Page:Petty 1851 The Down Survey.djvu/380

 circular letters constituting and calling together the committee of safety. And in De Larrey's Histoire d'Angleterre, vol. p. 375, we find him commanding the Irish Brigade in Lambert's army in the north of England. Sir Charles Coote, who appears to have been always friendly to Dr. Petty, sided with the Parliament and Monke. The Restoration and the Act of Settlement speedily followed, and we hear no more of the impeachment or misdemeanours, which, if the memory of them had not been preserved by Dr. Petty himself, would probably have been long since forgotten altogether.

Not so the survey, which will always remain one of the most remarkable undertakings of which we have any record. We are not to estimate its merits as a topographical work, by the precision which has been attained in modern times, nor test it by comparison with modern surveys, but with those which had gone before, and which it immediately replaced, as well as the circumstances under which it was executed, and the short time in which the whole operation was performed.

Before the time of Petty, except the material compiled into the early maps of Ireland by Boazio, Ortelius, Norden, Blaeu, and others, the only detailed surveys of any magnitude were those of the King's and Queen's Counties, about 1630; the county of Londonderry, by Raven; and the Strafford Survey. Worsley was carrying on the surveys for grants and forfeitures, which have been sufficiently adverted to already as "grosse surrounds;" but it remained for Dr. Petty, to originate the idea of connecting the separate operations, into a general survey of the three provinces which were not comprised in the Strafford Survey. His great step was making territorial and natural boundaries the main objects, instead of estate boundaries alone; because the former were permanent and enduring, the latter in their nature fluctuating, and destined to change by the very purpose for which the survey itself was made.

The insertion which he enjoined of prominent buildings and objects, the heights of remarkable mountains, the more general information in regard to harbours, roads, and communications, were the result of the general, and, it is not too much to say, enlarged views he took of the work before him. The division of labour, first between office and field-work, and then between operative and directing ability; the forethought, apparent even in the minutest particulars, mark Dr. Petty as possessing the faculty which would probably have commanded success in any undertaking or career to which he had devoted himself.

That he should have ventured upon one so remote from anything to which his attention had previously been directed, may be taken as great boldness on his part, but it enhances our surprise at the success of the work. It would be no easy task in our own day, to accomplish in thirteen months, even a traverse survey in outline, of 5,000,000 acres in small divisions, and it was immeasurably greater then. But then, as now, the difficulties of the director of such an operation did not lie in the work itself. They arose from the obstructions thrown around him, by ignorance on the one hand and jealousy on the other; without any power possessing sufficient knowledge, strength, and general control, to afford protection and support. Enmity is always more active than friendship, and the few who feel or fancy themselves injured, are far more clamorous, and more heard, than the many who are honestly served and satisfied.