Clarendon fired off a series of remarkably candid assessments to Prime Minister Russell. “A great social revolution is now going on in Ireland, the accumulated evils of misgovernment and mismanagement are now coming to a crisis.” As to the cause: “No one could venture to dispute the fact that Ireland has been sacrificed” to British economic policy, he wrote. “No distress would have occurred if the exportation of Irish grain had been prohibited.” And there it was, official acknowledgment of the deep complicity by England in one of the world’s worst human atrocities.
