THE STATUTES OF ICOLMKILL. 239 



difficult enterprise ; and, in any case, Maclean of Duart 

 was made responsible for his part-taker of Barra. He 

 also stated that he had destroyed all the vessels he could 

 find in the parts which he visited ; but it needs no great 

 perspicuity to see that this part of his mission, at least, 

 was not carried out with the thoroughness which had been 

 contemplated. 



Never had King James had so favourable an opportunity 

 of carrying out his cherished scheme for bringing the 

 Hebrides under complete subjection to the Crown. He 

 appears to have had a perfect mania for rooting out Celtic 

 subjects, and re-placing them with settlers of Anglo-Saxon 

 descent. In pursuance of this fad, he was at this time 

 actively engaged in expelling the natives of Ulster, and 

 granting their lands to English and Scottish settlers, whose 

 descendants are, at the present day, so clearly differentiated 

 in race, religion, and character, from the Celts of Ireland. 

 What he had failed to do in the Northern Hebrides, he 

 accomplished in Ulster, but the means of accomplishment 

 is to this day a bitter memory in the hearts of the Irish 

 Celts. It is easy to argue that, as the energy and industry 

 of the English and Scottish settlers have made Ulster 

 what it is, so the energy and industry of the Lowland 

 settlers would have transformed the face of the Hebrides. 

 But the ethics which bear upon the extirpation of a people 

 must be judged apart from the ultimate results of the 

 operation, for the morality and success of an enterprise 

 are far from being inter-dependent. The plantations in 

 Ulster were clearly designed by the King to go hand- in - 

 hand with the reduction of the Hebrides to obedience. 

 But whereas the brutality of his former intentions in regard 

 to some of the Scottish islands was now, in a measure, 

 transferred to the North of Ireland, his policy towards the 

 Hebrides underwent an important modification. He is no 

 longer bent on extirpation, but on pacification. In a letter 

 dated 6th February, 1609, ne gives his views at length on 

 the matter. He professes himself unwilling to resort to 

 extermination, or even to transplantation, unless compelled 



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