In contrast with the poets, but mingling with them in forecast, were
two writers on Trade, who saw the future through facts and figures,
or what one of them called “political arithmetic,” even discerning
colonial independence in the distance. These were Sir Josiah Child,
born 1630 and died 1699, and Dr. Charles Davenant, born 1656 and died
1714.
Child is mentioned by De Foe as “originally a tradesman”; others speak
of him as “a Southwalk brewer”; and McCulloch calls him “one of the
most extensive, and, judging from his work, best-informed, merchants
of his time.”[279] He rose to wealth and consideration, founding a
family which intermarried with the nobility. His son was known as
Lord Castlemaine, Earl Tylney, of Ireland. Davenant was eldest son of
“rare Sir William,” the author of “Gondibert,” and, like his eminent
father, a dramatist. He was also member of Parliament, and wrote much
on commercial questions; but here he was less famous than Child, whose
“New Discourse of Trade,” so far as it concerned the interest of money,
first appeared in 1668, and since then has been often reprinted and
much quoted. There was an enlarged edition in 1694. That now before me
appeared in 1698, and in the same year Davenant published his kindred
“Discourses on the Public Revenues and on the Trade of England,”
among which is one “on the Plantation Trade.” The two authors treated
especially the Colonies, and in similar spirit.
* * * * *
The work of Child was brought to more recent notice by the voluminous
plodder, George Chalmers, particularly in his writings on the Colonies
and American Independence,[280] and then again by the elder Disraeli,
in his “Curiosities of Literature,” who places a prophecy attributed
to him in his chapter on “Prediction.” After referring to Harrington,
“who ventured to predict an event, not by other similar events, but by
a theoretical principle which he had formed,” and to a like error in De
Foe, Disraeli quotes Chalmers:--
“Child, foreseeing from experience that men’s conduct must
finally be decided [directed] by their principles, foretold the
colonial revolt. De Foe, allowing his prejudices to obscure
his sagacity, reprobated that suggestion, because he deemed
interest a more strenuous prompter than enthusiasm.”