All creatures, great and small, share rights to their habitat- the earth. How has our system of exclusive ownership become entrenched in Land Laws?

The "Law of the Land clause" in the Magna Carta (1297) states:

"No Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land." - XXIX, Archived

"Just Laws" of Colonialism
The Spanish Origin of International Law ...
Spanish Roman Catholic philosopher, theologian, and jurist of Renaissance Spain, Francisco de Vitoria (1483-1546) is remembered as the "Father of International Law" for his theories on Just War and international law.

Reviewed in the American Journal of Sociology, January 1934
The Spanish Origin of International Law - Francisco de Vitoria and His Law of Nations, by Professor James Brown Scott, (1866-1943)

Excerpt:
Admitting that there was a profound transition in European thought about 1500, the learned author of this book takes as his thesis that the discovery of America was an important element in bringing about this transition, that the internationalist and humanistic tendencies of the new age arose in large measure from the results of this discovery, and that Francisco De Vitoria, considering the Spanish conquest in America, was the first to express this new orientation in logical form, thus giving birth to modern international law. To prove this thesis he discusses the social, political, and philosophical consequences of the discovery and use of the Greek classics, gunpowder, printing, the mariner’s compass, and vernacular languages. He then considers the influence of the discovery of America upon the ideas of four typical humanists: Moore, Erasmus, Montaigne, and Bacon… >>>more

Further:
The Lawbook Exchange
Francisco de Vitoria [c.1483-1546] was a founder of international law. Scott holds that Vitoria's doctrines, popularized in his important Reflectiones, De Indis Noviter Inventis and De Jure Belli (the text of these are included in the appendix), are in fact the first works to address the law of nations, which was to become the international law of Christendom and the world at large. Vitoria held that pagans were entitled to freedom and property, declared slavery to be unsound and upheld the rights of Indians. He also questioned the legitimacy of Spain's recent conquest of the New World. This was the source of his thesis that the community of nations transcends Christendom. One of the greatest figures in modern international law, James Brown Scott [1866-1943] was editor-in-chief of the American Journal of International Law and secretary of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The guiding force behind the American Society of International Law, he played a key role in several important diplomatic conferences. His books on international law include Resolutions of the Institute of International Law Dealing with the Law of Nations (1916), The Catholic Conception of International Law (1934) and Law, The State and the International Community (1939).
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The Law of Nations
Emer de Vattel (1714-1767), in The Law Of Nations, (1797 ed.), defines the rights of nations thus:

“That all mankind has an equal right to things that have not yet fallen into the hands of anyone, and those things belong to the person who first takes possession of them. When therefore a nation finds a country uninhabited, and without an owner, it may lawfully take possession of it, and after it has sufficiently made known its will in this respect, it can not be deprived of it by any nation. Thus navigators going on voyages of discovery, and meeting with islands or other lands in a desert state, have taken possession of them in the name of their nations, and this title has been usually respected, provided it was soon followed by a real possession.”

A NOTE ON THE TEXTS
English Editions of The Law of Nations
Vattel’s Law of Nations was translated anonymously into English several times in the eighteenth century.
The first edition of 1760 was based on the French original Droit des gens of 1758.
A Dublin translation of 1787 is remarkably fluent and elegant, but it does not include the substantive notes of the original nor, more importantly, the notes added to the posthumous French edition of 1773 and intended by Vattel for a second edition he did not live to complete.
There is no modern edition of The Law of Nations, but facsimiles of the popular nineteenth-century editions by the London barrister Joseph Chitty have appeared in recent times. These annotated editions (first in 1834) and their reissue with further notes by Edward Ingraham (first in 1852) were based on the 1797 London edition. >>>more
Screen capture:

Excerpt from the Preface

The Law of Nations, though so noble and important a subject, has not hitherto been treated of with all the care it deserves. The greater part of mankind have therefore only a vague, a very incomplete, and often even a false notion of it. The generality of writers, and even celebrated authors, almost exclusively confine the name of the Law of Nations to certain maxims and customs which have been adopted by different nations, and which the mutual consent of the parties has alone rendered obligatory on them. This is confining within very narrow bounds a law so extensive in its own nature, and in which the whole human race are so intimately concerned; it is at the same time a degradation of that law, in consequence of a misconception of its real origin.

