Ireland Since the Union (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1888* Excerpt: ...of a single crop--the potato--but certainly that privation would not have reached the extent of a general famine. A free Irish Parliament could have kept our food at home to feed our people. A free Irish Parliament would have had the command of the Irish revenue; so that if home food-stuffs required to be supplemented by foreign supplies, we should have had abundant means to purchase them. Flippant Unionists have said: " You surely don't pretend that the Union produced Quoted from Captain Larcom's statement, by John Mitchel. History of Ireland, chap. xxiv. the potato disease?" We do not ascribe the failure of that vegetable to the Union. The potato disease was the visitation of Providence. What we do ascribe to the Union is the enormous abstraction of Irish wealth which deprived us of the means of effectually meeting the calamity. The Union replaced, in modern fashion, the policy pursued by Queen Elizabeth's agents in Ireland; the policy of destroying the people by destroying their food. In Elizabeth's time the green corn was cut down and the cattle were driven into strong places by her Majesty's army. In Queen Victoria's time the corn and our other agricultural products are shipped off, and the price paid for them is shipped off also. The mode of action is changed since the days of the Tudors, but the result on our people is tolerably similar. When a candid English statesman, such as Lord Derby, declares that it would pay England well to advance a large sum of money for exporting the Irish people, and when an Irish Orangeman, such as Mr. Johnston, of Ballykillbeg, exclaims that Ireland would be happy if it contained only Protestants, we may fairly infer that one great merit of the Union in the estimation of such statesmen is its powerful extermi...