Existing comment:
DYING OF HUNGER
Starting in 1845, a virulent fungus devastated the potato crop, depriving poor Irish families of their main source of food and subsistence. Ironically, as thousands of Irish starved to death, the British government then ruling Ireland callously allowed tons of grain to be exported from Ireland to pay absentee landlords their rents. "The stranger reaps our harvest, the alien owns our soil," wrote Irish poet Lady Jane Wilde. |