 2005);
5. M. J. Powell, The Politics of Consumption in Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Basingstoke, 2005).
6. J. O. Appleby, Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England (Princeton, 1978), ch. 7;
7. T. Hutchison, Before Adam Smith. The Emergence of Political Economy, 1662-1776 (Oxford, 1988), 73-86.
8. Appleby, 'Consumption in Early Modern Social Thought', 165; M. Berg and E. Eger, 'The Rise and Fall of the Luxury Debate', in Luxury in the Eighteenth Century, 9.
9. C.J. Berry, The Idea of Luxury. A Conceptual and Historical Investigation (Cambridge, 1994), ch. 5;
10. E. A. J. Johnson, Predecessors of Adam Smith. The Growth of British Economic Thought (New York, 1937), ch. 14.
11. R. Tuck, Philosophy and Government, 1372-1631 (Cambridge, 1993), chs 2 and 3;
12. C. Robbins, The Pursuit of Happiness (Washington, 1974), 12-14;
13. A. O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests. Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton, 1977), part I. For English debates on economic interests
14. see J. A. W. Gunn, Politics and the Public Interest in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1969), ch. 5. I am grateful to Joanna Innes for helpful comments on this and other aspects of the argument of this article.
15. Hutchison, Before Adam Smith, 90-3, 100-9.
16. I have found no evidence of Becher directly influencing English economic writers of the later 1670s and 1680s, although he was in England from 1679 or 1680 until his death in 1682, and personal contact, perhaps through the Royal Society, cannot be ruled out: H. Hassinger, Johann Joachim Becher 16)3-1682. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Merkantilismus (Vienna, 1951), 241, 247;
17. P. H. Smith, The Business of Alchemy. Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire (Princeton, 1994), 258-9.
18. W. J. Ashley, 'The Tory Origin of Free Trade Policy', Quarterly Journal of Economics, July 1897
19. reprinted in idem, Surveys Historic and Economic (London, 1900), 268-303.
20. The importance of economic interest groups for government finance is illuminated in C. D. Chandaman, The English Public Revenue 1660-1688 (Oxford, 1975), esp. 16-21;
21. and their relations with the Court discussed in B. Weiser, Charles II and the Politics of Access (Woodbridge, 2003), ch. 5.
22. For the subtleties of Anglican and Tory views with respect to some of the writers discussed below, especially Houghton, see M. Goldie, 'Sir Peter Pett, Sceptical Toryism and the Science of Toleration in the 1680s', in W. J. Sheils (ed.), Persecution and Toleration (Studies in Church History xxi, Oxford, 1984), 247-73
23. and J. R. Jacob, 'Restoration Ideologies and the Royal Society', History of Science, xviii (1980), 25-38, to both of which I am much indebted.
24. J. Houghton, England's Great Happiness (London, 1677), 3.
25. Ibid., 7, 8. In the 1723 edition of The Fable of the Bees, Bernard Mandeville painted a similar image of moral reformation and sumptuary laws emptying London and making artisans 'learn to hold the plough':
26. B. Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees or Private Vices, Publick Benefits, ed. F. B. Kaye (Oxford, 1924), 1, 232.
27. England's Great Happiness, 19-20, and title page.
28. Houghton's authorship is clear from a second edition of 1677, and from references in his periodical in 1682.
29. The Grand Concern of England Explained (London, 1673), 49-55.
30. Compare Chamberlayne's Englands Wants (London, 1667)
31. 'by a true lover of his country', 4, 29, and his Angliae Notitia (London, 1669 edn) 69, 84-5.
32. R. Coke, A Discourse of Trade. In two Parts (London, 1670), 40-1.
33. Cf. R. Coke, A Treatise (London, 1671), 69, 81, 90, which'Houghton may also have had in his sights.
34. D. G. E. Hall, 'Anglo-French Trade Relations under Charles II, History, vii (1922-3), 24-6;
35. M. Priestley, "Anglo-French Trade and the "Unfavourable Balance" Controversy, 1660-1685', Economic History Review, n.s., iv (1951), 37-52;
36. D. C Coleman, 'Politics and Economics in the Age of Anne: The Case of the Anglo-French Trade Treaty of 1713', in D. C. Coleman and A. H. John (ed.), Trade, Government and Economy in Pre-Industrial England. Essays Presented to F.J.Fisher (London, 1976), 188-9, '97-8, 203.
