Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/531

 Conditions surrounding Settlement of ]irginia 521 in the years immediately following 1630 formed plans for still another plantation, to be located in Ormond, Clare, and Connaught. it soon became evident that no English settlers were forthcoming, and Wentworth's political downfall only anticipated the certain fail- ure of his colonizing policy. In fact the settlement of Ireland as well as of America was neces- sarily limited by the amount of available population in England at the opening of the seventeenth century. A wide-spread opinion existed then that England was overpopulated, and this opinion is apparently still generally held. A tract printed in London in 1609, A Good Speed to Virginia, says : God hath prospered us with the blessings of the wombe, and with the blessings of the breasts, the sword devoureth not abroad, neither is there any feare in our streetes at home ; so that we are now for multi- tude as the thousands of Manasses and as the ten thousands of Ephraim ... we are a great people and the lande is too narrow for us.' When James offered to allow his Scottish as well as his English sub- jects to take up lands in Ireland he explained that " There be no want of great numbers of the country people of England who with all gladness would transport themselves and their families to Ireland and plenish the whole bounds sufficiently with inhabitants.'" The desirability of drawing off surplus population is frequently used as an argument for the plantation both of Ireland and of Virginia, and large numbers of emigrants are freely counted on. The Spanish ambassador Zuiiiga learns in March, 1606, that the new company is planning to send 500 or 600 men to Virginia at once, and a few months later hears that the company will send 2,000 men ; soon afterward 3,000 are talked of, then 1,500 more, with a plan of an early increase of the numbers to 12,000.' In the colonization of Munster in 1586, similarly, 4,200 persons were planned for during the first year, 21,800 during the first seven years.^ Yet there is much to throw doubt on the correctness of this com- mon impression of the existence of a large surplus of population in England. Overpopulation is entirely a relative term and can mean nothing more than either an excessive number of persons out of employment or a disproportionately rapid increase of population. It is very doubtful whether the latter of these conditions, at least, existed. Nothing is more untrustworthy than contemporary esti- mates of population. Dependent on the subjective attitude of the '■ Reprinted in Brown, Genesis of the United States, I. 297. = Hill, ^inumary SIcetch of the Great Ulster Plantation. 3 Brown, Genesis of the United States, I. 46, 100, 102, 147.
 * Cal. St. Papers, Ireland, 15S6-15SS. p. 243.