Petty, Sir William.

a scribal copy of an early version of the opening chapters of the essay, written in c.1664 but published only posthumously in 1691, in 19 numbered paragraphs, in which Petty outlines the extent of the value of the labour and production of the six million inhabitants of England in the 1660s, and explaining how this potential tax base eclipses the value of land and property, the manuscript inscribed at the top of the first page "For Capt[ai]n Graunt", endorsed on the outer panel ("A paper proposing a way for the more equall distribucion of the monthly taxe by estimating the nations vallue &c."), 5 pages, plus blanks, folio, comprising 4 bifolia secured with an iron pin, probably 1660s to 1680s, a few small stains, a few wormholes, some dustmarking to outer leaves

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This manuscript is an early version of Petty's important treatise, providing the rationale for taxing "the labour of the people" rather than the landed interest. This work represents the creation of macro-economic conceptualisation and entitles Petty to be considered the father of macro-economics, and this copy is uniquely addressed to John Graunt, the father of modern statistical analysis. Recently-discovered, it is one of only a handful of contemporary copies of this landmark in the development of modern economics, others being found at  the British Library and the Osborn collection at Yale.

Sir William Petty (1623-1687) was the most important seventeenth-century British political economist, secretary to Thomas Hobbes, a founding fellow of the Royal Society and friend of Samuel Pepys.  Petty is credited with inventing the science of macro-economics and assessing the wealth of the nation. This manuscript comprises an early draft of the Introduction, Chapter 1 and the first two paragraphs of Chapter 2 of Petty's  "Verbum Sapienti", written in c.1664 and first published after his death as part of Political Anatomy of Ireland in 1691.

Petty complains, not without self-interest, about the burden of taxation presently drawn purely from landowners, pointing out that by Christmas 1665, what with the demands of the Dutch Wars, this would amount for some people to about a third "of their whole Estates".  He states that no-one should pay more than ten percent of their estate, even in the event that "tax should rise to 250,000^£, per mens[em], which God forbid".   In this early draft of his essay, he sets out a much wider assessment of the wealth of the English nation and the breadth of its potential tax base, including the income from labour, and giving his estimate of the total worth of the nation at forty million pounds (inferred from a population of 6 million), and contrasting it with that of the landed interest of a mere fifteen million pounds.  The nineteen sections cover the value of the land, cities, suburbs, small estates (shops, warehouses, barns etc), shipping, gold & silver, livestock, fisheries, furnishings, and calculates the total income available generated from the "labour of the people".

...There are of Men, Weomen, & Children in England & Wales 6 Mill[ions] whose expense att 6^£:13^s:4^d  each p[er] an[n]um or neere 4½ penny p[er] diem for foode, housing, clothes, & all other necessaries amounts to 40 Mill[ions] p[er] annum...Now if the annuall proceed of the stock or wealth of the nation yields but 15 mill[ions], & the expence be 40 then the labour of the people must furnish the other 25, w^ch may be done if but ½ of them viz 3 mill[ions] earned but 8^£:6^s:8^d: per annum..."

Captain John Graunt (1620-1674), whose name is inscribed at the head of the first page, was a fellow member of the Royal Society, and provided Petty with detailed statistics of London's demographic trends, enabling him to infer the wider national statistics upon which he based his arguments. The inscription is unique to this copy, and provides a significant association between two key figures in seventeenth century economics.