37. Statutes of the Realm, 29 & 30 Charles II, c. 1, clause lxx;
38. Houghton, England's Great Happiness, 5; A. Grey, Debates [of the House of Commons from the Year 1667 to the Year 1694] (10 vols, London, 1769), iv, 175 (and cf. 191, 388).
39. It is ironic that at much the same time J. J. Becher was ending his career as a public servant trying to enforce an imperial ban on French imports in the Holy Roman Empire: Smith, Business of Alchemy, 18.
40. J. Houghton, [A] Collection [for the Improvement of Husbandry and Trade], ed. R. Bradley (4 vols, London, 1727-8), iv, 55 (1681-5, ii, 52). On p. 58 (ii, 54), Houghton tries, somewhat unpersuasively, to argue that he was not advocating prodigality but only 'a generous careful high living'. (In referring to Houghton's periodical, I have used Bradley's edition of 1727-8, but also, for the 1680s, given in parentheses page references from the original numbers of 1681-5 which were collected in two volumes.)
41. Houghton, Collection, iv, 382-3, 389 (1681-5, ii, 175-6, 182). This issue, no. 6, was dated 16 June 1683, but that is clearly a misprint for 1685.
42. Houghton, England's Great Happiness, 17, 18;
43. Collection, iv, 303-20 (1681-5, ii, 97-114). This number, of Jan. 1683/4, was unusually long (40 pp) and a conspicuously Tory tract.
44. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (hereafter ODNB) (Oxford, 2004), sub Houghton.
45. Houghton's election can scarcely have pleased Edward Chamberlayne FRS, if he was the author of the Grand Concern, but Houghton did not present a copy of his tract to the Society until 1681:
46. T. Birch, The History of the Royal Society of London (4 vols, London, 1756-7), iv, 90.
47. The Correspondence of Robert Boyle, ed. M. Hunter, A. Clericuzio and L. M. Principe (6 vols, London, 2001), v. 307-13;
48. M. Stubb, 'John Beale, Philosophical Gardener of Herefordshire, Part II: The Improvement of Agriculture and Trade in the Royal Society (1663-1683)', Annals of Science, xlvi (1989), 354-61.
49. Cf. J. R. Jacob, Robert Boyle and the English Revolution (New York, 1972), 134-44
50. E. Stillingfleet, A Sermon Preached on the Fast-Day, November 13 1678 (5th edn, London, 1679), 28, 31-2, 42, 47-8.
51. It was not only the Popish Plot which raised the moral temperature at this time. Court wits like Rochester and his friends were also causing outrage. Cf. the praise for the 'tempting luxuries' of 'happy' England in John Oldham's 'Satyr Against Vertue' (1679), in H. F. Brooks (ed.), The Poems of John Oldham (Oxford, 1987), 58.
52. On'Barbon's authorship, which is evident from similarities of style and content with his later writings, see P. Slack, 'Perceptions of the Metropolis in Seventeenth-Century England', in P. Burke, B. Harrison and P. Slack (ed.), Civil Histories. Essays Presented to Sir Keith Thomas (Oxford, 2000), 175-6.
53. The Grand Concern of England Explained, 4-5.
54. C. A. Edie, 'New Buildings, New Taxes, and Old Interests: An Urban Problem of the 1670s', Journal of British Studies, vi (1967), 57;
55. Grey, Debates, v, 183-8, 205.
56. Hooke knew Houghton through the Royal Society from at least 1680, and Barbon even earlier: A. Finkelstein, Harmony and the Balance. An Intellectual History of Seventeenth-Century English Economic Thought (Ann Arbor, 2000), 214.
57. [Nicholas Barbon], A Discourse Shewing the Great Advantages ... (London, 1678), 2, 4, 10, 13-15, 20.
58. Ibid., 5.
59. Houghton's sentence of 1677 about everyone striving to exceed his fellow and never being satisfied (England's Great Happiness, 7
60. quoted supra, 611) almost made the same point; he was clearer about it in 1696:
61. Collection, ii, 7-8.
62. [Nicholas Barbon], An Apology for the Builder (London, 1685), 30, 37 (also reprinted in 1689).
