Page:Schüller - Jim Connolly and Irish Freedom (1926).djvu/19

 there was a terrible famine, which brought in its wake the deaths of several hundred thousands from hunger and fever. And during this time Ireland continued to export corn for large sums of money. Even today, after the agrarian reform, such periods of famine are still possible, as was proved by the famine in Ireland in the winter of 1924–25, which was particularly rampant among the peasants in the West.

The result of this condition of the peasantry were voiced in many peasant risings and revolts, in which the peasantry supplied the mass of the troops until the time of the development of the industrial proletariat. In the famine years, in 1848, and in the '70's under the leadership of «the "Land League" these peasant risings were particularly widespread.

The year 1848 was also marked as a year of disgraceful weakness and treachery on the part of the petty bourgeoisie and the betrayal of a powerful and specially hopeful revolutionary mass movement. Connolly writes bitterly and with contempt of the leaders of the "Young Ireland" movement, who from fear of the social land demands of the peasantry lost a favorable possibility for revolution and separation from England. Our Irish Girondists sacrificed the Irish peasantry on the altar of private property. With scorn he writes ("Labor in Irish History") about these "revolutionaries" who wanted to carry out the rising in a "respectable" manner:

"English army on one side, provided with guns, bands and banners; Irish army on the other side, also provided with guns, bands and banners, 'serried ranks with glittering steel,' no .mere proletarian insurrection, and no interference with the rights of property … But the crowning absurdity of all was the leadership of William Smith O'Brien. He wandered through the country telling the starving peasantry to get ready, but refusing to allow them to feed themselves at the expense of the landlords who had so long plundered, starved, and evicted them; he would not allow his fol-