Page:Confiscation in Irish history.djvu/212

 80,000 acres of Protestant purchases in Connaught, that in 1672, when he wrote, the Catholics held 2,280,000 plantation acres of profitable lands, i.e., something less than half of what they had held in 1641; or in round numbers four and a half out of the fifteen millions of profitable English acres; a total loss to them of something more than five and a half millions.

As Petty had a taste for statistics and had every opportunity for ascertaining the facts, one would at first sight be inclined to accept his conclusions as accurate. But Hardinge, who has founded his calculations on an actual examination of the figures contained in the different existing surveys, arrives at a totally different result as to the area confiscated. He has published a statement for each barony and for each county showing the total extent of land forfeited in each. According to his figures eleven million English acres were confiscated, of which 7,700,000 were profitable. In this total were included church lands and the estates of Ormond, Inchiquin and other loyalist Protestants. The remaining nine millions belonged to Protestants who had either sided with or made their peace with the usurpers. So that we may take it that