63. N. Barbon, A Discourse of Trade (London, 1690), 5-6, 15.
64. Cf. N. Barbon, A Discourse Concerning Coining the New Money Lighter (London, 1696), 1, 3, 48.
65. On Barbon's conception of infinity, see Finkelstein, Harmony and the Balance, 211-18.
66. R. North, The Lives of the Norths (3 vols, London, 1890), iii, 56.
67. Barbon, Discourse of Trade, 62.
68. ODNB, sub Barbon and Houghton. On the latter
69. see also Houghton, Collection, iii, 377-8;
70. M. Hunter, The Royal Society and Its Fellows 1660-1700. The Morphology of an Early Scientific Institution (2nd edn, London, 1994), 29.
71. The Grand Concern of England Explained, 7, 15-16.
72. For similar views, see [William Carter], England's Interest Asserted, in the Improvement of Its Native Commodities (London, 1669), 14.
73. E.g.-S. Fortrey, Englands Interest and Improvement (Cambridge, 1663), 4,12;
74. R. Haines, The Prevention of Poverty (London, 1674), 2;
75. A. Yarranton, England's Improvement by Sea and Land (London, 1677), 1, 142, 194-5.
76. See, for example, Chamberlayne, Englands Wants, 4-6;
77. Coke, Treatise, title page, citing dangers to 'Church and State' along with 'Trade'.
78. [Slingsby Bethel], The Present Interest of England Stated (London, 1671), 12-13 (7, 21, for attacks on Chamberlayne);
79. J. Scott, Algernon Sidney and the Restoration Crisis, 1677-168) (Cambridge, 1991), 165-7;
80. 'Philanglus', Britannia Languens (London, 1680), 6, 122-30.
81. Beale seems to have been distancing himself from Bethel when he defended 'the ancient hospitality of the City' in his 1682 letter to Boyle: Correspondence of Robert Boyle, v. 309.
82. Chandaman, English Public Revenue, 32-5.
83. Cf. the Board of Trade's 1697 report on the 'considerable increase' of trade 1673-88: Seventeenth-Century Economic Documents, ed. J. Thirsk and J. P. Cooper (Oxford, 1972), 568.
84. R. Allen, Insulae fortunatae (London, 1675), title page and p. 10;
85. Ananias and Saphira discover'd (London, 1679), 5.
86. At the same time, these authors predictably lamented the growth of debauchery (Allen, 13) and luxury (Ananias, 6).
87. Houghton, England's Great Happiness, 17-18;
88. Barbon, Discourse Shewing the Great Advantages, 2.
89. Cf. Barbon, Discourse of Trade, 37. Unlike Barbon, Houghton did not think in terms of an infinite potential for economic growth but seems generally to have assumed, with most of his contemporaries, that there was a finite amount of trade in the world for which nations had to compete. For his problems with this in the 1690s
90. see infra, 623-4, 626.
91. Chandaman, English Public Revenue, 16-20.
92. A Discourse of the Common Weal of This Realm of England, ed. E. Lamond (Cambridge, 1893), 82, 84-5, 91, 121, 125-6;
93. Dy Kuchta, The Three-Piece Suit and Modern Masculinity. England, 1550-1850 (Berkeley, 2002), 44, 196 n 125. On London
94. see L. L. Peck, 'Luxury and War: Reconsidering Luxury Consumption in Seventeenth-Century England', Albion, xxxiv (2002), 1-23.
95. Cf. R."Grassby, The English Gentleman in Trade. The Life and Works of Sir Dudley North, 1641-1691 (Oxford, 1994), 244.
96. L. Roberts, The Treasure of Traffike (London, 1641), 38-9, 86.
97. E.g. J. Child, Brief Observations Concerning Trade and Interest of Money (London, 1668)
98. in W. Letwin, Sir Josiah Child. Merchant Economist (Boston, 1959), 4-5.
99. Cf. M. Peltonen, Classical Humanism and Republicanism in English Political Thought 1370-1640 (Cambridge, 1995), 266-7.
100. Kuchta, Three-Piece Suit, 80-1;
101. and cf. Chamberlayne, Angliae Notitia (1669 edn), 84-5.
