The History of England, from the Accession of James II — Volume 5Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
History
The History of England, from the Accession of James II — Volume 5
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
Great Britain -- History -- James II, 1685-1688; Great Britain -- History -- William and Mary, 1689-1702
and is still exercising over every other colony that she has ever
planted. And what reason could be given for making such a distinction?
No colony had owed so much to England. No colony stood in such need of
the support of England. Twice, within the memory of men then living, the
natives had attempted to throw off the alien yoke; twice the intruders
had been in imminent danger of extirpation; twice England had come to
the rescue, and had put down the Celtic population under the feet of
her own progeny. Millions of English money had been expended in the
struggle. English blood had flowed at the Boyne and at Athlone, at
Aghrim and at Limerick. The graves of thousands of English soldiers
had been dug in the pestilential morass of Dundalk. It was owing to the
exertions and sacrifices of the English people that, from the basaltic
pillars of Ulster to the lakes of Kerry, the Saxon settlers were
trampling on the children of the soil. The colony in Ireland was
therefore emphatically a dependency; a dependency, not merely by the
common law of the realm, but by the nature of things. It was absurd to
claim independence for a community which could not cease to be dependent
without ceasing to exist.
Molyneux soon found that he had ventured on a perilous undertaking. A
member of the English House of Commons complained in his place that
a book which attacked the most precious privileges of the supreme
legislature was in circulation. The volume was produced; some passages
were read; and a Committee was appointed to consider the whole subject.
The Committee soon reported that the obnoxious pamphlet was only one
of several symptoms which indicated a spirit such as ought to be
suppressed. The Crown of Ireland had been most improperly described in
public instruments as an imperial Crown. The Irish Lords and Commons had
presumed, not only to reenact an English Act passed expressly for
the purpose of binding them, but to reenact it with alterations. The
alterations were indeed small; but the alteration even of a letter was
tantamount to a declaration of independence. Several addresses were
voted without a division. The King was entreated to discourage all
encroachments of subordinate powers on the supreme authority of the
English legislature, to bring to justice the pamphleteer who had dared
to question that authority, to enforce the Acts which had been passed
for the protection of the woollen manufactures of England, and to direct
the industry and capital of Ireland into the channel of the linen trade,
a trade which might grow and flourish in Leinster and Ulster without
exciting the smallest jealousy at Norwich or at Halifax.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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