Book excerpt: This pamphlet makes use of the most recent revisionist literature to reassess the view, much propagated by nationalist sources, that Ireland was a land of impoverished peasants oppressed by English laws and absentee English landlords. The land question has always been closely linked to the development of Irish national consciousness, and greatly exercised the minds of English politicians in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The author examines the nature of English understanding of Irish problems, which was often limited or ignorant, and attributes to it much of the unsound and ineffective ligislation passed. The book is concerned less with questions of English party politics than with the situation in Ireland itself and with the nature of the English response to it.