Page:Petty 1851 The Down Survey.djvu/363

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and impotent soldiers forgotten by them, though in a later paper their claims will be seen at the end of the list instead of the beginning.

There appears some confusion of dates in this chapter. In the sixth line, "the beginning of May" refers to the order of the 11th of that month in the following page; and the report, called "the 9th of the same month," is not given. The "18th of December last," in the sixth and seventh lines of p. 64, should be the 11th of December last, printed at p. 30. It is similarly misquoted at p. 157, in the same order of council there reprinted, making it possible indeed that the date at p. 30 is the incorrect one. There can be no doubt, however, that the resolution is the same, whatever the date may be.

At p. 66, line 6, the word "summ" is "same" in the Lansdowne manuscript.


CHAPTER X.

Pages 80-102.

Dr. Petty is now urged forward; every one anxious to assist, who before had thwarted him; but another cry arises as soon as the parties begin to see their settlements, finding, probably, the country a wilderness. Desolation and war had "made a desert and called it peace." They think waste land has been erroneously returned as profitable, for which, of course, "the Doctor" is to blame. His answers are perfectly satisfactory: the gain would have been comparatively inconsiderable, and to no one but himself, who had no means of doing the wrong; the distinction being made by the local surveyor, not in Dublin. To this he adverts in his "Reflections": "Can any man say I ever altered the returns made unto me? changed profitable into unprofitable lands? altered any field-books, expunged any observation? chopped or changed in the least"? And again, "I contracted with my surveyors, by that most impartial, just, and never before thought of way, of the mile in length, and not by the thousand acres of superficial extent." Nor were the surveyors paid more for measurements in one class of land than in another. The average proportion between profitable and unprofitable land, which he gives as seven to one, appears indeed excessive when compared with the proportion between "arable" and "uncultivated" in the tables of the census of 1841, p. 453, which give about five and a half to one in Leinster, two to one in Munster, two to one in Ulster; but unprofitable and uncultivated are by no means synonymous terms, as much of the latter is profitable for pasture. This complaint was the same which the Doctor had made against the former survey; and it would perhaps have been more satisfactory to all parties if the Doctor's original offer of a gross sum for the whole had been accepted. The man must be very sceptical who can retain any doubt on these complaints after reading the first three pages of this chapter.

The complaint appears to have been more especially pressed in regard to the county of

irish arch. soc.
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Kerry,