a large section of the
people to a happier country. In this good work the Quakers, who had
been untiring in their efforts to relieve distress during the famine,
took a prominent part; and the Government gave assistance. At the
time no one regarded this as anything but a beneficent course; for the
emigrants found better openings in new and rising countries than
they ever could have had at home, and the reduced population, earning
larger wages, were able to live in greater comfort. One evidence of
this has been that mud cabins, which in 1841 had numbered 491,000
had in 1901 been reduced to 9,000; whilst the best class of houses
increased from 304,000 to 596,000. In 1883 the Roman Catholic bishops
came to the conclusion that matters had gone far enough, and that in
future migration from the poorer to the more favoured districts was
better than emigration from the country; but they did not say anything
against the work that had been done up to that time. Yet a recent
Nationalist writer, wishing to bring every possible charge against the
landlords, has hinted that the total loss of population from 1841 to
1901 was caused by the brutality of the landlords after the famine,
who drove the people out of the country! To show the fallacy of this,
it is sufficient to point out that the powers of the landlords for
good or evil were considerably reduced by the Land Act of 1870, and
after that they were further diminished by each successive Act until
the last shred was taken away by the Act of 1887; yet the population
went down from 5,412,377 in 1871 to 4,453,775 in 1901--the emigration
being larger in proportion from those counties where the National
League was omnipotent than from other parts of Ireland.

In the early thirties O'Connell commenced his famous agitation for the
Repeal of the Union. After he had disappeared from the scene, his work
was taken up by those of his followers who advocated physical force;
and in 1848 an actual rebellion broke out, headed by Smith O'Brien. It
ended in a ridiculous fiasco. The immediate cause of its failure, as
A.M. Sullivan has pointed out, was that the leaders, in imitation of
the movement of half a century before, endeavoured to eliminate the
religious difficulty and to bring about a rising in which Orange
and Green should be united; but their fight for religious tolerance
exposed them to the charge of infidelity; the Roman Catholic priests
(who now possessed immense political influence) den