CHILD, SIR JOSIAH (163o-1699), English merchant, economist and governor of the East India Company, was born in London in 1630, the second son of Richard Child, a London mer chant of old family. After serving his apprenticeship in the busi ness to which he succeeded, he started on his own account at Portsmouth, as victualler to the navy under the Commonwealth, when about 25. He amassed a comfortable fortune and became a considerable stockholder in the East India Company, his inter est in India being accentuated by the fact that his brother John (q.v.) was making his career there. He was returned to parlia ment in 1659 for Petersfield; and in later years sat for Dartmouth (1673-78) and for Ludlow (1685-87) . He was made a baronet in 1678. His advocacy, both by speech and by pen, under the pseu donym of Philopatris, of the East India Company's claims to polit ical power, as well as to the right of restricting competition with its trade, brought him to the notice of the shareholders, and he became a director in 1677, and, subsequently, deputy-governor and governor. He was for a considerable time virtually the sole ruler of the company, and directed its policy as if it were his own private business. He and his brother have been credited with the change from unarmed to armed traffic; but the actual renuncia tion of the Roe doctrine of unarmed traffic by the company was resolved upon in Jan. 1686, under Gov. Sir Joseph Ash, when Child was temporarily out of office. He died on June 22, 1699. Child made several important contributions to the literature of economics; especially Brief Observations concerning Trade and the Interest of Money (1668), and A New Discourse of Trade (1668 and 169o) . He made various proposals for improving Brit ish trade by following Dutch example, and advocated a low rate of interest as the "causa causans of all the other causes of the riches of the Dutch people." This low rate of interest he thought should be created and maintained by public authority. Child, whilst adhering to the doctrine of the balance of trade, observed that a people cannot always sell to foreigners without ever buy ing from them, and denied that the export of the precious metals was necessarily detrimental. He had the mercantilist partiality for a numerous population, and propounded a new scheme for the relief and employment of the poor; he advocated the reserva tion by the mother country of the sole right of trade with her colonies.