102. French fashions returned to the Court in the 1670s (Kuchta, Three-Piece Suit, 88). Cf. infra, 84-5.
103. S. C A. Pincus, 'Popery, Trade and Universal Monarchy: The Ideological Context of the Outbreak of the Anglo-Dutch War', ante, cvii (1992), 15-16.
104. Child, Brief Observations, 7-9 (written in 1665: ibid., 17). By 1673, however, and probably earlier, Child thought the country in a declining condition': British Library, Petty Papers, Add. MS 72850, fo. 132.
105. Cf. J. Child, A Discourse about Trade (London, 1690), 150 (probably written in 1668-70:
106. W. Letwin, The Origins of Scientific Economics (New York, 1964), 250-1).
107. C. Reynell, The True English Interest (London, 1674), title page and sigs A5-6r, pp. 1, 13.
108. There were later editions in 1679 and (with a different title page) 1685.
109. I. Hont, Jealousy of Trade. International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, Mass., 2605), 47-50. It is tempting to suppose that Nicole had as great an influence on Houghton and Barbon as he had, for instance, on Locke, but I have found no clear evidence that they had read him.
110. Houghton, England's Great Happiness, 6, 17;
111. Collection, iv, 85 (1681-5, i, 82).
112. Houghton was also well aware of contemporary economic projects and consumer industries, whose relevance to political economy was demonstrated by J. Thirsk, Economic Policy and Projects. The Development of a Consumer Society in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1978).
113. Houghton, England's Great Happiness, 7,18.
114. Cf. Collection, iv, 23 (1681-5, 1, 21). For Hartlib
115. see C. Webster, The Great Instauration. Science, Medicine and Reform 1626-1660 (London, 1975), ch. 5
116. and P. Slack, From Reformation to Improvement: Public Welfare in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1999), ch. 4;
117. and on the Royal Society, M. Hunter, Science and Society in Restoration England (Cambridge, 1981), chs 4 and 5; Jacob, 'Restoration Ideologies and the Royal Society'.
118. Barbon, Apology, 16;
119. Barbon, Discourse Shewing the Great Advantages, 2, 6.
120. Ibid., 2, 7, 15, 18-19;
121. M. Hale, The Primitive Origination of Mankind Considered and Examined According to The Light of Nature (London, 1677), 151, 155, 165, 203-7, 238, 240.
122. Hale's influence on Barbon seems apparent in Discourse Shewing the Great Advantages, 15-17
123. and clear in Apology, 7-10.
124. In the 1680S, Petty was working on an essay on this subject, partly concerned with the question of whether, if the world was fully peopled, there would be space for everyone to 'rise at the last day'. His political arithmetic proved to his satisfaction that there would be: The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty, ed. C H. Hull (2 vols, Cambridge, 1899), ii, 453, 477-8;
125. The Petty-Southwell Correspondence 1676-1687, ed. Marquis of Lansdowne (London, 1928), 91-3, 143-6, 153-7,171,174,176.
126. For Gregory King's similar interests, see his 'Natural and Political Observations' in The Earliest Classics: John Graunt and Gregory King, intro. by P. Laslett (London, 1973), 41-2.
127. J. Houghton, A Proposal for Improvement of Husbandry and Trade (London, 1691), 1.
128. Cf. N. Glaisyer, 'Readers, Correspondents and Communities: John Houghton's A Collection for Improvement of Husbandry and Trade (1692-1703)', in A. Shepard and P. Withington (ed.), Communities in Early Modern England (Manchester, 2000), 249 n 17.
129. Economic Writings of Petty, i, 16, 33.
130. Petty's Verbum Sapienti of c.
131. 1665 (not published until 1691) also took gross and per capita expenditure as a proxy for wealth: ibid., 1, 105.
132. Ibid., 1, 122, 124, 192.
133. In 1682, Houghton knew some of Petty's views on Ireland from his 'Observations' on the Irish cattle trade: Collection, iv, 108 (1681-5, 1, 105)
134. clearly referring to the paper in The Petty Papers, ed. Marquis of Lansdowne (2 vols, London, 1927), 1, 215-16;
135. G. Keynes, A Bibliography of Sir William Petty FRS and of Observations on the Bills of Mortality by John Graunt FRS (Oxford, 1971), 11-12, no. 14.
