Critical and Historical Essays — Volume 1Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
History
Critical and Historical Essays — Volume 1
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
English literature -- History and criticism; Great Britain -- History
emigration, such as we now see from Ireland to England, there was, under
his government, a constant and large emigration from England to Ireland.
This tide of population ran almost as strongly as that which now runs
from Massachusetts and Connecticut to the states behind the Ohio. The
native race was driven back before the advancing van of the Anglo-Saxon
population, as the American Indians or the tribes of Southern Africa
are now driven back before the white settlers. Those fearful phaenomena
which have almost invariably attended the planting of civilised colonies
in uncivilised countries, and which had been known to the nations
of Europe only by distant and questionable rumour, were now publicly
exhibited in their sight. The words “extirpation,” “eradication,”
were often in the mouths of the English back-settlers of Leinster and
Munster, cruel words, yet, in their cruelty, containing more mercy than
much softer expressions which have since been sanctioned by universities
and cheered by Parliaments. For it is in truth more merciful to
extirpate a hundred thousand human beings at once and to fill the void
with a well-governed population, than to misgovern millions through
a long succession of generations. We can much more easily pardon
tremendous severities inflicted for a great object, than an endless
series of paltry vexations and oppressions inflicted for no rational
object at all.
Ireland was fast becoming English. Civilisation and wealth were making
rapid progress in almost every part of the island. The effects of
that iron despotism are described to us by a hostile witness in very
remarkable language. “Which is more wonderful,” says Lord Clarendon,
“all this was done and settled within little more than two years, to
that degree of perfection that there were many buildings raised for
beauty as well as use, orderly and regular plantations of trees, and
fences and inclosures raised throughout the kingdom, purchases made
by one from another at very valuable rates, and jointures made upon
marriages, and all other conveyances and settlements executed, as in a
kingdom at peace within itself, and where no doubt could be made of the
validity of titles.”
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