“No person knows better than you do that the domination of England is the sole and blighting curse of this country. It is the incubus that sits on our energies, stops the pulsation of the nation’s heart and leaves to Ireland not gay vitality but horrid the convulsions of a troubled dream.” –Daniel O’Connell
In the House of Commons, Daniel O’Connell warns about the dangers of The Great Hunger. ‘It was certain that there was a fearful prospect of a most calamitous season before the people of Ireland. The extent of that calamity had been disputed, and there had been a time when there was a prospect of some portion of it being possibly averted… The calamity was pressing, was imminent—more pressing, more imminent, and more fearful than that House was aware of. In order to understand it, it was right that the House should be made aware of the state of Ireland before the calamity, had impended.’
The level of poverty in Ireland was evidenced by further comments from O’Connell, ‘The last Population Returns of 1841 showed that, out of the whole rural population of Ireland, 46 per cent lived in a single room; the entire human family and the pigs occupied the same apartment together. The next fact was, that of the civil population — that is, of the inhabitants of towns — 36 per cent lived in a single room, and that two or three families sometimes occupied the same room.’
Featured Image | Statue of Daniel O’Connell outside St Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne
