Page:Petty 1851 The Down Survey.djvu/368

 or Sir Richard Cox, from the latter of whom, there is preserved in the manuscript volume already quoted, in the possession of Messrs. Hodges and Smith, the original draft of a letter to Sir Robert Southwell, dated the 15th of June, 1687, containing very judicious remarks on another of Sir William's works, the Political Anatomy of Ireland, from which their habitual correspondence, and the high estimation in which Sir William Petty was held by those learned men, may be seen.

At p. 104, fourth line from foot, for petitioners, read petitioner.

At p. 132, fifth line from foot, for proportion, read proposition.

pages are chiefly occupied with the times and manner in which the several payments were made to Dr. Petty, as well by the State, on its own part, as on the part of the army, of the penny an acre, agreed to by the committee of officers, on the 11th December, 1654. This latter, as well as the former, appears to have been advanced to him by the State, and deducted from the accruing pay of the soldiers and officers, and if the original intention of settling the men upon their lands, regiment by regiment, concurrently with the survey, could have been carried out, the payment would have been easily closed. But in two years, at such a period, it may well be supposed, frequent changes would take place among the troops, some being moved to England and elsewhere, and many irregularly set down as they were disbanded, or dispersed here and there, in some cases before the survey was complete. Accordingly, in February, 1657, there remained due to Dr. Petty £614 8s. 9d., which could not be raised from the army then in pay, and for this amount two modes of paying him were proposed, either to remit an equal amount of the repayment to be made by him for the old surveyors, or allow him to collect the sum himself from the soldiers and settled men, from whom it was due, with some addition for his trouble. The latter would obviously be a difficult process, but there was a considerable sum due on that account by the same parties to the State, which the State despaired of collecting, and this debt it was proposed to make over to him to collect for his own benefit, in compensation for the labour of collecting the £614 8s. 9d., increasing that sum to £3181 14s. 3d. To this the Doctor agreed, finding probably that money was scarce in the coffers of the State. He took, in fact, an addition to a bad debt, in lieu of payment of the debt itself. But it will be seen that he afterwards turned it to good account, having been paid in great part in land; and several years afterwards, subsequently to the Restoration, we shall find him petitioning the King on the same subject, in regard to the adventurers' lands, and in connexion with the completion of the maps; when, in 1666, a clause was inserted in the Act of Explanation, giving him powers of levying this penny an acre by seizure and distraint on the lands from which it was still considered due.