Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/113

 determined to appeal to the tribunal of public opinion; and published a short pamphlet entitled 'A Brief of the Proceedings between Sir Hierome Sankey and the Author,' and also the little book already quoted in the course of this narrative, entitled 'Reflections on Certain Persons and Things in Ireland.' In these works he unveils, from their very commencement, the whole of the doings of Sir Hierome and his adviser Worsley. His leading adversaries, he points out, were a corrupt clique of Anabaptists, hostile to the Cromwell family for refusing to be governed by them, and to himself because of his views on religion and his perhaps imprudent satires. 'Jews, Christians and Mahomedans,' he says, 'notwithstanding their vast differences, do not make so much noise and squabble as the subdivided sectarians do, their animosities being so much the greater, by how much their differences are smaller. Upon which grounds some with too much truth, as well as too much looseness, have pronounced that gathering of churches may be termed listing of soldiers.' ... 'melancholy, jealous, discontented and active spirits,' he goes on, 'who find fault with the administration of the Survey, as they do with the Sacraments, and with the distributing of land as well as dividing the word; carrying them as fiercely to pull down Dr. Petty as the Protector or the Priests,' 'and to be esteemed as worms and maggots in the guts of the Commonwealth.'

In regard to the general charges of bribery and corruption advanced by Sir Hierome in Parliament and brought before the Irish Commissioners, he dwells with great satisfaction on their discrepancies. He also points out that those which had survived to be brought forward in Parliament had not a shred of evidence to support them, and were not in the report which had been made in Ireland by the Court of Officers appointed to examine the matter. He then urges that no suspicion had ever been suggested against him in his offices of Clerk to the Council and Private Secretary to the Lord Deputy, offices in which his opportunities were enormous and