. Ridpath's history of the world : being an account of the principal events in the career of the human race from the beginnings of civilization to the present time, comprising the development of social instititions and the story of all nations . tsresources. It will surprise the American work-ingnian to know that, in 1845, not a few ofthe Irish peasants, but all of them, lived, notprincipally or in the main, but wholly, exclusitidy,on the potato. Such a thing as meat, or anyother of the more concentrated forms of humanfood, was absolutely unknown in the Irish-mans home. His meal was of the pot
. Ridpath's history of the world : being an account of the principal events in the career of the human race from the beginnings of civilization to the present time, comprising the development of social instititions and the story of all nations . tsresources. It will surprise the American work-ingnian to know that, in 1845, not a few ofthe Irish peasants, but all of them, lived, notprincipally or in the main, but wholly, exclusitidy,on the potato. Such a thing as meat, or anyother of the more concentrated forms of humanfood, was absolutely unknown in the Irish-mans home. His meal was of the potatoonly. All of his meals were so. He hadnothing else. His children grew to manhoodand womanhood, and then to old age, withoutever having once in their lives known the tasteof meat-food. In such a condition, what shallwe say of the terror which the gloomy, wetsummer of 1845, and the spread, ev^er-increas-ing and widening, of the potato-rot must haveinspired among the crowded populations ofthe ill-omened island ? The cry was sonn heard across the first the country squires of England, satis-fied in their abundance, were disposed to denythe story of the famine, to put it off as a scare,as a hobgoblin conjured up by the Opposition. 1 -n^ f-s^P^ i^, 310 UNIVERSAL MODERN WORLD. and the Free Traders; but the specter wouldnot down, and the shadow thereof soon fellacross the obdurate and conservative conscienceof Great Britain. Such was the condition ofaffairs that Johu Bright, speaking of the crisisafterwards, declared that Famixie itself hadjoined the Free-Trade cause. But why the cause of Free Trade ? For thereason that the grains which all the worldstood ready to pour into the harbors of starv-ing Ireland were excluded therefrom by theCorn Laws of Great Britain. Even if notexcluded, the price was so exorbitantly highas to be beyond the reach of the Irish peas-antry. The Corn Law thus stood, like thetree of Tantalus, with its boughs hanginglow and lade
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