Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/300

 object of which was to set out in greater detail the conclusions to be found in the first chapter of the 'Political Anatomy of Ireland:' viz., that when all the circumstances of the case were considered, from the rebellion of 1641 onwards, the grievances of the great Roman Catholic proprietors were not what they had been represented, because those proprietors had deliberately courted the arbitrament of the sword, which had proved adverse, and nevertheless had been reinstated in a very large proportion of their possessions at the Restoration. Since then the steady growth of the prosperity of the country had left them, if with possessions in extent diminished, yet, all the circumstances considered, in a far more favourable position pecuniarily, owing to the increase in the value of land, than would otherwise have been the case. To overturn the whole of the Land Settlement would, he argued, not only be an act of injustice, but would once more plunge the whole country—the great need of which was security and order—into confusion. It would be far better to compensate the dissatisfied Catholics in some other way: for example, with grants of land in England, which would have the effect of strengthening the Roman Catholic interest there, an object which he considered equally desirable with the strengthening of the Protestant interest in Ireland, in order to prevent the supremacy of either denomination in any part of the two kingdoms. He also prepared a plan for the partial disendowment of the Established Church both in England and Ireland, in order to pay the Roman Catholic priests, and wrote three small tracts developing the same order of ideas; but it does not appear that, though privately circulated, any of them were printed or published.

Already early in 1686, in a letter written to Southwell,