re:Your paragraph seems to refute the allegations that the English were to blame for the starvation in Ireland.
except if you consider that english law striped the irish of ownship of their traditional farmland, and made them 'serf' and 'tenent workers' to english 'lords', and english law forbade the irish from owning anything more than 10£ in value, and many were barred from gainfull employment, unless they converted to church of england, and so on, and so on...
please Dr Bill, the english have given the world many worderful things, including the language we love. but their history in ireland is rather black... goodness knows, the worst treatment the english dealt out to the 'people of its empire', was the treatment it gave to the irish.
the irish starved because they were poor, and as GBS put, 'not deserving poor' --soup kitchens and other 'reliefs' were denied to catholic irish...(the cathlic irish were deemed unworthy of english charity) i don't think the english of today look back to the behavior of the mid 1800's and claim 'it was our finest hour'.. the irish are bit hot under the collar, but even the english in retrospect think they could have handle the 'situation' (3 to 5 million irish dying of starvation over a 20 year period) better.
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