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and by that to set out such auxiliary lines and limits as should enable the ultimate subdivisions to be made without additional surveying. That he might not appear to supplant the former surveyors, or deprive them of their reward, he consented to pay them for all they had done, so far as he could make use of the same, and to execute the whole work for £30,000, or £6 per 1000 acres, thus appearing to estimate the probable amount of forfeited land at five millions of acres.
The boldness with which he undertook to bind himself, by pecuniary responsibility, to perform this immense work in thirteen months, may well have startled, "gravelled," as he calls it, all opponents. It would have been the extreme of rashness in an ordinary man, but was doubtless justified by that self-dependence and confidence which such a man as Dr. Petty well might feel in himself and his own powers. He had discovered the great principle of division of labour. The mind was yet young, which in later life produced the Political Arithmetic, Political Anatomy, and other works of the like nature, making him almost the founder of what we now call political economy.
In a manuscript called a "Briefe Account of the most materiall Passages relatinge to the Survey, managed by Dr. Petty in Ireland, Ann. 1655 and 1656," preserved among the papers of the Down Survey, in the Record Branch of the Office of the Paymaster of Civil Services in Dublin, and printed with the preface to this volume, he details his arrangements. It is extremely curious, and deserves careful perusal. It was the good fortune of the editor, nearly 200 years later, to see similar foresight and arrangements exercised on a far larger scale in another survey of Ireland, by one who possessed many of the qualities which distinguished Sir William Petty, and who also succeeded in carrying his great work to a successful close, under circumstances and obstructions, many of which bear a striking analogy to those which this history will show to have attended the Down Survey. This may give the narrative a peculiar value to those who are conversant with the more modern survey, but it will show to all, the importance, nay, necessity, of clearly scanning a work as a whole before entering upon it, and that similar circumstances will perhaps, in all ages, produce similar measures, though each be perfectly independent of the other.
The remainder of this chapter exhibits great jealousy, or perhaps, it may be charitably hoped, extreme caution, on the part of Mr. Worsley, to which is attributed a reference of the subject to another Committee, which, however, ended satisfactorily, as its report fully confirmed that of the former, in recommending the adoption of the Doctor's proposals. Dr. Petty's remarks, here as elsewhere, in regard to the surveyor-general, must be read with a knowledge that Mr. Worsley afterwards joined with the Doctor's great enemy, Sir Jerome Sankey, and that this history was not written till after the close of the litigation between them, which may be supposed to have embittered all his recollection of Mr. Worsley's earlier measures. The objections being "clandestinely made;" the nomination of friends of Worsley's to the second committee; the "business of Carricke," and other personalties, of the 11th page, bear marks of anger which would have been better omitted. They, however, show the difficulties which beset the work from its very commencement, and are perhaps necessary as a prelude to much which is to follow. The difficulties indeed were only such as most men