There certainly exists a natural law of nations, since the obligations of the law of nature are no less binding on states, on men united in political society, than on individuals. But, to acquire an exact knowledge of that law, it is not sufficient to know what the law of nature prescribes to the individuals of the human race. The application of a rule to various subjects can no otherwise be made than in a manner agreeable to the nature of each subject. Hence it follows that the natural law of nations is a particular science, consisting in a just and rational application of the law of nature to the affairs and conduct of nations or sovereigns. All those treatises, therefore, in which the law of nations is blended and confounded with the ordinary law of nature, are incapable of conveying a distinct idea or a substantial knowledge of the sacred law of nations.

The Romans often confounded the law of nations with the law of nature, giving the name of “the law of nations” (Jus Gentium) to the law of nature, as being generally acknowledged and adopted by all civilised nations. * The definitions given by the emperor Justinian, of the law of nature, the law of nations, and the civil law, are well known. “The law of nature” says he, “is that which nature teaches to all animals”: † thus he defines the natural law in its most extensive sense, not that natural law which is peculiar to man, and which is derived as well from his rational as from his animal nature. “The civil law,” that emperor adds, “is that which each nation has established for herself, and which peculiarly belongs to each state or civil society. And that law, which natural reason has established among all mankind, and which is equally observed by all people, is called the law of nations, as being a law which all nations follow.” ‡ In the succeeding paragraph the emperor seems to approach nearer to the sense we at present give to that term. “The law of nations,” says he, “is common to the whole human race. The exigencies and necessities of mankind have induced all nations to lay down and adopt certain rules of right. For wars have arisen, and produced captivity and servitude, which are contrary to the law of nature; since, by the law of nature, all men were originally born free.” § But, from what he adds— that almost all kinds of contracts, those of buying and selling, of hire, partnership, trust, and an infinite number of others, owe their origin to that law of nations,—it plainly appears to have been Justinian’s idea, that, according to the situations and circumstances in which men were placed, right reason has dictated to them certain maxims of equity, so founded on the nature of things, that they have been universally acknowledged and adopted. Still this is nothing more than the law of nature which is equally applicable to all mankind.

The Romans, however, acknowledged a law whose obligations are reciprocally binding on nations: and to that law they referred the right of embassies. They had also their fecial law, which was nothing more than the law of nations in its particular relation to public treaties, and especially to war. The feciales were the interpreters, the guardians, and, in a manner, the priests of the public faith.*
Source:

Defining International Law
William Edward Hall, M.A. (1880) International Law
Oxford at the Clarendon Press
Excerpt:

“The earth-hunger of colonising nations has not been so readily satisfied; and it would besides be often inconvenient and sometimes fatal to the growth or perilous to the safety of a colony to confine the property of an occupying state with the narrow limits. Hence it has been common, with a view to future effective appropriation, to endeavour to obtain an exclusive right to territory by acts which indicate intention and show momentary possession, but which do not amount to continued enjoyment or control; and it has become the practice in making settlements upon continents or large islands to regard vast tracts of country in which no act of ownership has been done as attendant upon the appropriated land.

In the early days of European exploration it was held, or at least every state maintained with respect to territories discovered by itself, that the discovery of previously unknown land conferred as absolute title to it upon the state by whose agents the discovery was made.But it has now been long settled that the bare fact of discovery is an insufficient ground of proprietary right. It is only so far useful that it gives additional value to acts in themselves doubtful or inadequate. Thus when an unoccupied country is formally annexed an inchoate title is acquired, whether it has or has not been discovered by the state annexing it; but when the formal act of taking possession is not shortly succeeded by further acts of ownership, the claim of a discoverer to exclude other states is looked upon with more respect than that of a mere appropriator, and when discovery has been made by persons competent to act as agents of a state for the purpose of annexation, it will be presumed that they have used there powers, stop that in an indirect manner discovery may be alone enough to set up an inchoate title.
An inchoate title acts as a temporary bar to occupation by another state, but it must eight be converted into a definitive title within reasonable time by planting settlements or military posts, or it must at least be kept alive by repeated local acts showing an intention to continual claim. – William E. Hall, International Law, Oxford University Press, at the Clarendon Press, 1880, Part 2, Chapter 2, pp. 88-89 >>> more

Terra nullius, generally referred to territories considered devoid of civilised society, does not follow Roman concepts of conquest.

