Ireland’s ingratitude remained puzzling to the British government, indicating to it an innate turbulence in the Irish. In fact, the so-called rural outrages were based on the reality that, in the name of political economy, throughout the period of the famine, grain and other produce, including livestock, were exported out of Ireland. Any attack on the integrity of these exports was not only a violation of God’s commands against theft but an interference with the free market. Charles Trevelyan and others seem to have been surprised when the sight of British troops guarding the shipping of the harvest along country roads, or by way of the canal system of Ireland, generated rage among the Irish people, and the crime of stealing ‘Trevelyan’s corn’. In the needy years of 1845–6, a compact region of neighbouring counties – Limerick, Clare, Tipperary, Roscommon, Longford and Leitrim – accounted for 60 per cent of the crimes. The shooting of Major Mahon was considered a most extreme form of rural outrage.
