The British threatened the use of force against these gatherings if they did not immediately cease, as these constituted a direct threat to the English pre-eminence in Ireland. Eventually, most of the agitators found themselves imprisoned or transported' to a penal colony for penalties of treason against Britain. This event also soured relations between the two isles.
The potato famine had a profound effect on Irish politics, creating an entire generation of Irish living abroad who had reason to hate the British. Secondly, rebels had a new determination to change the situation for Ireland and her people. However, the British viewed the potato famine as an act of God, and if it where God's will, then He would give the Irish the strength to overcome this famine, "We must give over telling the Irish that it is our business to find food for them. We must tell them, now and forever, that it is their business-. Such remarks surfacing in parliament mid 19th century demonstrated the callous disregard for the well being of the Irish people. This event ruptured the prospect of amicable future relations between Ireland and Britain. .
As British perceptions of the Irish during the 1840's was one of inferiority, they believed that forcing the Irish to fend for themselves in time of dearth appeared a useful and necessary moral lesson for a people with such potential for improvement. Frustration at the apparently unwillingness of the Irish to improve' as a result of the famine led an increasingly large portion of the English public to believe that the Irish were an irredeemably inferior race for whom no amount of tutoring would do any good. The blame for this, it was supposed, rested on the Anglo-Irish and English policy as practised from the twelfth century throughout the eighteenth centuries. These policies, by segregating the two peoples socially, racially and religiously had kept them artificially divided.
