Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/173

 They wear better clothes than ever; the gentry have better breeding, and the generality of the plebeians more money and freedom.'

It was, he said, often his lot to hear 'wise men,' when bewailing the vast losses of England in suppressing rebellions in Ireland, and considering how little profit had come thereby, proceed to wish in their melancholy 'that (the people of Ireland being saved) the island were sunk under water,' while others wished for another rebellion as an excuse for stamping out the inhabitants. To these melancholy philosophers he used to reply that 'the distemper of his own mind' caused him to dream that the benefit of their wishes might practically be obtained without the adoption of such very extreme courses, 'if all the moveables and people of Ireland and of the Highlands of Scotland, were moved into the rest of Great Britain,' where he was prepared to show there was abundant room and occupation for them; though he thought it as well to guard himself by saying that, however ingenious and attractive these speculations might be, they were to be considered 'a dream or reverie,' rather than rational or serious proposals.' He did, however, seriously favour a considerable State-aided emigration from Ireland to England and vice versá, as affording a partial solution of many political and religious difficulties. This proposal he renewed more than once. He also suggested that the inhabitants of New England might, as had been proposed in the time of the Commonwealth, be removed to Ireland. 'The Government of New England, both civil and ecclesiastical,' he wrote in almost prophetic words, 'doth so differ from His Majesty's other dominions, that 'tis hard to say what may be the consequence of it.... I can but wish they were transplanted into Old England or Ireland (according to proposals of their own made within this twenty years) although they were allowed more liberty of conscience than they allow one another.' But his favourite idea was the union of the countries.