Ireland was thinly peopled, but there was so little employment that labour was cheap, and there was plenty of available land. English commercial jealousy was thus excited, and the House of Commons forgot that they were really dealing with the Protestant settlers and showing them how to seek support from other and perhaps hostile nations. The Roman Catholic majority had always done so, and would do it again when opportunity offered. Petty saw that a legislative union was the only real solution of the problem, for without it the colony was starved, while the natives were at the mercy of those who had supplanted them. In the meantime he wrote in 1676: 'It is wonderful that men born in England, who have lands granted to them by the King for service done in Ireland to the Crown of England, when they have occasion to reside or negotiate in England should by their countrymen, kindred, and friends there, be debarred to bring with them out of Ireland food whereupon to live, nor suffered to carry money out of Ireland, nor to bring such commodities as they fetch from America directly home, but round about by England with extreme hazard and loss, and be forced to trade only with strangers and become unacquainted with their own country; especially when England gaineth more than it loseth by a free commerce.' The prohibition of cattle alone had destroyed a carrying trade which employed one hundred English ships, and things became much worse when the bulk of Irish wool was smuggled away in foreign bottoms.[71] [Sidenote: Ireland retaliates on Scotland.]