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The potato was not Ireland’s only crop, nor was every Irish person dependent on it in the same way. Grain, livestock and dairy produce formed major commercial sectors, while townspeople, stronger farmers and many artisans had more varied diets. Yet for a vast rural population of labourers, cottiers and very small occupiers, potatoes supplied the essential daily food. A small plot, cultivated intensively, could sustain a family when wages were low, land access insecure and cash scarce. The same system left households exceptionally exposed when the crop failed. Potatoes also fed pigs and helped to support the small, interlocking economies of cabins, petty trade, rent payments and seasonal labour.
The parliamentary session opened on 22 January. In the ornate Parliament House at College Green, the lord lieutenant delivered the crown’s message to the Irish Lords and Commons. It did not set out a finished bill. Rather, it called on the two parliaments to consider measures that would make the connection between the kingdoms more secure and consolidate the strength and resources of the empire. Its meaning was unmistakable. The British government of William Pitt and the Dublin Castle administration wanted an incorporating union.
In 1795 the Kingdom of Ireland remained constitutionally separate from Great Britain, with its own parliament in Dublin, but it was governed within the British imperial state and during a European war against revolutionary France. The year was not yet one of general rebellion. Rather, it was a year in which hopes of reform were dramatically raised, then withdrawn; in which a new Catholic college was legally founded; and in which local violence in County Armagh gave institutional form to a durable Protestant association. These developments did not cause every later crisis by themselves, but together they made the political atmosphere markedly more fearful, divided and combustible.
