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Charles II the penalties of præmunire; the Chancellor suggested, whether in jest or earnest does not seem quite certain, that it should be styled "adultery." The Duke of Buckingham, in a tone too characteristic of Irish debates, informed the opponents of the Bill that they must have "either Irish estates or Irish understandings." By an Act of 1680 the prohibition was rendered still more stringent.

It is to this legislation that we must attribute one of the earliest suggestions of a measure which, more than a century afterwards, was actually accomplished. Sir William Petty, an eminent economist and statistician, who had enriched himself by very questionable means during the recent troubles, saw with indignation a policy directed against the prosperity of the country in which his lot was cast. Under the Protectorate the Irish Parliament had been abolished, and the English settlers had sent representatives to Westminster. Free trade was a natural feature of this policy; and to this policy Petty now proposed to revert. For five hundred. years Ireland had been connected with England, and, during that period, so little had the larger country profited by the connection that many Englishmen wished "that Ireland were sunk under water," while others sought to provoke a 94