Sir William Petty, the Cabal Ministry, and the Government of Empire

Abstract

Abstract This chapter resumes the story of Petty’s engagement with Hobbes in the early 1670s, when Petty wrote The Political Anatomy of Ireland and Political Arithmetick. These texts were written under the ‘Cabal’ ministry, a member of which, Sir Henry Bennett, Lord Arlington, was a patron of Hobbes and an associate, at least, of Petty. The ministry’s relationships with Hobbes and Hobbesian discourse are much discussed; but these discussions are restricted thematically and geographically. This chapter recovers a debate about the government of empire which divided the Cabal ministry. It shows that Hobbes intervened in this debate, broadly on the same side as Arlington, and argues that Petty used Hobbes’s concepts of subjecthood, sovereignty, conquest, and the church to do the same. In both his texts, Petty thought with Hobbes to argue for reforms to imperial government and trade, a British union, and the incorporation of Irish Catholics into a British state.