Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/56

 the second, to a vast number and the most dangerous; and the remaining are weary of war, having long since submitted; and those that are out sue for nothing but mercy. For the poor commons the sun never shined, or rather not shined upon a nation so completely miserable. There are not 100 of them in 10,000 who are not by the first and fourth articles of the Act of Settlement under the penalty of losing life and estate. The tax sweeps away their whole existence. Necessity makes them turn thieves and Tories, and then they are prosecuted with fire and sword for being so. If they discover not Tories, the English hang them; if they do, the Irish kill them.' It was possible, no doubt, to reply with Colonel Lawrence, who published an answer, that technically no promiscuous transplantation was intended; but a promiscuous transplantation was none the less going on, and that it would not even have the merit of success, was the opinion of the two critics. 'The unsettling of a nation,' they pointed out, 'is an easy work; the settling is not,' and the transplantation could have but one result—the permanent mutual alienation of the English and the Irish, and the division of the latter between a large discontented garrison beyond the Shannon and scattered bands of pillaging Tories on this side of the river. Such bands were already sufficiently numerous, owing to the heavy taxes and to 'the violence and oppression of the soldiery,' which had driven even loyal men into rebellion and despair. A settlement of the country, they fully admitted, was obviously needed; but it should have for object to detach the people of the country from lawless courses, instead of driving them into madness by injustice.

The anomalous result of the rates of distribution under the Act was another matter which had struck Henry Cromwell. At the existing rates he saw that 'one might have a thousand acres worth more than 1,000l., and another in the same barony a thousand acres not worth 200l.' The great desideratum of Ireland, he reported home, was to secure