Ireland was owned very securely and very comfortably by a post-revolutionary political elite, by a well-heeled professional class, by big cattle ranchers, and above all by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. The state founded in revolution and civil war had become remarkably stable. But it was a stability sustained by radical instability – to keep it as it was, huge parts of the population had to emigrate, for otherwise the sheer weight of their discontented numbers would drag it down.
