The Preface.
YOung and vain persons, though perhaps they marry not primarily and onely on purpose to get Children, much less to get such as may be fit for some one particular vocation; yet having Children, they dispose of them as well as they can according to their respective inclinations: Even so, although I wrote these sheets but to rid my head of so many troublesome conceits, and not to apply them to the use of any one particular People or Concernment; yet now they are born, and that their Birth happened to be about the time of the Duke of Ormond's going Lord Lieutenant into Ireland, I thought they might be as proper for the consideration of that place, as of any other, though perhaps of effect little enough in any.
Ireland is a place which must have so great an Army kept up in it, as may make the Irish desist from doing themselves or the English harm by their future Rebellions. And this great Army || must occasion great and heavy Leavies upon a poor people and wasted Countrey; it is therefore not amiss that Ireland should understand the nature and measure of Taxes and Contributions.
2. The Parishes of Ireland do much want Regulation, by uniting and dividing them[1]; so as to make them fit Enclosures
- ↑ In 1662 the Parliament of Ireland passed an Act for the real union and division of parishes—14 & 15 Charles II., c. 10. It is not clear that Petty had any connection with this Act, but the preamble seems to reflect his ideas: "Whereas parishes are in some parts of this Kingdom so little that five or six lie together within a mile or two, whereby subjects are likely to be much burdened with the unnecessary charge of building and repairing so many churches,
