At the end of 6 years 64
” 16 ” 40
” 26 ” 25
” 36 ” 16
” 46 ” 10
” 56 ” 6
” 60 ” 3
” 76 ” 1
” 80 ” 0
He says gravely of another of his calculations, “According to this
proportion Adam and Eve, doubling themselves every 64 years of the 5610
years, which is the age of the world according to the Scriptures, shall
produce far more people than are now in it. Wherefore, the world is not
above 100,000 years old, as some vainly imagine, nor above what the
Scripture makes it.”
That Captain Graunt was a man of no ordinary perceptive power let
his volume bear witness. In it he touches on almost every intricate
question which, despised when he wrote, has since been investigated
by Adam Smith, by M’Culloch, by Porter, by Tooke, and by all to whom
political economy is dear. The following will give some idea of the
character of these studies:--
“It were good to know how much hay an acre of every sort of meadow
will bear; how many cattle the same weight of each sort of hay will
feed and fatten; what quantity of grain and other commodities the
same acre will bear in 3 or 7 years; unto what use each sort is most
proper; all which particulars I call the intrinsic value, for there
is another value merely accidental or extrinsic, consisting of the
causes why a parcel of land lying near a good market may be worth
double another parcel, though but of the same intrinsic goodness; which
answers the question why lands in the north of England are worth but
16 years purchase and those of the west above 28.” “Moreover, if all
these things were clearly and truly known, it would appear how small a
part of the people work upon necessary labours and callings; how many
women and children do just nothing, only learning to spend what others
get; how many are mere voluptuaries, and as it were, mere gamesters
by trade; how many live by puzzling poor people with unintelligible
notions in divinity and philosophy; how many, by persuading credulous,
delicate, and religious persons that their bodies or estates are out
of tune and in danger; how many, by fighting as soldiers; how many, by
ministries of vice and sin; how many, by trades of mere pleasure or
ornament; and how many, in a way of lazy attendance on others; and,
on the other side, how few are employed in raising necessary food and
covering; and of the speculative men how few do study nature, the more
ingenious not advancing much further than to write and speak wittily
about these matters.”
From this enumeration of his objects it may be seen that life assurance
was not contemplated by the author when his important book was written;
but as the earliest attempt to number the people, to classify their
callings, and to ascertain the mortality among them, he assuredly
laid the foundations of this science. His book gave new ideas. It
first propounded the fact, that “the more sickly the years are, the
less fruitful of children they be;” and though this was wonderfully
ridiculed, time has proved that it was not less strange than true.
It formed a taste for similar inquiries among thinking men. It was
published at a period when, the city being less populous, there was
additional facility in arriving at certain facts. From that time the
subject was cultivated more and more. Increased attention was paid
to the parish registers. The different diseases and casualties were
gradually inserted; but it was not till 1728 that the ages of the dead
were introduced. Graunt had forced people to think; and whatever merit
may be ascribed to Sir William Petty, Daniel King, Dr. Davenant, and
others, it may all be traced to the first observations of Graunt on the
Bills of Mortality. To him we owe the care with which parish registers
have since been kept, and the valuable material they have afforded to
the science of political economy.
There is something in the old registers which places us in an almost
antediluvian world, and seems to treat of diseases belonging to another
sphere. In 1657, among the deaths are recorded 1162 “chrisomes and
infants;” and few reading in 1853 would know that infants, until
christened, wore a “chrisom” or cloth anointed with holy unguent, from
which they were denominated chrisomes. “Blasted and planet” would
puzzle the medical student of to-day; but the latter was simply an
abbreviation of “planet struck,” both words indicating some wasting
disease which the faculty failed to fathom. “Head-mould-shot” and
“horseshoe-head” were meant for water on the brain, and were very
expressive of the shape of the head in those who suffered from it.
Another complaint was “calenture,” a disease said to be similar to the
_maladie du pays_, for it seized seamen with an irresistible desire to
immerse themselves, the sea assuming in their eyes the appearance of
green fields. “Tissick” expressed phthisis or consumption. In 1634,
the “rickets” is recorded; and the “rising of the lights” has been a
great puzzle to our medical historians. A little later than this period
is mentioned, “one died from want in Newgate,” “one murdered in the
pillory,” and “one killed in the pillory.” In the course of twenty
years fifty-one are put down as starved. “But few are murdered, not
above eighty-six of the deaths in twenty years; whereas, in Paris,
few nights escape without their tragedy.” It must be remembered, in
explanation, that medicine had not assumed the dignity of a science
before the time of Harvey in the middle of the seventeenth century,
but was exercised by “a great multitude of ignorant persons.” Common
artificers, smiths, weavers, and women took upon them cures, “to the
high displeasure of God, and destruction of many of the King’s liege
people.” Nor was the patient much better off when the clergy, priests,
and poor scholars left the cure of the mind for the cure of the body.
Such, however, was the position of leech-craft when Graunt inoculated
the people with the love of vital statistics.
Contemporary with Graunt, and contributor to his attempts, was one of
those strange, restless, speculative men whose love of money teaches
them how to procure it, and whose desire to preserve it, by purchasing
land, and leaving their heirs in possession, makes them the founders of
noble English houses. This was Sir William Petty, who, in his “Essay
on Political Arithmetick concerning the Growth of the City of London,
with the Measures, Periods, Causes, and Consequences thereof,” made a
further onward movement. The earlier portion of his life was passed in
battling with the world. He was as much a votary of mathematics as of
money, and was eminently successful in both. Although only the son of a
Romney clothier, he was the founder of a house which has exercised an
important influence on English political life--the House of Lansdowne.
