The monstrous human disaster that followed--the loss of 2,000,000 of
population in twenty years--was the direct result of the destruction of
all the means of prompt salvage and repair which could have been
brought to bear only by a Home Rule Government.
During those calamitous decades another great evil emerged as a result
of the Union. Many bad things have been said against the Irish land
laws, and many of them are justified. But the Irish land laws in their
old working were simply rather an exaggerated form of the very same
laws that have survived in England right up to the present moment. Why
is it that these laws proved intolerable in Ireland, and have yet
survived up to the present moment in England? Simply because, after the
passing of the Act of Union, they were aggravated by the great and
terrible social evil of Absenteeism.
Even those bad laws could be made to work as long as there was a human
relationship between the landlords and their tenants. Up to 1830, at
any rate, there was a strong motive for that relationship. The victory
of Catholic emancipation was a colossal triumph for the genius of
Daniel O'Connell. It removed one of the worst surviving religious
injustices in this kingdom.
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