Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/54

 'Discourse against the transplanting into Connaught,' declaring it on public grounds a wasteful transaction and contrary to sound policy.

'Mercy and pardon' as to life and estate had indeed been decreed in favour of 'all husbandmen, ploughmen, labourers, and artificers,' and others of the inferior sort; for the chosen people, it was recollected, had found the Gibeonites useful in Palestine as hewers of wood and drawers of water. But all the landowners who had not fled over sea, and their retainers, were to cross the Shannon. Many had already fled the country. The land was already free from the old Irish military party. Nobody at least could deny that. 'The chiefest and eminentest of the nobility, and many of the gentry, have taken conditions from the King of Spain, and have transported 40,000 of the most active spirited men, most acquainted with the dangers and discipline of war.' Such is the grim epitaph of the ancient chiefs and nobles, which the authors of 'The Discourse' recorded in their book. Some went to France and enlisted in the royal armies, others took service with the King of Spain and the King of Poland. Europe was full of Irish Roman Catholic exiles eager for revenge. The widows and orphans, the deserted wives and families of the 'swordsmen,' experienced a worse fate. They were kidnapped and shipped wholesale into the West Indies, the slave-dealing merchants of Bristol achieving a pre-eminence in the nefarious traffic, which their previous experience enabled them to organise with