He began his career with nothing, and he closed it possessed of
15,000_l._ per annum. He lived at a time when social economy was but
little regarded; and he published a volume which, however uncertain
both in its data and its conclusions, was an attempt to apply
arithmetic to the economics of life. It is both unphilosophical and
unjust to say, “Petty was nothing of a politician or statesman, or even
of a political economist. He was merely a political arithmetician;
that is to say, he occupied himself with a consideration of the
circumstances of society and of the forces and activity that pervaded
it, only in so far as they could be stated and estimated numerically.
His social science was little more than an affair of ciphering, a
business of addition and subtraction.” It is from the figures of such
men that our politicians form deductions, estimate consequences,
frame laws, and create trade. It may be true that he was no seer, and
that he was wrong in his prophetic capacity; but this is only another
proof that statisticians rarely possess a large development of the
imaginative faculty. That his work is worth perusal to all who are
interested in his subject, although based on information which was rude
and imperfect, we hope to show. In it he calculates that--
Between 1604 and 1605, there died in London 5,135
” 1621 and 1622, ” 8,527
” 1641 and 1642, ” 11,883
” 1661 and 1662, ” 15,148
” 1681 and 1682, ” 22,331.
In about forty years he estimated that London had doubled itself (the
number being, when he wrote, 670,000), and that the assessment of
London was about one-eleventh of the whole territory: “Therefore, the
people of the whole may be about 7,369,000; with which account that
of the poll-money, hearth-money, and the bishops’ late numbering of
the communicants, do pretty well agree.” This founder of the House of
Lansdowne was a good deal puzzled by the growth of the metropolis. He
thus accounts for it:--“The causes of its growth from 1642 to 1682 may
be said to have been as follows: From 1642 to 1650, men came out of
the country to London to shelter themselves from the outrages of the
civil wars during that time. From 1650 to 1660, the royal party came
to London for their more private and inexpensive living. From 1660 to
1670, the King’s friends and party came to receive his favours after
his happy restoration. From 1670 to 1680, the frequency of plots and
parliaments might bring extraordinary numbers to the city. But what
reasons to assign for the like increase from 1604 to 1642, I know
not, unless I should pick out some remarkable accident happening in
each part of the said period, and make that to be the cause of this
increase (as vulgar people make the cause of every man’s sickness to be
what he did last eat); wherefore, rather than so say, I would rather
quit what I have above said to be the cause of London’s increase from
1642 to 1682, and put the whole upon some natural and spontaneous
benefits and advantages that men find by living in great more than in
small societies: I shall, therefore, seek for the antecedent causes
of this growth in the consequences of the like, considered in greater
characters and proportions.”
That the people are the life-blood of the kingdom, was Sir William’s
fixed belief; and he said, that if the whole highlands of Scotland
and the whole kingdom of Ireland were sunk in the ocean, so that the
people were all saved and brought to the lowlands of Great Britain,
the Sovereign and the subject in general would be enriched. The reader
will smile when he hears that a great deal of useful information
was embodied in Sir William Petty’s attempts to prove the following
extraordinary points:--
1st. That London doubles in 40 years, and all England in 360 years.
2nd. That there be in 1682 about 670,000 souls in London, and 7,400,000
in England and Wales; and about 20,000,000 of acres in land.
3rd. That the growth of London must stop of itself before the year 1800.
4th. That the world would be fully peopled within the next 2000 years.
Burnet says, that Petty wrote the book published in Graunt’s name;
but the bishop was too much of a gossip to be trusted, and the works
which Sir William claimed are sufficient for his fame. In the midst
of a life devoted to the world, he turned his attention to abstruse
and recondite subjects. That money makes the man, was his fundamental
article of faith. “Instead of saying with Bacon,” remarks a biographer,
“that knowledge was power, he would have said that knowledge was _l._
_s._ _d._... He was all for the practical, and in general for the
pecuniary, as the most comprehensive form of the practical.”
He was, probably, not a brave man; for he left England at the most
stirring period of its history, and, when at a later period he was
challenged by one of Cromwell’s knights to fight a duel, he claimed
the privilege of choosing time, place, and weapons, to throw an air of
ridicule over the proceeding. The place he named was a dark cellar, and
the weapon he chose was a carpenter’s axe. Near-sightedness was his
excuse for both.
He wrote “An Essay concerning the Growth of the City of London,”
“Observations on the Dublin Bills of Mortality,” “Two Essays concerning
the People of London and Paris,” “Two Essays on Political Arithmetick;”
and the name of Sir William Petty has come down to us more as the
author of these works, than as the successful speculator, as the
founder of the Marquisate of Lansdowne, or as one who began life
penniless, and left a princely inheritance. To those who wish to trace
the career of the man who drew so great a portion of public attention
to the foundations of life assurance, the epitome of his life as given
in his will may prove interesting.
Having thus endeavoured to trace the early dawn of the theory, it is
now time to chronicle the progress of life assurance as a social and
mercantile requirement.