ABSTRACT
The political fallout from the Irish famine, however, came to fuel the Irish independence movement and soured Anglo-Irish relations for over a century. The Irish have been disabused of one of the strangest delusions which ever paralysed the energies of a naturally intelligent and energetic people. The uniting power of a common misfortune has also been felt throughout the British Empire. The most wholesome symptom of all, however, is that a general impression prevails, that the plan of depending on external assistance has been tried to the utmost and has failed; that people have grown worse under it instead of better; and that the experiment ought now to be made of what independent exertion will do. Innumerable had been the specifics which the wit of man had devised; but even the idea of the sharp but effectual, remedy by which the cure is likely to be effected had never occurred to any one.