Recommended reading:

1. The Acquisition of Legal Title to Terra Nullius, (1938)
By James Simsarian, Political Science Quarterly, 53(1), 111-128.
Excerpt: “In the contest over the north-western territory, in which the United States, England and Russia were involved during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, discovery with symbolic taking of possession was considered insufficient to vest legal title in any of the claimants. In this later period, occupation was regarded as an essential concomitant in the acquisition of terra nullius.”

2. Assembly of First Nations:
Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery, January 2018 (pdf)
“In referring to the “pre-existing” land rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Supreme Court ruled: “The doctrine of terra nullius (that no one owned the land prior to European assertion of sovereignty) never applied in Canada, as confirmed by the Royal Proclamation (1763)”, p. 3

3. The Franciscan Invention of the New World, (2017)
by Julia McClure
(Pre-Modern Global History, The Spanish Empire, The History of Poverty, The transatlantic World, Global Intellectual History)
Google Scan: Chapter 7, Conclusion

4. Terra Nullius - an overview, written anonymously.
Excerpt: In Latin, the term terra nullius means "land belonging to nobody." It does not, however, seem to have been a Roman concept. Not being great discoverers, the Romans had to acquire their empire the old-fashioned way: they fought for it.
Starting in the 17th century, terra nullius denoted a legal concept allowing a European colonial power to take control of "empty" territory that none of the other European colonial powers had claimed.
Of course, most of these "empty" territories were inhabited, so the meaning of terra nullius grew to include territories considered "devoid of civilized society." The most celebrated example is that of Australia, where the concept of terra nullius still features in lawsuits pressed by the Aboriginal peoples. Other examples of lands once considered terra nullius would be Siberia and the Americas. The United States seems to have treated its Western frontier as terra nullius in the rush to fulfill its perceived Manifest Destiny. >>> more

5. The Archaeology of Colonialism in Medieval Ireland:
Shifting Patterns of Domination and Acculturation
by Russell Ó Ríagáin: MPhil Dissertation submitted to the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge August 2010
Abstract excerpt: This project examines Scandinavian and Anglo-Norman colonialism in two Irish case study regions, the south-east and the mid-west, by placing them on a continuum of social development. It analyses their spatial organisation and their impact on the landscape in terms of a model of colonialism based on three sub-phases: expansion, consolidation and domination. >>>more

6. The law of the land, 1987 [3rd ed. 2003] by Henry Reynolds,
"The Law of the Land" reassessed the legal and political arguments traditionally used to justify European settlement of Australia. Henry Reynolds argued compellingly that the British government in fact conceded land rights to the Aborigines early in the nineteenth century. In rejecting the concept of terra nullius in the historic Mabo case of 1992, the High Court of Australia effectively verified Henry Reynolds's conclusions on the issue of native title. Now updated to cover the Mabo judgment, the Wik decision of 1996 and subsequent developments, Reynolds's remarkable and seminal work remains central to the race debate in Australia.

"Race is a social construct, not a scientific fact... there is not even such a thing as a pure species." - A.L. Chavda

1. Theoretical physicist A.L. Chavda has contributed three critical reviews on Aryan Invasion Myths, with specific analysis of the origin of Indo-European (IE) languages and culture, beginning with rebuttals on Tony Joseph's perspective: Journalist Attempts to Revive Aryan Invasion Myth Using Discredited Genetic Research, Indology, 21-03-2019
Excerpt:
Tony Joseph’s new book “Early Indians: The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From” attempts to revive the colonial Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) on the basis of racist, Hinduphobic Harvard geneticist David Reich’s recent research. The review demonstrates how the Russian archaeologist Leo Klejn has thoroughly debunked Reich’s pro-AIT research and how the New York Times has exposed Reich’s dubious, deeply flawed research methodology, alleged unethical practices, and unprecedented preferential treatment by scientific journals, thereby invalidating the basic premise behind the book’s conclusions, effectively consigning it to the trash heap.
. . . In other words, Joseph’s book is a fresh attempt to re-establish the AIT as a robust theory of the origin of Hinduism and the Sanskrit language, despite an immense amount of evidence to the contrary

