particular, and to the Commonwealth in general, being chiefly intended as an Answer to a scandalous, seditious Pamphlet, entitled [The great Case of Transplantation in Ireland discussed]. Composed and published at the request of several persons in eminent place in Ireland, to the end all who desire it, might have a true Account of the Proceedings that have been there in the business of Transplantation, both as to the rise, progress, and end thereof. By a faithfull Servant of the Common-wealth, Richard Laurence.
London, Printed by Henry Hills, and to be sold at the Sign of Sir John Oldcastle near Py-Corner, MCDLV [1655].
Title, 1 l., pp. 1—29, 4º.
A reply soon appeared under the title:
The | author | and | Case of Transplanting | the | Irish into Connaught | vindicated, | from the unjust Aspersions of Col. Richard Laurence. | By Vincent Gookin Esquire. | [Ornament.]
London, Printed by A. M. for Simon Miller at the Signe of | the Starre in St. Pauls Church-yard. [May 12.] 1655.
Title, 1 l., epistle dedicatory, 1 l., pp. 1—59, 4º. All three pamphlets are in the Halliday Collection in the Library of the Royal Irish Academy, in the Library of King's Inns, Dublin, and in the British Museum. An account of The Great Case may be found in Prendergast's Cromwellian Settlement, pp. 54-64.
Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice's reason for regarding Petty as one of the authors of the first pamphlet is that "the published book bears the marks of joint authorship, the opening sentences—an elaborate medical comparison between the State and the human body—being altogether in Petty's style as well as the later portions, where the arguments are of exactly the same character as those in the Political Anatomy of Ireland, ch. iv." These similarities do indeed strengthen the presumption of Petty's collaboration in "The Great Case" which may well arise from his mention of "A Discourse against the Transplanting into Ireland." But they do not seem to me conclusive, and there are direct arguments against Petty's authorship. So far as the probabilities are concerned it may be noted that Gookin and Petty were personal friends and political allies[1], and as such would naturally take similar views of the Rebellion of 1641. This seems to me to account sufficiently for the parallelism between some passages of "The Great Case" and of the "Political Anatomy." Nor does the use,
- ↑ Fitzmaurice, 31, 51, 77—81.
