Mankind and Political Arithmetic | Page 5

must desire the reader to be content therewith, till more can be had.
The extract of a letter concerning the scope of an essay intended to precede another essay concerning the growth of the City of London, &c. An Essay in Political Arithmetic, concerning the value and increase of People and Colonies.
The scope of this essay is concerning people and colonies, and to make way for "Another Essay" concerning the growth of the city of London. I desire in this first essay to give the world some light concerning the numbers of people in England, with Wales, and in Ireland; as also of the number of houses and families wherein they live, and of acres they occupy.
2. How many live upon their lands, how many upon their personal estates and commerce, and how many upon art, and labour; how many upon alms, how many upon offices and public employments, and how many as cheats and thieves; how many are impotents, children, and decrepit old men.
3. How many upon the poll-taxes in England, do pay extraordinary rates, and how many at the level.
4. How many men and women are prolific, and how many of each are married or unmarried.
5. What the value of people are in England, and what in Ireland at a medium, both as members of the Church or Commonwealth, or as slaves and servants to one another; with a method how to estimate the same, in any other country or colony.
6. How to compute the value of land in colonies, in comparison to England and Ireland.
7. How 10,000 people in a colony may be planted to the best advantage.
8. A conjecture in what number of years England and Ireland may be fully peopled, as also all America, and lastly the whole habitable earth.
9. What spot of the earth's globe were fittest for a general and universal emporium, whereby all the people thereof may best enjoy one another's labours and commodities.
10. Whether the speedy peopling of the earth would make
(1) For the good of mankind.
(2) To fulfil the revealed will of God.
(3) To what prince or State the same would be most advantageous.
11. An exhortation to all thinking men to solve the Scriptures and other good histories, concerning the number of people in all ages of the world, in the great cities thereof, and elsewhere.
12. An appendix concerning the different number of sea-fish and wild-fowl at the end of every thousand years since Noah's Flood.
13. An hypothesis of the use of those spaces (of about 8,000 miles through) within the globe of our earth, supposing a shell of 150 miles thick.
14. What may be the meaning of glorified bodies, in case the place of the blessed shall be without the convex of the orb of the fixed stars, if that the whole system of the world was made for the use of our earth's men.

THE PRINCIPAL POINTS OF THIS DISCOURSE

1. That London doubles in forty years, and all England in three hundred and sixty years.
2. That there be, A.D. 1682, about 670,000 souls in London, and about 7,400,000 in all England and Wales, and about 28,000,000 of acres of profitable land.
3. That the periods of doubling the people are found to be, in all degrees, from between ten to twelve hundred years.
4. That the growth of London must stop of itself before the year 1800.
5. A table helping to understand the Scriptures, concerning the number of people mentioned in them.
6. That the world will be fully peopled within the next two thousand years.
7. Twelve ways whereby to try any proposal pretended for the public good.
8. How the city of London may be made (morally speaking) invincible.
9. A help to uniformity in religion.
10. That it is possible to increase mankind by generation four times more than at present.
11. The plagues of London is the chief impediment and objection against the growth of the city.
12. That an exact account of the people is necessary in this matter.

OF THE GROWTH OF THE CITY OF LONDON: And of the Measures, Periods, Causes, and Consequences thereof

By the city of London we mean the housing within the walls of the old city, with the liberties thereof, Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, and so much of the built ground in Middlesex and Surrey, whose houses are contiguous unto, or within call of those aforementioned. Or else we mean the housing which stand upon the ninety-seven parishes within the walls of London; upon the sixteen parishes next without them; the six parishes of Westminster, and the fourteen out-parishes in Middlesex and Surrey, contiguous to the former, all which, 133 parishes, are comprehended within the weekly bills of mortality.
The growth of this city is measured. (1) By the quantity of ground, or number of acres upon which it stands. (2) By the number of houses, as the same appears