I DO presume, in a very small paper, to show your Majesty that your City of London seems more considerable than the two best cities of the French monarchy, and for aught I can find, greater than any other of the universe, which because I can say without flattery, and by such demonstration as your Majesty can examine, I humbly pray your Majesty to accept from Your Majesty’s Most humble, loyal, and obedient subject, WILLIAM PETTY. AN ESSAY IN POLITICAL ARITHMETIC _Tending to prove that London hath more people and housing than the cities of Paris and Rouen put together_, _and is also more considerable in several other respects_. 1. THE medium of the burials at London in the three last years—viz., 1683, 1684, and 1685, wherein there was no extraordinary sickness, and wherein the christenings do correspond in their ordinary proportions with the burials and christenings of each year one with another, was 22,337, and the like medium of burials for the three last Paris bills we could procure—viz., for the years 1682, 1683, and 1684 (whereof the last as appears by the christenings to have been very sickly), is 19,887. 2. The city of Bristol in England appears to be by good estimate of its trade and customs as great as Rouen in France, and the city of Dublin in Ireland appears to have more chimneys than Bristol, and consequently more people, and the burials in Dublin were, A.D. 1682 (being a sickly year) but 2,263. 3. Now the burials of Paris (being 19,887) being added to the burials of Dublin (supposed more than at Rouen) being 2,263, makes but 22,150, whereas the burials of London were 187 more, or 22,337, or as about 6 to 7. 4. If those who die unnecessarily, and by miscarriage in L’Hôtel Dieu in Paris (being above 3,000), as hath been elsewhere shown, or any part thereof, should be subtracted out of the Paris burials aforementioned, then our assertion will be stronger, and more proportionable to what follows concerning the housing of those cities, viz.: 5. There were burnt at London, A.D. 1666, above 13,000 houses, which being but a fifth part of the whole, the whole number of houses in the said year were above 65,000; and whereas the ordinary burials of London have increased between the years 1666 and 1686, above one-third the total of the houses at London, A.D. 1686, must be about 87,000, which A.D. 1682, appeared by account to have been 84,000. 6. Monsieur Moreri, the great French author of the late geographical dictionaries, who makes Paris the greatest city in the world, doth reckon but 50,000 houses in the same, and other authors and knowing men much less; nor are there full 7,000 houses in the city of Dublin, so as if the 50,000 houses of Paris, and the 7,000 houses in the city of Dublin were added together, the total is but 57,000 houses, whereas those of London are 87,000 as aforesaid, or as 6 to 9.