After the Union £15

for the failure to provide adequate relief solely on England,
cannot be maintained. A tradition-ridden peasant economy,
and the highly inflexible and unchanging society insisted
upon by the Church: these \vere decisive elements in a story
of disastrous errors and inability to respond to need when it
arose. The revision, largely the work of Irish historians, did not
touch the brilliant but by now rather unreliable book on the
theme written by an Englishwoman.1342 Against this, Free-
man describes a situation even before the disaster which in
itself could hardly continue and offered determined resistance
to every effort at improvement.1343 Council's important popu-
lation studies heavily underscore such conclusions: early
marriage and a high birth rate produced an 'explosion' which
the country could not handle.1344 The new view, resting on
scholarly investigation, gains a hearing in a collection of essays
tackling the problem from various sides.1345 Connell has also
studied the history of peasant marriage since 1846 and found
a total revolution: now people married late and the population
stagnated.1346 Four essays from his pen throw a soberly lurid
light upon the realities of that society, with its illicit stills,
ether drinkers, heavy illegitimacy before the famine and en-
forced celibacy after.1347 The decline of the population was,
of course, assisted by the great emigration to America^ an

1S4£ Cecil Woodham-Smith, The Gnat Hunger: Ireland, 1845 - /##,

L: Hamilton: 1962. Pp. 510.
1343 x. W. Freeman, Pre-Famine Ireland: a studj in historical geography.

Manchester UP: 1957. Pp. viii, 352. Rev: EHR 74, 54if.

1844 K, H. Connell, "The population of Ireland in the eighteenth
century', EcHR* 16 (10*63-4), 111-24. - Idem, The Population of
Ireland, 1750-1845. O: Clarendon: 1950. Pp. xi, 293.-Idem,
'The colonization of waste land in Ireland, 1780 - 1845*, &HR*3
(1950-1), 44-71,

1845 R. Dudley Edwards and Desmond Williams, cds., The Great
Famine: studies in Irish history, 1845-1852* Dublin: Browne &
Nolan: 1956, Pp. xx, 517. Rev: EHR 73, 3i6ff.

1S4« K. H. Connell, 'Peasant marriage after the great famine', PP
12 (1957), 76-91; 'Peasant marriage in Ireland: the structure
and development since the famine*, EcHR* 14 (1960 - i), 502-23,

1847 K. H. Council* Irish Peasant Society: four historical essays. O: daroa-
don: 1968. Pp. xiii, 167. Rev: Hist 54, 432f.