136. Economic Writings of Petty, 1, 235;
137. Keynes, Bibliography of Petty, 21-2, no. 20.
138. Economic Writings of Petty, 1, 241-2, 243, 254, 290.
139. Petty refers to 'emulators' again in a publication of 1683, written c. 1681, ibid., ii, 474.
140. Though much less careful of his personal appearance than Batbon, Petty also lived in some style, since according to Evelyn his wife 'could endure nothing mean, and that was not magnificent': Keynes, Bibliography of Petty, 94-5.
141. Economic Writings of Petty, 1, 271, 302, 312, 313.
142. Petty-Southwell Correspondence, 61 (Oct. 1678);
143. Economic Writings of Petty, 1, 240.
144. Ibid., 1, 278, 284, 297, 298.
145. [Slingsby Bethel], Observations on the Letter Written to Sir Thomas Osborne (London, 1673), 8, 11.
146. Cf. S. C. A. Pincus, 'From Butterboxes to Wooden Shoes: The Shift in English Popular Sentiment from Anti-Dutch to Anti-French in the 1670s', Historical Journal, xxxviii (1995), 333-61.
147. Petty-Southwell Correspondence, 93 (1681);
148. Petty Papers, ii, 57 (1687).
149. Sir W. Temple, Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands, ed. G. N. Clark (Oxford, 1972), 110;
150. W. Temple, Miscellanea (London, 1680), 47-52.
151. Cf. Britannia Languens, 141-2;
152. R. Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics and Locke's Two Treatises of Government (Princeton, 1986), 216-18;
153. D. Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge, 2000), 142-3.
154. Bethel, Present Interest of England Stated, 21, 24.
155. Petty, however, like some later critics of Weber, thought trade 'not fixed to any species of religion as such; but rather ... to the heterodox part of the whole': Economic Writings of Petty, 1, 264.
156. Three Great Questions Concerning the Succession and the Danger of Popery Fully Examin 'd (London, 1680), 5, 6, 16, 18.
157. Goldie', 'Sir Peter Pett',' 261, 269-72; P. Pett, The Happy Future State of England (London, 1688), 101, 124, 194.
158. For similar arguments, see J. Glanvill, The Zealous and Impartial Protestant (London, 1681), cited by Goldie, 261-2. It is possible that Pett got part of his title from Chamberlayne's Angliae Notitia which in its early editions, 1669-84, claimed to be providing material on the past and present state of England so that men might 'foresee, without consulting our astrologers and apocalyptic men, what will be the future state of this nation': e.g. 1684 edn, sig. A4.
159. A Poem on England's Happiness (1686).
160. Cf. England's Happiness in a Lineal Succession (London, 1685);
161. and, at the last moment, England's Happiness or, a Health to the Young Prince of Wales (ballad, 1688).
162. Economic Writings of Petty, 1, 243:
163. supra, 619.
164. Lerwin, Origins of Scientific Economics, 47-8;
165. Child, Discourse, ch. 9;
166. Economic Writings of Petty, i, 295-7, 312;
167. Houghton, Collection, ii, 52-4 (1696).
168. Cf. infra, 626.
169. John Graunt had also thought there was 'but a certain proportion of trade in the world': Economic Writings of Petty, ii, 354.
170. See for example, The Mischief of Cabals: or, the Faction Expos'd (London, 1685), 35 on France.
171. Thomas Sheridari, later a Jacobite, pressed for high duties on imported luxuries and a tax on new buildings in London in A Discourse of the Rise and Power of Parliaments (London, 1677), 173, 178.
172. For similar Tory views, see J. Nalson, The Present Interest of England (London, 1683) 2-4, 31;
173. [Edmund Bohun], The Third and Last Part of the Address to the Free-Men and Freeholders of the Nation (London, 1683), 116.
174. The classic account of these issues is J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment. Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, 1975). ch. 13.
175. An excellent recent discussion of the republican theme in old Whiggery is J. Scott, Commonwealth Principles. Republican Writing of the English Revolution (Cambridge, 2004), chs 15 and 16, esp. pp. 331-2, 337-8.