2.
American scholar Theodore W. Allen, (1919-2005), made a special contribution to the study of racism in his two-volume history,
"The Invention of the White Race: Volume 2
The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America" (Verso: 1994, 1997).
In CH 1, The Anatomy of Racial Oppression, he attributes the origin of racism to the beginnings of British colonialism and that the English ‘enslaved’ both the Irish and their own people while Europeans colonisers were “forbidden by force of custom even to think of industry or commerce,” that European migrants to the Americas were provided with land, material supplies. and African slaves, in return for supervising the labor of 'others'.

3.
American Professor of History George M. Fredrickson, (1934-2008), best known for "White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History" (OUP, 1981), states, on page 15, that while the English justified genocidal treatment of the Irish and the American Indians by classing them as “savages,” this did not involve “a ‘racial’ concept in the modern sense” because it was “not yet associated with pigmentation.”

4.
England's Levellers, Ranters, Diggers, and Quakers:
"Reformation Restoration Colonies" and the American Dream
In A Most Mutinous People (2009), Northern Irish historian Professor Noeleen McIlvenna probed the archives on early American settlement, during her tenure at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to unlock key insights on the impacts of post-English Reformation in America: "These ideas, ...and all those very mutinous people, eventually became accepted as the quintessential American values." 

Excerpt:
In 1663, three years after the Restoration, Charles II carved up his portion of the globe to thank his faithful supporters. He issued a charter for the area from the coast of the Carolinas to the Pacific Ocean to eight well-connected "lords proprietor": … The plan was that the immense acreage would serve as a lucrative and potentially perpetual source of income for the lords of colonization. Quitrents from settlers, profit from commodities such as tobacco, and of course gains from the sale of humans and their labor would flow home to the coffers in London. Four of the proprietors belonged to the Royal Adventurers to Africa, and two others already owned or had investments in Caribbean plantations.
See more excerpts HERE

5.
On the 'tradition' of justifying one's wealth by claiming that the poor are inferior human beings, Henry George wrote, in 1879:

"There is, and always has been, a widespread belief among the more comfortable classes that the poverty and suffering of the masses are due to their lack of industry, frugality, and intelligence. This belief, which at once soothes the sense of responsibility and flatters by its suggestion of superiority, is probably even more prevalent in countries like the United States, where all men are politically equal, and where, owing to the newness of society, the differentiation into classes has been of individuals rather than of families, than it is in older countries, where the lines of separation have been longer, and are more sharply, drawn. It is but natural for those who can trace their own better circumstances to the superior industry and frugality that gave them a start, and the superior intelligence that enabled them to take advantage of every opportunity, to imagine that those who remain poor do so simply from lack of these qualities. . . .

"Be this as it may, it is evident that intelligence, which is or should be the aim of education, until it induces and enables the masses to discover and remove the cause of the unequal distribution of wealth, can operate upon wages only by increasing the effective power of labor. It has the same effect as increased skill or industry. And it can raise the wages of the individual only in so far as it renders him superior to others. When to read and write were rare accomplishments, a clerk commanded high respect and large wages, but now the ability to read and write has become so nearly universal as to give no advantage. Among the Chinese the ability to read and write seems absolutely universal, but wages in China touch the lowest possible point. The diffusion of intelligence, except as it may make men discontented with a state of things which condemns producers to a life of toil while non-producers loll in luxury, cannot tend to raise wages generally, or in any way improve the condition of the lowest class—the “mudsills” of society, as a southern senator once called them—who must rest on the soil, no matter how high the superstructure may be carried. No increase of the effective power of labor can increase general wages, so long as rent swallows up all the gain. This is not merely a deduction from principles. It is the fact, proved by experience. The growth of knowledge and the progress of invention have multiplied the effective power of labor over and over again without increasing wages. In England there are over a million paupers. In the United States almshouses are increasing and wages are decreasing.” – Henry George, 1879, Progress and Poverty, CH 2

Analysts and policymakers may learn a valuable lesson from the history of Ireland

Resource Rent holds the property key.
By Bryan Kavanagh, Land Valuer (Ret.) Australian Tax Office
July 15, 2005, The Age Newspaper, Melbourne, Australia

After his bloody victory in Ireland (1649-52), one of the first things Oliver Cromwell [1599-1658] did was to establish the annual worth of the lands of Ireland. William (later Sir William) Petty won the tender to value the newly conquered land by using cheap labour in the form of some of Cromwell's by then unemployed soldiers.

