ness. The Chamber which had resounded with the eloquence of Flood
and Grattan passed over to the money-changers, and ever since the clink
of coin has taken the place of the silver voices of the Irish
orators.[68]

AFTER THE UNION

The events of 1800 left Ireland, for the moment, prostrate under the
heel of Great Britain. The last remnants of self-government disappeared
with the absorption of the two exchequers in 1817. Although Ireland
still retained a separate administration, that administration was not
under the control of any self-governing authority. Out of the Dragon's
teeth of the Union rose the sinister army of a new bureaucracy,
recruited almost entirely by the enemies of Ireland, and for the most
part even working with its guns trained against the hopes and
aspirations of the Irish race.

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.

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