176. For a powerful argument to this effect, see S. Pincus, 'Revolution in Political Economy', in his forthcoming book on the 1688 Revolution. I am greatly indebted to Professor Pincus for allowing me to read this chapter in draft. It presents a configuration of economic and political attitudes different from the one I am suggesting here, and of wider import. Cf. S. Pincus, 'John Evelyn: Revolutionary', in John Evelyn and his Milieu, ed. F. Harris and M. Hunter (London, 2003), 185-219. On English republican and Whig theories of empire
177. see also Scott, Commonwealth Principles, 10-11, 93-8 and ch.10.
178. Goldie, 'Sir Peter Pett', 252.
179. E.g. R. W., The Happy Union of England and Holland (London, 1689);
180. Englands Happiness Reviv'd, or, a Farwell [sic] to Popery (ballad, 1689);
181. B. L., England's Happiness: In a Discourse Occasionally Written on the Glorious Solemnity of the Coronation Of King William and Queen Mary (London, 1689);
182. The Loyal Subjects Happy Choice: or, England's Happiness in a Protestant King and a Free Parliament (ballad, 1690).
183. T. Claydon, William III and the Godly Revolution (Cambriadge, 1996), ch. 3;
184. Kuchta, Three-Piece Suit, 90.
185. The reformation of manners was itself soon hailed as a road to England's happiness: S. Burtt, Virtue Transformed. Political Argument in England, 1688-1740 (Cambridge, 1992), 25 n 21.
186. For a parallel and increasing 'Country' and neo-republican strain in politics in the later 1690s, see Claydon, William III and the Godly Revolution, 215-16;
187. Scott, Commonwealth Principles, 347-52.
188. Grassby, English Gentleman in Trade, ch. 6 and p. 231. North had probably started writing with an eye on James II's 1685 parliament: ibid., 231 n 5.
189. North, Discourses upon Trade (London, 1691 [Old Style]), 297;
190. Grassby, English Gentleman in Trade, 332.
191. Houghton, Collection, 1, 20, 263-7, 272, 442-3;
192. ii 7_8, 42, 48, 403. The full title of the revived Collection was A Collection for Improvement of Husbandry and Trade, on which see
193. N. Glaisyer, The Culture of Commerce in England, 1660-1720 (Woodbridge, 2006), 145-55.
194. Houghton's statement (ii, 48) that the English were 'very backward in invention' but good 'at improving of arts' probably owed something to Chamberlayne, Angliae Notitia (1694 edn), 51. Cf.
195. also G. Miege, The New State of England (London, 1691), part II, p. II.
196. H. M., England's Glory: or, the Great Improvement of Trade in General. By a Royal Bank (London, 1694), 21-3.
197. Ibid., 18-19;
198. Houghton, Collection, ii, 53.
199. H. M., England's Glory, sig. A3V;
200. for Reynell, see supra, xx. On Mackworth and the attribution of this work to him
201. see The House of Commons 1690-1713, ed. E. Cruickshanks, S. Handley and D. W. Hayton (5 vols, Cambridge, 2002), iv, 724-35.
202. D. Thomas, An Historical Account of the Rise and Growth of the West-India Collonies (London, 1690), 2, 7;
203. Anon., A Discourse of the Nature, Use and Advantages of Trade (London, 1694), 3, 5 (but contrast p. 13);
204. T. Tryon, England's Grandeur, and the Way to get Wealth (London, 1699), 7, 13-14
205. F. Brewster, Essays on Trade and Navigation. In Five Parts (London, 1695), 50.
206. John Blanch was more unqualified in his attacks on Child and his allies: The Interest of England Considered: In an Essay upon Wooll (London, 1694);
207. idem. An Abstract of the Grievances of Trade which Oppress Our Poor (London, 1694), 15.
208. Locke on Money, ed. P. H. Kelly (2 vols, Oxford, 1991), i, 230-1, 276;
209. J. Cary, An Essay on the State of England in Relation to Its Trade (Bristol, 1695), 1, 150, 154-5, 166.
210. C. Davenant, The Political and Commercial Works, ed. C Whirworth (5 vols, London, 1781), 1, 71;
211. Hont, Jealousy of Trade, 208-14.
212. Richard C. Wiles has drawn attention to some connected similarities between Child, Davenant, Cary and Barbon in 'The Theory of Wages in Later English Mercantilism', Economic History Review, 2nd ser., xxi (1968), 115-19.
