abuse on the heads of their authors. Especially have the clauses ordering the return from England within a certain time under pain of forfeiture been marked out for blame.[1] It is said that, first, such persons could not have been made acquainted with the provisions ordering their return and, secondly, that it would have been almost impossible for them to return if they had wanted to. Both these objections are true; but on the other hand it is extremely unlikely that any considerable number of the persons named in these clauses would have wanted to return.
As to the Acts in general, barely a generation had passed since clause (1) of the Act of the Long Parliament for the Settlement of Ireland had condemned practically the whole adult male population to lose both life and estate, and since the Act for the Attainder of the Irish Rebels (1657) had attainted all Catholic and many Protestant landowners, excepting of the Catholics only those falling within the classes of comparatively innocent laid down in the first Act. At least eight thousand Catholic and about one hundred and seventy Protestant landowners had lost everything under the Cromwellians; now about two thousand Protestants, and possibly a few Catholics, were to lose their estates unless, within certain specified periods, they could prove their loyalty. Yet Macaulay can assert that "they"—the colonists—"never came up to the atrocious example set by
- ↑ Macaulay actually calls it "a law without a parallel in the history of civilised countries." We must only conclude that he did not consider England under the Commonwealth a "civilised country," or that he had never read the Acts of the Long Parliament dealing with Ireland. He believes that the names in the Act of Attainder were really kept secret.
