Declarations of Indulgence as wise measures for the unification of national sentiment. Knowing as he did the immense material preponderance of the protestant interest both in England[1] and especially in Ireland[2]—a preponderance of which he did his best to convince the King by written and by oral argument[3]—he was unable to believe that the Declarations, whose sentiments quite accorded with his own views[4], were really issued in the sole interest of the Roman Catholics, and he continued to regard the boastings of Tyrconnel and the extreme Irish faction as without foundation in the intentions of the king[5]. But at length tidings of the alarm prevalent among the English protestants in Ireland, and especially the news that McCarthy had been appointed governor of the province of Kerry, brought home to him the danger with which he himself, as well as the other protestants in Ireland, were threatened.
It is not certain whether Petty lived to know that Kenmare was destroyed. For some months he had been unwell. In spite of a "great lameness" he attended the annual dinner of the Royal
- ↑ Cf. his Telling of Noses, p. 461 note [where read 11870 for 11878 and 17810⁄13 for 17810⁄10]. Regarding "the Bishops late numbering of the Communicants," upon which Petty's calculations for England were based, Mr W.C. Abbott kindly writes me that "in 1676 the Earl of Danby, then Lord High Treasurer and Chief Minister to Charles II., ordered a census of religious bodies in England by dioceses and committed the task of making it to the Anglican clergy. Among the Leeds papers (Hist. MSS. Com., vol. xi. pt. 7, pp. 14 seq.), in consequence, we find several documents dealing with the matter. The first is a letter from Danby to Bishop Morley regarding this inquiry, which was set on foot to demonstrate to the King by actual figures the vast superiority in numbers of the Anglican Church over all other religious bodies in England. This, as the Bishop says, will probably break down the king's objection to the rigid suppression of conventicles, and he assumes that it is for that purpose. Rather, one would say from a political point of view, it was to demonstrate to Charles the absolute futility of his religious policy."
- ↑ The figures from the Political Anatomy, pp. 156, 138—144, are familiar from the use made of them by Macaulay and Lecky. Those in the Treatise of Ireland, pp. 561, 590—596, now first published, are not less striking.
- ↑ Fitzmaurice, 280.
- ↑ Cf. pp. 70—73, 262—264, post; Fitzmaurice, pp. 234—243, 270. In Rawlinson MS. A 171, ff. 274—275, is a dialogue on Liberty of Conscience endorsed "Sr Wm Petty 's Paper written at my desire & given me by himselfe a little before his Death. S[amuel] P[epys]." The only theological suggestion contained in "Twelve articles of a good catholique and good patriot's creed" found in Petty's pocket after his death (Fitzmaurice, 310) is "that Liberty of Religion and Naturalization be secured."
- ↑ Cf. pp. 577, 591.
