I could easily add some other motives, which, to men of spirit, who desire and expect, and think they deserve the common privileges of human nature, would be of more force, than any you have yet named, to drive them out of this kingdom.  But, as these speculations may probably not much affect the brains of your people, I shall choose to let them pass unmentioned.  Yet I cannot but observe, that my very good and virtuous friend, his excellency Burnet, (O fili, nec tali indigne parente!)[90] hath not hitherto been able to persuade his vassals, by his oratory in the style of a command, to settle a revenue on his viceroyal person.[91] I have been likewise assured, that in one of those colonies on the continent, which nature hath so far favoured, as (by the industry of the inhabitants) to produce a great quantity of excellent rice, the stubbornness of the people, who having been told that the world is wide, took it into their heads that they might sell their own rice at whatever foreign markets they pleased, and seem, by their practice, very unwilling to quit that opinion.

But, to return to my subject:  I must confess to you both, that if one reason of your people’s deserting us be, the despair of things growing better in their own country, I have not one syllable to answer; because that would be to hope for what is impossible; and so I have been telling the public these ten years.  For there are three events which must precede any such blessing:  First, a liberty of trade; secondly, a share of preferments in all kinds, to the British natives; and thirdly, a return of those absentees, who take almost one half of the kingdom’s revenues.  As to the first, there is nothing left us but despair; and for the third, it will never happen till the kingdom hath no money to send them; for which, in my own particular, I should not be sorry.

The exaction of landlords hath indeed been a grievance of above twenty years’ standing.  But as to what you object about the severe clauses relating to improvement, the fault lies wholly on the other side:  for the landlords, either by their ignorance, or greediness of making large rent-rolls, have performed this matter so ill, as we see by experience, that there is not one tenant in five hundred who hath made any improvement worth mentioning.  For which I appeal to any man who rides through the kingdom, where little is to be found among the tenants but beggary and desolation; the cabins of the Scotch themselves, in Ulster, being as dirty and miserable as those of the wildest Irish.  Whereas good firm penal clauses for improvement, with a tolerable easy rent, and a reasonable period of time, would, in twenty years, have increased the rents of Ireland at least a third part in the intrinsic value.