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In Ireland in 1846 there was a potato famine, this combined with the poor grain harvests meant the people would starve. Four million people in Ireland depended on the potato. The great migration to America began (more than 100,000 in 1846 alone). Violence erupted. Peel asked for a Coercion Act, much the same as our Emergency Powers. This coincided with the successful repeal of the Corn Laws, Disraeli and his protectionists sought revenge and voted against the Coercion Bill. Peel lost it by 73 votes and resigned.

Daniel O'Connell

DANIEL O'CONNELL (1775-1847)

• Irish nationalist and known as The Liberator
• A well-known lawyer (he was once offered but declined the Mastership of the Rolls) who campaigned for Roman Catholic rights and was a founder of the Catholic Association (1823)
• He was imprisoned for sedition and although released, spent three months in prison
• Although an agitator, he fought to remain inside the law while many of his supporters wanted harsher methods to achieve rights for the Irish peoples
• He ended his life an unhappy and in many ways, an unfulfilled man

In 1843 Peel's secretary, Drummond, was assassinated because the murderer thought he was the Prime Minister himself.

SIR ROBERT PEEL ON PROTECTIONISM
Protectionists indeed! To close their eyes to the result of every commercial experiment that has been made, to find every one of their predictions falsified, to disregard the state of public opinion, to call the Corn Laws a labourer's question, and yet listen to the appalling facts as to the condition for years past of the labourers of Dorsetshire ...

to be willing to encounter the tremendous risks of two bad harvests and recurrence of such a state of things in Paisley and Stockport as was witnessed in the winter of eighteen hundred and forty one and eighteen hundred and forty two; not to see that the Corn Laws would ...

be swept away with dishonour on the demand of the starving population - this is to be a Protectionist!