rs past, were raised so high, that
the owners can, at present, hardly receive any rent at all. For, it is
the usual practice of an Irish tenant, rather than want land, to offer
more for a farm than he knows he can be ever able to pay, and in that
case he grows desperate, and pays nothing at all. So that a land-tax
upon a racked estate would be a burthen wholly insupportable.

The question will then be, how these national debts can be paid, and how
I can make good the several particulars of my proposal, which I shall
now lay open to the public.

The revenues of their Graces and Lordships the Archbishops and Bishops
of this kingdom (excluding the fines) do amount by a moderate
computation to _36,800l._ _per ann._ I mean the rents which the
bishops receive from their tenants. But the real value of those lands
at a full rent, taking the several sees one with another, is reckoned
to be at least three-fourths more, so that multiplying _36,800l._ by
four, the full rent of all the bishops' lands will amount to
_147,200l._ _per ann._ from which subtracting the present rent
received by their lordships, that is _36,800l._ the profits of the
lands received by the first and second tenants (who both have great
bargains) will rise to the sum of _110,400l._ _per ann._ which lands,
if they were to be sold at twenty-two years' purchase, would raise a
sum of _2,428,800l._ reserving to the Bishops their present rents,
only excluding fines.[171]

Of this sum I propose, that out of the one-half which amounts to
_1,214,400l._ so much be applied as will entirely discharge the debts of
the nation, and the remainder laid up in the treasury, to supply
contingencies, as well as to discharge some of our heavy taxes, until
the kingdom shall be in a better condition.

But whereas the present set of bishops would be great losers by this
scheme for want of their fines, which would be hard treatment to such
religious, loyal and deserving personages, I have therefore set apart
the other half to supply that defect, which it will more than
sufficiently do.

A bishop's lease for the full term, is reckoned to be worth eleven
years' purchase, but if we take the bishops round, I suppose, there may
be four years of each lease elapsed, and many of the bishops being well
stricken in years, I cannot think their lives round to be worth more
than seven years' purchase; so that the purchasers may very well afford
fifteen years' purchase for the reversion, espec