very many politicians and thinkers at the time fully realized,
that the old law as to tithes was a cruel injustice; but no change
was made until the opposition to the payment of tithes amounted to
something like civil war, involving a series of murders and outrages.
Then the fatal precedent was set of a successful and violent revolt
against contracts and debts. In 1838 an Act was passed commuting
the tithes into a rent-charge payable not by the occupiers but the
landlords. Some modern writers have argued that the change was merely
a matter of form, as the landlords increased the rents in proportion;
and it seems such a natural thing to have happened that earlier
writers may well be excused for assuming that it actually occurred.
But there is no excuse for repeating the charge now; for in
consequence of recent legislation it has been necessary for the Land
Courts to investigate the history of rents from a period commencing
before 1838; and the result of their examination has elicited the
strange fact that in thousands of cases the rent remained exactly the
same that it had been before the Tithe Commutation Act was passed.

But ere long economic causes were at work which tended to check the
prosperity of Ireland. It was soon found that the proportion which by
the Act of Union Ireland was to contribute to the Imperial Government
was too large for the country to bear. The funded debt of Ireland
which amounted to L28,000,000 in 1800 rose by 1817 to L130,000,000;
in that year the whole liability was taken over by the Imperial
Government. Then the fall in prices which naturally resulted from
the peace of 1815 pressed heavily on an agricultural community.
Improvements in machinery and the development of steam power squeezed
out the handlooms of Ulster and the watermills of other parts of the
country. Wages were low; and the people who depended mainly on the
potato were underfed and undernourished. In 1846 and 1847 came the
two terrible blows to Ireland--first, the potato disease; and then the
Repeal of the Corn Laws, which made the profitable growing of wheat
with its accompanying industries, impossible. During the fearful years
of the potato famine, it is only too probable that some of the efforts
for relief were unwisely conducted and that some persons sadly failed
in their duties; no measures or men in the world are ever perfect; and
the difficulties not only of obtaining food but of getting it to the
starving people in days