ABSTRACT
The Protestant Ascendancy effectively forfeited its right to lead the Irish nation. The Catholic peers favoured a deal. The bishops were less keen: in 1808 and again in 1810 they turned down Grattan’s schemes to get official recognition and finance in return for a government veto over episcopal appointments. The Emancipation Act of 1829 for the first time brought into existence the ‘Catholic Nation’ as a legal and constitutional force. The Catholics now began to take over the towns and cities, Daniel O’Connell himself becoming Mayor of Dublin. One major beneficiary of the famine was the Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston. The pathetic series of incidents, for which Palmerston was fiercely criticised in the Canadian press, was merely one episode in a national diaspora which rivals that of the Jews. There was no general correlation between the severity of the famine and areas of high emigration, or between poverty and emigration.
