Some of these words are striking, especially when we consider their early date. In a commentary on each verse the author seeks to explain it. New England is “that thriving colony which hath so much increased in our days”; its people are already “industrious,” and when they have so far increased “that the neighboring country will not contain them, they will range still farther, and be able in time to set forth great armies, seek for new possessions, or make considerable and conjoined migrations.”[274] The verse touching Africa will be fulfilled “when African countries shall no longer make it a common trade to sell away their people.” And this may come to pass “whenever they shall be well civilized, and acquainted with arts and affairs sufficient to employ people in their countries: if also they should be converted to Christianity, but especially unto Mahometism; for then they would never sell those of their religion to be slaves unto Christians.”[275] The verse concerning America is expounded thus:—
“That is, When America shall be better civilized, new policied, and divided between great princes, it may come to pass that they will no longer suffer their treasure of gold and silver to be sent out to maintain the luxury of Europe and other parts; but rather employ it to their own advantages, in great exploits and undertakings, magnificent structures, wars, or expeditions of their own.”[276]
The other verse, on the invasion of the Old World by the New, is explained:—
“That is, When America shall be so well peopled, civilized, and divided into kingdoms, they are like to have so little regard of their originals as to acknowledge no subjection unto them: they may also have a distinct commerce between themselves, or but independently with those of Europe, and may hostilely and piratically assault them, even as the Greek and Roman colonies after a long time dealt with their original countries.”[277]
That these speculations should arrest the attention of Dr. Johnson is something. They seem to have been in part fulfilled. An editor quietly remarks, that, “to judge from the course of events since Sir Thomas wrote, we may not unreasonably look forward to their more complete fulfilment.”[278]
SIR JOSIAH CHILD AND DR. CHARLES DAVENANT, 1698.
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:—