the Act of Union Ireland was to contribute to the Imperial Government was too large for the country to bear. The funded debt of Ireland which amounted to L28,000,000 in 1800 rose by 1817 to L130,000,000; in that year the whole liability was taken over by the Imperial Government. Then the fall in prices which naturally resulted from the peace of 1815 pressed heavily on an agricultural community. Improvements in machinery and the development of steam power squeezed out the handlooms of Ulster and the watermills of other parts of the country. Wages were low; and the people who depended mainly on the potato were underfed and undernourished. In 1846 and 1847 came the two terrible blows to Ireland--first, the potato disease; and then the Repeal of the Corn Laws, which made the profitable growing of wheat with its accompanying industries, impossible. During the fearful years of the potato famine, it is only too probable that some of the efforts for relief were unwisely conducted and that some persons sadly failed in their duties; no measures or men in the world are ever perfect; and the difficulties not only of obtaining food but of getting it to the starving people in days when there were few railways and no motors were enormous. But when modern writers shower wholesale abuse over the landlords of the period, and even hint that they brought about the famine, it is well to turn to the writings of an ardent Home Ruler, who was himself an eye-witness, having lived as a boy through the famine time in one of the districts that suffered most--Mr. A.M. Sullivan. He says:-- "The conduct of the Irish landlords throughout the famine period has been variously described, and has been, I believe, generally condemned. I consider the censure visited on them too sweeping. I hold it to be in some respects cruelly unjust. On many of them no blame too heavy could possibly fall. A large number were permanent absentees; their ranks were swelled by several who early fled the post of duty at home--cowardly and selfish deserters of a brave and faithful people. Of those who remained, some may have grown callous; it is impossible to contest authentic instances of brutal heartlessness here and there. But granting all that has to be entered on the dark debtor side, the overwhelming balance is the other way. The bulk of the resident Irish landlords manfully did their best in that dread hour ... No adequate tribute has ever been paid to the memory of those Irish landlords--they were men of every party and creed--perished martyrs to duty in that awful time; who did not fly the plague-reeking work-houses or fever-tainted court. Their names would make a goodly roll of honour ... If they did too little compared with what the landlord class in England would have done in similar case, it was because little was in their power. The famine found most of the resident gentry of Ireland on the brink of ruin. They were heritors of estates heavily overweighted with the debts of a bygone generation. Broad lands and lordly mansions were held by them on settlements and conditions that allowed small scope for the exercise