6.  Since the great Fire of London, A.D. 1666, about 7 parts of 15 of the present vast city hath been new built, and is with its people increased near one half, and become equal to Paris and Rome put together, the one being the seat of the great French Monarchy, and the other of the Papacy.

FIVE ESSAYS IN POLITICAL ARITHMETIC

I. Objections from the city of Ray in Persia, and from Monsier Auzout, against two former essays, answered, and that London hath as many people as Paris, Rome, and Rouen put together.

II.  A comparison between London and Paris in 14 particulars.

III.  Proofs that at London, within its 134 parishes named in the bills of mortality, there live about 696,000 people.

IV.  An estimate of the people in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Venice, Rome, Dublin, Bristol, and Rouen, with several observations upon the same.

V. Concerning Holland and the rest of the Seven United Provinces.

TO THE KING’S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY

Sir,

Your Majesty having graciously accepted my two late essays, about the cities and hospitals of London and Paris, as also my observations on Rome and Rouen; I do (after six months’ waiting for what may be said against my several doctrines by the able men of Europe) humbly present your Majesty with a few other papers upon the same subject, to strengthen, explain, and enlarge the former; hoping by such real arguments, better to praise and magnify your Majesty, than by any other the most specious words and eulogies that can be imagined by

Your Majesty’s
Most humble, loyal
And obedient subject,
William Petty.

THE FIRST ESSAY.

It could not be expected that an assertion of London’s being bigger than Paris and Rouen, or than Paris and Rome put together, and bigger than any city of the world, should escape uncontradicted; and ’tis also expected that I (if continuing in the same persuasion), should make some reply to those contradictions.  In order whereunto,

I begin with the ingenious author of the “Republique des Lettres,” who saith that Rey in Persia is far bigger than London, for that in the sixth century of Christianity (I suppose, A.D. 550 the middle of that century), it had 15,000, or rather 44,000 mosques or Mahometan temples; to which I reply, that I hope this objector is but in jest, for that Mahomet was not born till about the year 570, and had no mosques till about 50 years after.

In the next place I reply to the excellent Monsieur Auzout’s “Letters from Rome,” who is content that London, Westminster, and Southwark may have as many people as Paris and its suburbs; and but faintly denieth, that all the housing within the bills may have almost as many people as Paris and Rouen, but saith that several parishes inserted into these bills are distant from, and not contiguous with London, and that Grant so understood it.