In reality it was the last straw after decades of English landowners pushing a rapidly increasing local population further and further into the weeds and denying access to traditional lands and their resources.
"The Irish Question" had been debated at length and from afar in the British houses of Parliment for years prior, and there were a number of small famines before the big crop failures that saw millions displaced.
It's another in a common pattern of invaders colonising a country resulting in dire outcomes for those already there.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-comi...