The artificial stimulus given to agriculture by the French wars
concealed for some years the greatness of the disaster. The population
of Ireland continued to rise. The Irish landlords, indeed, had for the
moment a strong motive to multiply their tenants, in the existence of
the forty shilling freehold vote granted by the Irish Parliament.
Holdings were sub-divided, and the cultivation of the potato encouraged
an even larger population on a lower level of subsistence. This
prepared the way for the great catastrophe of the Irish famine in
1847. It was that famine which brought out fully, for the first time,
the tremendous calamity inflicted on Ireland by the destruction of her
Parliament.
For it was not that England showed any lack of sympathy in dealing with
the Irish famine. It was indeed that event which finally converted Sir
Robert Peel to the abolition of the Corn Laws, and, more even than the
agitation of Richard Cobden or the speeches of John Bright, contributed
to the final triumph of Free Trade. It was not want of sympathy that
wrecked Ireland then. It was want of understanding. For it was only an
Irish Government, living on the spot, and responsible to the people of
Ireland itself, that could have risen to the great height of that
tremendous emergency.
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