Clearing the island of the natives, and stocking it with loyal Englishmen. They succeeded only to plant a landowning aristocracy. English Protestant adventurers (merchants, usurers), who obtained from the English crown the confiscated lands, and gentlemen undertakers who were to plant the ceded estates with native English families. James I. Ulster. (Jacobite plantation, 1609-12.) British undertakers, to stock the confiscated, stolen lands with Irish. Not until 1613 are Irish considered English subjects; previously they were looked upon as outlaws and enemies. The Irish Parliament  governed only the Pale. Persecution of Catholics. Elizabeth settled Munster, James I Ulster, but Leinster and Connaught have not yet been purged. Charles I tried to purge Connaught. Cromwell. First national revolt of Ireland, its 2nd Complete Conquest. Partial Re-cal onisation. (1641-60.) Irish Revolution of 1641. August 1649 Cromwell landing Dublin. (Followed by Ireton, Lambert, Fleetwood, Henry Cromwell.) In 1652 the 2nd Complete Conquest of Ireland completed. Division of spoils: the Government itself, the adventurers who had lent 360,000 for the 11 years of war, the officers and soldiers, by the Acts of the English Parliament, 12 August, 1652, and 26 September, l653.  Smite the Amalekites of the Irish Nation hip and thigh, and replant the re-devastated land with new colonies of brand-new Puritan English.-Bloodshed, devastation, depopulation of entire counties, removal of their inhabitants to other regions, sale of many Irish into slavery in the West Indies. By engaging in the conquest of Ireland, Cromwell threw the English Republic out the window. Thence the Irish mistrust of the English people s party. The British were then more numerous in Ireland than at any other time. Never higher than 3/11, never lower than 2/11 of the Irish population. 1684. Charles II begins to favour the Catholic interest of Ireland, and to enlist a Catholic army. The Williamite (imported lords) absentees.  Cry against absentee landlords since 1692. Similar legislation of England against Irish Cattle. Experiment to coerce the mass of the Irish nation into the Anglican religion. Catholics deprived of vote for members of Parliament.  This Penal Code intensified the hold of the Catholic Priesthood upon the Irish people. The poor people fell into habits of indolence. During the palmy days of Protestant ascendancy and Catholic degradation, the Protestants did not encroach upon the Catholics in numbers. English incomers absorbed into the Irish people and Catholicised. The towns founded by the English Irish. No English colony (except Ulster Scotch) but English landowners. The North American Revolution forms the first turning-point in Irish history. 1778. Roman Catholic Relief Bill (passed by the Anglo-Irish Parliament). (Catholics were still excluded from acquiring by purchase, or as tenants, any freeholds  interest.) 1779. Free Trade with Great Britain. Almost all restraints put upon Irish industry swept away. 1782. The Penal Code still further released. The Roman Catholics allowed to acquire freehold property for life, or in fee simple, and-to open schools. 1783. Equal rights of the Anglo-Irish Parliament. Winter 1792-93. After the French Government had annexed Belgium and England resolved upon French war, another portion of the Penal Code was released. Irish could become Colonels in Army, elective franchise for Irish Parliament, etc. Rebellion of 1798. Belfast Republicans (Wolfe Tone, Lord Fitzgerald). Irish peasants not ripe. Anglo-Irish House of Commons voted for the Act of Union passed in 1800. By the Legislature and Customs Union of Britain and Ireland closed the struggle between the Anglo-Irish and the English. The colony itself protested against the illegal Act of Union. From 1783 legislative independence of Ireland, shortly after which duties were imposed on various articles of foreign manufacture, avowedly with the intention of enabling some of her people to employ some of their surplus labour, etc. The natural consequence was that Irish manufactures gradually disappeared as the Act of Union came into effect. etc. The linen industry (Ulster) did not compensate for this. Every time Ireland was about to develop industrially, she was crushed and reconverted into a purely agricultural land. After the latest General Census of 1861: Therefore (1861) approximately 4/5 purely agricultural, and actually perhaps 6/7 if market towns are also counted. Ireland is therefore purely agricultural: Land is life (Justice Blackburne). Land became the great object of pursuit. The people had now before them the choice between the occupation of land, at any rent, or starvation. System of rack-renting. The lord of the land was thus enabled to dictate his own terms, and therefore it has been that we have heard of the payment of 5, 6, 8, and even as much as 10 per acre. Enormous rents, low wages, farms of an enormous extent, let by rapacious and indolent proprietors to monopolising land jobbers, to be relet by intermediate oppressors, for five times their value, among the wretched starvers on potatoes and water. State of popular starvation. Corn Laws in England create a monopoly to a certain extent for the export of Irish corn to England. The average export of grain in the first 3 years following the passage of the Act of Union about 300,000 qrs, 1820 over 1 million qrs, 1834 yearly average of 21/2 million qrs. Amount to pay rent to absentees, and interest to mortgagees (1834), over 30 million dollars (or 7 million pounds sterling). Middlemen accumulated fortunes that they would not invest in the improvement of land, and could not, under the system which prostrated manufactures, invest in machinery, etc. All their accumulations were sent therefore to England for investment. An official document published by the British Government shows that the transfers of British securities from England to Ireland, i.e., the investment of Irish capital in England, in the 13 years following the adoption of free trade in 1821, amounted to as many millions of pounds sterling, and thus was Ireland forced to contribute cheap labour and cheap capital to building up the great works of Britain. Many pigs and export of same. 1831-1841. Accretion of Ireland s population from 7,767,401 to 8,175,238 O'Connell. Repeal Movement. Lichfield-House Contract with Whigs.  