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  History of Ireland since 1815; Part 2

History of Ireland since 1815; Part 2

With the advent of Peel into power, in 1841, O'Connell was again in active opposition. He had previously advocated the Repeal of the Union of 1800, and he now threw his whole energies into an agitation to secure the independence of Ireland. The rule of a government directly dependent upon an Irish Parliament, instead of the rule of a viceroy and a chief secretary dependent upon a British cabinet and a British Parliament, has been, since that time, the chief demand of the Irish party. O'Connell addressed monster meetings all over Ireland - it is estimated that there were at least a quarter of a million persons present at one held on the Hill of Tara (No disorder ever occurred at any of these meetings, except that on one occasion the retiring crowd trampled down the stall of an old woman who sold ginger-bread. The meetings generally terminated with enthusiastic cheers for the queen). 1 The agitation was assuming formidable imensions - when suddenly Peel struck. Arrangements had been made for O'Connell to address what was designed to be the most gigantic of all meetings. The day before that fixed for the meeting, Peel forbade it by proclamation, after having made elaborate prepara­tions to enforce the prohibition if necessary. O'Connell yielded and countermanded the meeting. Then Peel prosecuted O'Connell for his seditious speeches, and obtained his conviction and imprisonment (1843). Though the judges in the House of Lords subsequently declared the sentence an unjust one, O'Connell's power was broken. He lost touch with the more extreme element, known as the "Young Ireland" party, for having yielded to IV< 1, and died, a broken man, in 1847.

But meanwhile, before O'Connell died, the famine of 1846 had come upon a "starving people". The holdings m Ireland were minutely subdivided, and the means of subsistence were at all times but a bare sufficiency. The failure of the potato left the great mass of the population face to face with starvation. The result on the Corn Laws and on British politics has already been explained. id Ireland itself it had three results. First, a great shrinkage of tin population occurred, due partly to the deaths from starvation, and partly to the emigration to America, which has been constant ever since that time. The population of Ireland, which was eight millions in 1841, was only four millions in 1901. Secondly, the Government passed an Encumbered Estates Act, by which land might be more easily sold, hoping thus to force impoverished landowners to sell their land, and to encourage peasants to buy it. But the consequence was that in many parts of Ireland a new class of landlords arose, who bought the land and then evicted the small tenants, converting their holdings into pasture farm. This policy of "clearances", as it was called, was not entirely confined to new purchasers; but, as many of the old holdings were much too small, and pasture paid much better than arable, thru is some little justification for this action of the landlords.

Thirdly, the famine and the consequent evictions led to fresh outrages in Ireland, to the passing, therefore, of fresh coercion bills, and finally, in 1848 - the year of revolutions - to an armed insurrection under a leader called Smith O'Brien, an insurrection which came to an ignominious end through the defeat of its leaders in a cabbage garden. Eleven years later, in 1859, the extremists started, in order to enforce Irish independence, tin-Fenian Society, a seditious organization, which had for its objects the establishment of an Irish republic (In 1866 one thousand two hundred armed Fenians from the United States invaded Canada, hut were quickly repulsed. A year later the Fenians designed to capture the fort at Chester, hut the plan was discovered. An attempt to release some Fenian prisoners led to a policeman being murdered at Manchester. In connection with this three Fenians were hanged, and were known in Ireland as "the Manchester martyrs" (1867). ).

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