Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/51

 began to be seen, was at once attacked, by some for want of accuracy, by others for the interminable time which it seemed likely to occupy before completion; and it was also generally criticised for the manner in which it appeared to be carried out for the benefit of powerful individuals.

The Surveyor-General, Benjamin Worsley, had arrived in Ireland at the same time as Dr. Petty. He also was a member of the medical profession, but what were his qualifications as a surveyor does not precisely appear. Dr. Petty described him as one who 'having been frustrated as to his many severall great designs in England hoped to improve and repaire himselfe upon a less knowing and more credulous people. To this purpose he exchanged some dangerous opinions in religion for others more merchantable in Ireland, and carried also some magnifying glasses,' by means of which Dr. Petty, who seems to have underrated his abilities, says he impressed an ignorant public with a vast idea of his scientific attainments. He was a dealer in schemes for a universal medicine, for making gold, sowing saltpetre, establishing a universal trade, taking great farms, and other visionary plans, all of which excited the wrath of the practical and scientific mind of Dr. Petty, who described them as 'mountain-bellied conceptions.'

The scheme of survey attempted by him, so far as it was carried out, was to make a survey of forfeited lands only, without any reference to the civil territorial limits; and barren land was to be excepted from it, unless included by situation within the area of profitable land.

The payment was to be in proportion to the area surveyed, at the rate of 40s. per 1,000 acres of land, whether profitable or unprofitable. Dr. Petty at once perceived the defects which lay on the face of Worsley's plan. The rate of payment, in Dr. Petty's opinion, was excessive. There was also no check on the returns of the surveyors, and it was open to question whether the instructions to them complied in several respects with the