The Irish Question

For many weary years Home Rule or "The Irish Question" had confused the British Parliament. The Roman Catholic Irish despised the Union of 1801 that had abolished the Irish Parliament. It had not saved Ireland from appalling misery, death and depopulation in the famines of the mid-nineteenth century. It had refused Catholics the same voting rights as many Protestants and denied them many basic human dignities. Nonetheless, Irish agitation throughout the nineteenth centu...