The last conquest of Ireland was at the very end of the seventeenth.
Sixty years after the event, when Burke revisited Ireland, some important changes had taken place.

The English settlers of the beginning of the century had formed an Irish interest.

They had become Anglo-Irish, just as the colonists still further west had formed a colonial interest and become Anglo-American.

The same conduct on the part of the mother country promoted the growth of these hostile interests in both cases.

The commercial policy pursued by England towards America was identical with that pursued towards Ireland.