Two sides of a Coin

Jobs were scarce and badly paid and thousands of poor families lived in hovels in streets a stone's throw from the Georgian showpieces

In the latter half of the 18^th century the Irish Parliament even achieved a de facto independence but this was brought to an end by the shamefully engendered Act of Union with Great Britain in 1800.

Not that the erstwhile independence was of any great benefit to the Roman Catholic majority. The ruling Protestant ascendancy had ensured that their Irish tenants and workers would enjoy few privileges.
Harsh levies placed on Irish exports by Britain from 1699 resulted in many home industries collapsing including the traditional weaving craft shops of the Huguenots. Following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 the Huguenots had arrived in large numbers into Dublin as welcomed refugees.

Living mostly adjacent to St Patrick's Cathedral they suffered great hardship when their businesses were wiped out. The Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Jonathan Swift, laboured to alleviate their miseries while still finding time to write his masterpiece, Gulliver's Travels.

By 1829 an act was passed ensuring religious emancipation for Roman Catholic and minority churches but the English landlord system still kept the native Irish rural population in subservience and poverty.

The lot of the working classes in the cities was not much better either. Jobs were scarce and badly paid and thousands of poor families lived in hovels in streets a stone's throw from the Georgian showpieces.

A great famine in the 1840s devastated the countryside. Over a million died and as many emigrated. Millions more would emigrate over the next century.

Revolution and Independence

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