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 538 General History of Europe pounds yearly were drained away from Ireland to pay absentee landlords, who rarely set foot in that country and took little or no interest in their tenants beyond the collection of their rents. If the tenants did not pay or could not pay, they were speedily evicted from their cottages and lands. 968. The Condition of the Peasantry. Throughout large por- tions of Ireland the peasants were constantly on the verge of starvation. Whenever there was a failure of the potato crop, on which from one third to one half the population depended for food, there were scenes of misery in Ireland which defy descrip- tion. This was the case in the " Black Year of Forty-Seven," when the potato crop failed almost entirely and thousands died of starvation in spite of the relief afforded by the government. It was in the midst of this terrible famine that the stream of emigra- tion began to flow toward America. Within half a century four million emigrants left the shores of Ireland for other countries, principally the United States, taking with them their bitter resent- ment against England. 969. Question of the Irish Catholics. When England became Protestant she attempted to convert Ireland, but the Irish re- mained faithful to the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church. The English then set up their own Church in Ireland, drove out the Catholic priests, and substituted for them clergymen of the Church of England. Although the Protestants in Ireland num- bered only one in ten of the population, the Catholics were forced to support the English churchmen by paying tithes from their scanty incomes. W'hen Catholics were admitted to Parliament in 1829 ( 957) they set to work to get rid of the old system, and in 1869, after a long struggle of a generation, the English Church was disestablished in Ireland and the tithes abolished. 970. Irish Land Question. After gaining this important point the Irish members in Parliament, under the leadership of Parnell, forced the Irish land question on the attention of Parliament. From 1 88 1 to 1903 a series of acts was passed securing the Irish peasants a fair rent and advancing them money to buy their holdings, if they wished, on condition that they would pay back