ABSTRACT
Sir William Petty, writing his Political Arithmetic in 16]Z, argues that a big shipping trade can work cheaper than a small one because it makes it possible to have different kinds of ships for different purposes, just "as cloth must be cheaper made when one cards, another spins, another weaves, another presses and packs, than when all the operations above-mentioned were clumsily performed by the same hand" (Econ. Writings, ed. Hull, p.260). And in his defence of the possibility of London having at some date in the future 4,690,000 inhabitants, he says: " in so vast a city manufactures will beget one another, and each manufacture will be divided into as many parts as possible, whereby the work of each artisan will be simple and easie; as, for example, in the making of a watch, if one man shall make the wheels, another the spring, another shall engrave the dial-plate and another shall make the cases, then the watch will be better and cheaper than if the whole work be put upon anyone man. And we also see that in towns, and in the streets of a great town, where all the inhabitants are almost
94 of one trade, the commodity peculiar to those places is made better and cheaper than elsewhere" (ib., p. 473).
