Above : Picture Of Poverty At The Time

It has already been mentioned that during the earlier part of the nineteenth century a large proportion of the Irish people lived habitually on the verge of destitution. The food of about one-third of the population was almost exclusively potatoes, with which the better-off drank milk.

Above : Maynooth College, Founded In This Period

The population of Ireland at the time of the passing of the Act of Union is estimated as something between 40 and 45 millions. In spite of the wave of relative prosperity which marked the closing decades of the eighteenth century, there was much poverty, both in the urban and in the rural districts. The land laws, in many of their worst features, remained still unreformed, but long leases or freeholds could now be given to Catholics. A freehold of 40s. in annual value conferred the franchise on its possessor, and as Catholics were now (since 1793) voters, astute landlords considered it their interest to increase their own political weight by the multiplication of such tenures.

Above : Napoleonic Wars, Make Excessive FInancial Burden

The financial clause of the Act of Union, which fixed the amount of the contribution of Ireland to the common expenses of the United Kingdom at two parts in seventeen, had been sharply criticised even before the passing of the measure. Persons well competent to judge had declared that the figure had been arrived at by misleading methods of calculation, which had resulted in a very considerable over-estimate of the taxable capacity of Ireland, and the consequent imposition on her of an excessive burden.