He trained them in valuation techniques, including how to survey the whole of Ireland, and oversaw the professional completion of the valuation contract within 13 months.

Petty was a larger than life character whom some hold to be the father of modern economics and its first econometrician. At one point he is said to have commented on the extent of the Irish holding that Sir Hierome Sankey, one of Cromwell's more formidable knights, had chosen for himself following the invasion of Ireland. Insulted, the brawny knight challenged the notoriously near-sighted Petty to a duel, offering Petty the choice of weapons and location.

When the almost blind Petty chose broad axes in a darkened cellar, Sir Hierome retreated gracefully after finding reason to reconsider the seriousness of Petty's offence.

Both Cromwell and Petty saw the need to know the annual value of Ireland's natural resources, but the modern neo-classical economist is all but clueless on the quantum of resource rent within the economy, or for that matter to where it disappears.

He is even heard to say that as we no longer exist predominantly in rural communities, land-based revenue systems are no longer appropriate; this, despite the fact that the greater part of land rent is now located within our large cities.

Whereas it was accepted in Petty's day that the annual rent of land was a surplus that came about by the mere existence of community, and its collection and use was the cheapest and most equitable source of revenue, we are now educated to forget.

From 1695, Irish Penal Laws were designed to forcefully suppress Irish culture: study of law or medicine, playing traditional music, and confiscated all property, including land.

LAWS IN IRELAND FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF POPERY
commonly known as the PENAL LAWS
From the consolidation of English power in 1691 until well into the nineteenth century, religion was the gulf which divided the colonial rulers of Ireland from the native majority. This sectarian division resulted from deliberate government policy. It reached into political, economic, and personal life, through a series of statutes known as the Penal Laws. This site contains the texts of these laws. >>>more

Legal Origin of the "Ulster Custom"
By W. F. Bailey, Barrister-at-Law, Legal Assistant Land Commissioner, Tuesday, 30 January, 1894.
Source: – Bailey, William F. 'The Ulster tenant-right custom: its origin, characteristic and position under the Land Acts'.
- Dublin: Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, Vol. X Part. LXXIV, 1893/1894, pp12-22
Download pdf
Excerpt:

1. – Origin of the Ulster Tenant-right Custom
Excerpts from pages 12-15

... It is now, however, generally conceded that the Custom arose in the early part of the 17th century - in the reign of James I. - and was the direct outcome of the plantation of Ulster. The plantation originated in the insurrections of the two great native chieftains of the north, the Earls of Tyrone and Tryconnel. On their flight and attainder five hundred thousand acres of land, in Ulster, were forfeited to the crown. Thereupon King James, on the initiative of Lord Bacon, determined on settling the lands which had thus come into his hands on a system that would secure the crown from future difficulties with the native Irish.
...
From the sitting of the Devon Commission, in 1844, to the passing of the Land Act of 1870, opponents of the legislative recognition of the Custom alleged that it was merely an indulgence on the part of the landlord, and that it would be unjust and confiscatory to legalise it, and even impolite to discuss it.

As everybody knows, Parliament, by the Land Act of 1870, ended the controversy by legalising the custom, and any discussion that has since taken place has mainly been concerned with the interpretation of the governing statutes.
The passage of of the Land Acts of 1881 and 1887 affected the occupiers of land in all parts of Ireland in such a manner as to render the Ulster tenant-farmers less dependent on the recognition and preservation of the peculiar custom which he previously justly regarded as essential to the security of his tenure.