213. On the antagonism between the two authors, see Chamberlayne, Angliae Notitia (1691 edn), 'Advertisement' at the end of part II;
214. G. Miege, Utrum borum? Tyranny and Liberty (London, 1705).
215. Miege, New State of England (1691 edn), part I, 283;
216. Chamberlayne, Angliae Notitia (1694 edn), 577.
217. Davenant's presentation of arguments for and against the growth of London has similarities with that of Miege: Davenant, Works, 1, 59-60.
218. Chamberlayne, Angliae Notitia (1694 edn), 68;
219. Miege, New State of England (1691 edn), part II, 11.
220. Chamberlayne, Angliae Notitia (1694 edn), 67-8.
221. In 1699, Miege plagiarised much of this: New State (1699 edn), part II, 27.
222. Mandeville, Fable, 1, 130, 169, 197. On these aspects of Mandeville
223. see E. G. Hundert, The Enlightenment's Fable. Bernard Mandeville and the Discovery ofSociety (Cambridge, 1994), ch. 4
224. 'A World of Goods', and M. M. Goldsmith, Private Vices, Public Benefits. Bernard Mandeville's Social and Political Thought (Cambridge, 1985), ch. 5, 'The Pursuit of Happiness'.
225. I hope to discuss this theme at greater length on another occasion.
226. See, for example, M. S. Kempshall, The Common Good in Late Medieval Political Thought (Oxford, 1999), 26-8
227. and passim.
228. Tuck, Philosophy and Government, 112-13;
229. Webster, Great Instauration, 25-6, 33-4.
230. Slack, Reformation to Improvement, 83;
231. G. Plattes, A Discovery of Infinite Treasure Hidden Since the Worlds Beginning (London, 1639), 89;
232. R. Younge, The Prevention of Poverty Together with the Cure of Melancholy, Alias Discontent (London, 1655)
233. title page; J. Forster, Englands Happiness Increased (London, 1664).
234. Fortrey, Englands Interest and Improvement, sig. A3V.
235. Economic Writings of Petty, 1, 119;
236. J. Glanvill, The Way of Happiness (London, 1670), 99-101, 138;
237. M. Hale, 'An Inquiry Concerning Happiness', in Contemplations Moral and Divine (London, 1705), ii, 300-4.
238. Cf. England's Happiness: or, the Only Way to Make a Nation Truly Happy (London, 1687), 3, 6-7.
239. On happiness as a latitudinarian theme, see I. Rivers, Reason, Grace, and Sentiment. A Study in the Language of Religion and Ethics in England 1660-1780 (Cambridge, 1991), 83-4, and on the related topic of religious 'contentment', much advocated in the later seventeenth century
240. A. Thompson, The Art of Sujfering and the Impact of Seventeenth-Century Anti-Providential Thought (Aldershot, 2003), ch. 6.
241. In the 1680s, the Dublin Philosophical Society interested itself in the measurement of happiness: K. T. Hoppen, The Common Scientist in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1970), 122-3.
242. E.g. Coke, Treatise, 151;
243. Yarranton, England's Improvement, sig. A3r. For an early comment on England's 'happiness in abstracto'
244. see G. Botero, Relations of the most famous Kingdomes and Common-wealths thorowout the World, tr. R. Johnson (London, 1630 edn), 80.
245. [William Petty], The Advice of W.P. to Mr Samuel Hartlib (London, 1648), in Harleian Miscellany, ed. T. Park (10 vols, London, 1808-13), vi, 142;
246. supra, 615;
247. Economic Writings of Petty, 1, 119-20.
248. Cf. Hundert, Enlightenment's Fable, ch. 3;
249. P. Force, Self-interest before Adam Smith. A Genealogy of Economic Science (Cambridge, 2003), ch. 2 and 97-101;
250. Hutchison, Before Adam Smith, ch. 11.
251. It is interesting to see modern economists engaging once more with concepts of happiness: e.g. Economics and Happiness: Framing the Analysis, ed. L. Bruni and P. L. Porta (Oxford, 2006).