Partial famines. Insurrection Acts, Arms Acts, Coercion Acts. Earlier, repeated cases of partial famine. Now famine was general. This new period was ushered in by the potato blight (1846-47), starvation and the consequent exodus. Over one million die, partly from hunger, partly from diseases, etc. (caused by hunger). In nine years, 1847-55, 1,656,044 left the country. The revolution of the old agricultural system was but a natural result of the barren fields. People fled. (Families clubbed together to send away the youngest and most enterprising.) Hence, of course, the pooling of small leaseholds and substitution of pasturage for crop farming. However, soon circumstances arose whereby this became a conscious and deliberate system. Contributing circumstances that made this systematic: Act of Parliament passed (1847-48) that Irish landlords had to support their own paupers. (The English Pauper Law is extended to Ireland.) Hence, the Irish (especially English) landlords, mostly deep in debt, try to get rid of the people and clear their estates. Absentee Proprietors. (English capitalists, insurance societies, etc., thereby multiplied, equally former middlemen, etc., who wanted to run their farms on modern economic lines.) Eviction of farmers partly by friendly agreement terminating tenure. But much more eviction en masse (forcibly by crowbar brigades, beginning with the destruction of roofs), forcible ejection. (Also used as political retribution.) This has continued since 1847 to this day. (Abercorn, Viceroy of Ireland.) African razzias (razzias of the little African kings). (People driven from the land. The starving population of the towns largely increased.) The tenantry are turned out of the cottages by scores at a time.... Land agents direct the operation. The work is done by a large force of police and soldiery. Under the protection of the latter, the crowbar brigade advances to the devoted township, takes possession of the houses. ... The sun that rose on a village sets on a desert. (Galway Paper, 1852.) (Abercorn.[b]) Let us now see how this system affected the land in Ireland, where conditions are quite different from those in England. 1847-1865 per cent: the exact decrease: oats 16.3, flax 47.9, turnips 36.1, potatoes 50. Some years would show a greater decrease, but on the whole it has been gradual since 1847. Though Ireland exported considerable quantities of wheat in the past, it is now said to be good only for cultivating oats (the yield of which per acre also continuously decreases). In fact: 1866 Ireland shipped out only 13,250 qrs of wheat against 48,589 qrs shipped in (that is, almost fourfold). Meanwhile, it shipped out approximately one million qrs of oats (for 1,201,737). Since the exodus, the land has been underfed and overworked, partly from the injudicious consolidation of farms, and partly because, under the corn-acre system,  the farmer in a great measure trusted to his labourers to manure the land for him. Rents and profits (where the farmer is no peasant farmer) may increase, although the produce of the soil decreases. The total produce may diminish, and still greater part of it be converted into surplus produce, falling to the landlord and (great) farmer. And the price of the surplus produce has risen. Hence, sterilisation (gradual) of the land, as in Sicily by the ancient Romans (ditto in Egypt). We shall speak of the livestock, but first about the population. However, emigration alone does not account for the decrease of the population since 1847. This is borne out by the decade of 1851-61. No famine. The population decreased from 6,515,794 to 5,764,543. Absolute decrease: 751,251. Yet emigration in this period claimed over 1,210,000. Hence, there was an accretion of nearly 460,000 during the ten years. Because 751,251 + 460,000 = the number of emigrants = 1,211,251. Emigration claimed almost triple the accretion. The rate of accretion was 0.7 per cent per year, hence considerably lower than the 1.1 per cent of 1831-41. The explanation is very simple. The increase of a population by births must principally depend on the proportion which those between 20 and 35 bear to the rest of the community. Now the proportion of persons between the ages of 20 and 35 in the population of the United Kingdom is about 1:3.98 or 25.06 per cent, while their proportion in the emigration even of the present day is about 1:1.89 or 52.76 per cent. And probably still greater in Ireland. Professor Cliffe Leslie, in the Economist of February 9,1867, says: Partial famines especially in Munster and Connaught. Bankruptcy of shopkeepers is permanent. Market towns, etc., fall to ruin. In 1861 about 3/5 of the area (Ireland s total area: 20,319,924 acres) or 12,000,000 acres was held by 569,844 tenants who worked plots of one up to less than 100 acres, and about 2/5 (8 million acres) by tenants with over 100 and 500 acres and over (31,927 tenants). The process of consolidation in full gear. Ulster. (Cultivation of flax; Scottish Protestant tenants.) The Times, etc., officially congratulates Abercorn as Viceroy on this system. He, too, is one of these devastators. Lord Dufferin: over-population, etc.[c] In sum, it is a question of life and death. Meagher, Hennessy,[d] Irishman. 
On the Irish Question by Karl Marx