Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/87

 have taken place, if the advocates of change had not been met by the logic of accomplished facts, which they were compelled, however unwillingly, to respect.

From first to last the settlement of Ireland by the Commonwealth had occupied a space of four years, of which the actual distribution of the lands had occupied half. All this, 'which is the more wonderful,' says Clarendon, 'was done and settled within little more than two years, to that degree of perfection that there were many buildings raised for beauty as well as for use, orderly plantation of trees, and fences and enclosures raised throughout the kingdom, purchases made by one from the other at very valuable rates, and jointures made upon marriages, and all other conveyances and settlements executed as in a kingdom at peace within itself, and where no doubt would be made of the validity of the titles.' Such is the contemporary testimony of the great historian of the rebellion. Equally decisive is the verdict of one of the most skilled of modern Irish administrators, and one of the highest authorities on the art of surveying—at an interval of nearly two centuries—on the labours of his predecessor. 'It is difficult,' Sir Thomas Larcom wrote in 1851, 'to imagine a work more full of perplexity and uncertainty than to locate 32,000 officers, soldiers, and followers, with adventurers, settlers, and creditors of every kind and class, having different and uncertain claims, on lands of different and uncertain value in detached parcels sprinkled over two-thirds of the surface of Ireland; nor, as Dr. Petty subsequently experienced, a task more thankless in the eyes of the contemporary million. It was for his comfort that he obtained and kept the good opinion of those who were unprejudiced and impartial. The true appeal is to the quiet force of public opinion, as time moves on and anger gradually subsides; and from that tribunal the award has long been favourable to the work of Dr. Petty. It stands to this day, with the accompanying books of distribution, the legal record of the title on which half the land of Ireland is held; and for the purpose to which it was and is applied, it remains sufficient.'