when there were few railways and no motors
were enormous. But when modern writers shower wholesale abuse over
the landlords of the period, and even hint that they brought about the
famine, it is well to turn to the writings of an ardent Home Ruler,
who was himself an eye-witness, having lived as a boy through the
famine time in one of the districts that suffered most--Mr. A.M.
Sullivan. He says:--

"The conduct of the Irish landlords throughout the famine
period has been variously described, and has been, I believe,
generally condemned. I consider the censure visited on them
too sweeping. I hold it to be in some respects cruelly unjust.
On many of them no blame too heavy could possibly fall.
A large number were permanent absentees; their ranks were
swelled by several who early fled the post of duty at
home--cowardly and selfish deserters of a brave and faithful
people. Of those who remained, some may have grown callous;
it is impossible to contest authentic instances of brutal
heartlessness here and there. But granting all that has to be
entered on the dark debtor side, the overwhelming balance
is the other way. The bulk of the resident Irish landlords
manfully did their best in that dread hour ... No adequate
tribute has ever been paid to the memory of those Irish
landlords--they were men of every party and creed--perished
martyrs to duty in that awful time; who did not fly the
plague-reeking work-houses or fever-tainted court. Their names
would make a goodly roll of honour ... If they did too little
compared with what the landlord class in England would have
done in similar case, it was because little was in their
power. The famine found most of the resident gentry of Ireland
on the brink of ruin. They were heritors of estates heavily
overweighted with the debts of a bygone generation. Broad
lands and lordly mansions were held by them on settlements
and conditions that allowed small scope for the exercise
of individual liberality. To these landlords the failure of
year's rental receipts meant mortgage fore-one and hopeless
ruin. Yet cases might be named by the score in which such men
scorned to avert by pressure on their suffering tenantry the
fate they saw impending over them.... They 'went down with the
ship.'"

Soon after the famine, the Incumbered Estates Act was passed, by which
th