Charles II
should be united and governed by one legislative power."79 But Petty did not stop here. Wiser far than most of those who in more recent times have advocated a similar measure, he instinctively perceived that a union of the legislatures would be useless or mischievous unless it were accompanied by a union of the nations. With this end in view he framed an elaborate and comprehensive scheme, designed at once to quiet the apprehensions of the Protestant colonists and to redress the grievances of the native Irish. The Englishry, he maintained, "had at least a gambler's right to their estates"; the existing land settlement must be preserved inviolate, and, in the interest of the connection, English immigration into Ireland must be steadily encouraged.
At the same time he acknowledged in the clearest manner the claim of the dispossessed Catholics to compensation. Such compensation ought, in his opinion, to be given in England, where the Catholics were too few to be dangerous, and where the presence of a class of Irish landowners would form an additional link between the two countries. He proposed at the same time that religious tests should be abolished; that the revenues of the Established Church should be reduced; and that the money
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