ABSTRACT
It is by now a commonplace that Gregory King, despite the many textual variations which mar his calculations, has weathered criticism more successfully than many later social and economic arithmeticians, whose great progenitor he was. His cross-section of the social structure of England and Wales, derived from the hearth tax returns, illuminates the state of the nation on the eve of the eighteenth century, as Patrick Colquhoun’s complex calculations from the income tax, census and poor-relief records delineate it more precisely in the first decade of the nineteenth century.[ 1 ] From such men as these even guesses and interpolations, based on a wealth of demographic knowledge interpreted with perception born of experience and trained intelligence, are valuable as a record of probable fact, or at least of informed contemporary opinion which in its turn might well influence action. In short, they can give historical enlightenment without quantitative accuracy. For these reasons—the belief that King, Colquhoun, Beeke, Eden, Young, Chalmers and their fellows have added much to historical enquiry—a further calculation for the mid-eighteenth century drawn up specifically in the terms of Gregory King’s main table, as was one similar enquiry of Colquhoun, deserves an audience. Dependent upon the perception and sense of responsibility of its author, the potential value of such a calculation (which is more directly 172comparable with both those mentioned than any other) made at the onset of developments which so radically changed the structure of British society is obviously very high, even though it has been ignored as much as the man, Joseph Massie. And if it does not prove to merit such responsibility as a guide to actuality there remains its value for the history of opinion—in showing assumptions current in the mid-eighteenth century about the structure of society.