The Land Act of 1881 gave the rights of "free sale" and "fixity of tenure,” which the Ulster Custom, to a certain extent secured, to the agricultural tenants of all Ireland, and added the right to a "fair rent" which the Custom claimed, but had hitherto no satisfactory method of enforcing. It would be a mistake, however, to think that the existing Irish Land Code has obviated the necessity for preserving the Ulster Custom. It still possesses vitality and attracts peculiar privileges, and I think that it will be useful, as well as interesting, to consider the nature and present position of that system of land tenure under which so large a section of the Irish agricultural community still holds. As a generation has almost passed by since the discussions to which I have referred have closed, it will be well to deal shortly with the origin of the Custom as well as its peculiar characteristics. In fact such an inquiry is almost essential when dealing with such a subject, even from a purely legal stand point, as the legislature studiously refrained from attempting to define the Custom when giving it a statutory sanction... p. 12-13

… Some years later (1610), Chichester issued a proclamation requiring every landlord “to covenant to make certain estates to the under tenants, with reservations of certain rents;” and he subsequently recommended that as long as the Plantation landlords “receive their rents from the natives, they should never remove them.” The result of the Lord Deputy’s action was, as we have seen, that in every grant a conditions was inserted binding the landlord under pain of forfeiture to make “certain estates to their tenants at certain rents.” Here we that principle of fixity of tenure.

But, strange as it may appear, it is not improbable that the Ulster Tenant-right custom acquired its ultimate character as a result of the breach of this very condition. p. 14

p. 18
II. – Attributes of the Ulster Tenant-right Custom
… But in all cases it has two essential characteristic, and may be defined as (1) the right of the tenant to security of possession as long as he pays his rent. and (2) the right to sell his good will in the holding should he desiree, or find it necessary to do so. Mr. Hancock, agent of Lord Lagan, defined tenant-right before the Devon Commission as follows:

“Tenant-right I consider to be the claim of the tenant and his heirs to continue in undisturbed possession of the farm, so long as the rent is paid; and in the case of ejectment, or in the event of a change in occupancy, whether at the wish of the landlord or tenant, it is the sum of money which the new occupier must pay to the old one, for the peaceable enjoyment of his holding.”

The “essentials” of the Ulster Custom according to the present Master of the Rolls (in the case of McElroy v. Brooke, 16 Law Report Ireland), are

“the right to sell, to have the incoming tenant, if the be no reasonable objection to him, recognised by the landlord, and to have a sum of money paid for the interest, and the tenancy transferred. I think if any of these ingredients are absent, the essentials of the Ulster Tenant-right Custom are wanting.”

To interpret properly these rights–fixity of tenure and free sale–we must add two qualifications. The landlord should not arbitrarily raise the rent, but he was entitled to a rise should circumstances render it just. So also he was entitled to a veto on the purchaser of the holding should he have a reasonable objection to him. Where the tenant-right was recognised in full force rises of rent were very cautiously made, and the right of the landlord to object to the purchaser was rarely exercised...

Scottish emigration in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
according to T. C. Smout, N. C. Landsman and T. M. Devine, (1994), Scotland's Failed Harvests & Famine led to migration between parishes and emigration to England, Europe, the Americas and particularly Ireland. ...
From 1650 to 1700, approximately 7,000 Scots emigrated to America, 10–20,000 to Europe and England and 60–100,000 to Ireland. 
An estimated 20,000 migrated to Ireland from 1696-1698; these numbers were part of a continuation of the Ulster Plantation.
>>>more

The Presbyterians of Ulster, 1680-1730
By Robert Whan, Irish Historical Monographs, The Boydell Press. Woodbridge, 2013, ISBN: 978-1-84383-872-2
Google Books scan
PDF: Select List of Related Writings
Reviewed by James Kelly, 2014
Excerpt:

By comparison with the 200,000 or so Protestants who worshipped according to the rites and rituals of the Church of Ireland, whose social structure and material culture spanning the latter half of the seventeenth and most of the eighteenth century has been expertly reconstructed by Toby Barnard, (1) the economic, social and cultural world of Presbyterians is less well understood. Animated by the aspiration of emulating Barnard, albeit over a shorter time frame, Robert Whan has cast his evidential net wide and, like his exemplar, scrutinised an impressive volume of manuscript and printed sources in pursuit of telling and revealing detail. He has also adopted a comparable structure, but whereas Barnard commenced his undertaking with the peerage, Whan commences with the ministry. The fact that the nearest equivalent to Whan’s ‘gentry’ is Barnard’s ‘quality’ and that he (Whan) has no equivalent to Barnard’s chapters on ‘office-holders’, ‘agents’, or ‘the middle station’ is a further illustration of the different social structures of the two confessions that combined comprised ‘the Protestant interest’ in Ireland. It is also, by implication, justification (as if such was needed) of Whan’s decision to embark on this project. Presbyterians may have constituted a dissenting minority, but they were almost co-equal numerically with the more socially eminent Anglicans and their demographic ranks expanded impressively during the period covered by this book, aided by the influx of somewhere between 40,000 and 80,000 refugees from famine-torn Scotland in the 1690s. Further, they were ethnically as well as socially and religiously different from the Anglican elite, for though they conceived of themselves as equally entitled to enjoy the fruits of Protestant liberty secured by the ‘Glorious’ Revolution. . .

1) T.C. Barnard, A new anatomy of Ireland: the Irish Protestants, 1649-1770 (London, 2003); idem, Making the grand figure: lives and possessions in Ireland, 1641-1770 (London, 2004).
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Irish Potato Famine; Irish Genocide, The Great Irish Famine.
The 1841 census showed the Irish population at 8,175,124. 
The potato blight reduced potatoes, the main staple, to black mush. While the Irish starved and were evicted from their farmsteads for non-payment of rent, the British were exporting beef and other foods from Ireland.
40 years later, the 1881 census showed the population had fallen by 37% - over 3 million, to 5,174,836. The Irish population continued to fall to 4,228,553 by 1926.

Food Exports from Ireland 1846-47
Remembering the Great Irish Famine – 1845-1852
An Gorta Mór – aka The Great Hunger, Irish Potato Famine, and Irish Genocide. The 1841 census showed the Irish population at 8,175,124.
40 years later, the 1881 census showed the population had fallen by 37% - over 3 million, to 5,174,836. The Irish population continued to fall to 4,228,553 by 1926.

Food Exports from Ireland – 1846-47
According to reports by world-renowned Irish famine expert Professor Christine Kinealy,

"Almost 4000 vessels carried food from Ireland to the ports of Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, and London during 1847, when 400,000 Irish men, women and children died of starvation and related diseases. The food was shipped under military guard from the most famine-stricken parts of Ireland: Ballina, Balyshannon, Bantry, Dingle, Killala, Kilrush, Limerick, Sligo, Tralee, and Westport. A wide variety of commodities left Ireland during 1847, including peas, beans, onions, rabbits, salmon, oysters, herring, lard, honey, tongues, animal skins, rags, shoes, soap, glue, and seed. The most shocking export figures concern butter. Butter was shipped in firkins (a small cask), each one holding nine gallons. In the first nine months of 1847, some 56,557 firkins were exported from Ireland to Bristol, and 34,852 firkins were shipped to Liverpool. That works out to be 822,681 gallons of butter exported to England from Ireland during nine months of the worst year of the famine."
– Christine Kinealy, ‘A Death-Dealing Famine’:
The Great Hunger in Ireland, 1997, University of Chicago Press, pp. 32-36

and,
“While it was evident that the government had to do something to help alleviate the suffering, the particular nature of the actual response, especially following 1846, suggests a more covert agenda and motivation. As the Famine progressed, it became apparent that the government was using its information not merely to help it formulate its relief policies, but also as an opportunity to facilitate various long-desired changes within Ireland. These included population control and the consolidation of property through various means, including emigration”
– Christine Kinealy, The Great Calamity: The Irish Famine 1845-52, Roberts Reinhart, 1995, p. 352
See preview on Google Books

8 ESSAYS
Remembering the Irish Potato Famine, which began in 1845.
Eight articles on revisionism in Irish history, written by Irish-American Law Librarian James Mullin, Chairman, Irish Famine Curriculum Committee, available HERE.

"The British repressed Irish trade, allowed only Englishmen to export products, and made the Irish totally dependent. . . .
The 1695 penal laws made it illegal for the Irish to receive an education, practice a profession, lease land, vote, keep arms, inherit land from a Protestant, educate a child outside Ireland. -- The Irish were impoverished and (that) brought them to subsisting on the potato." – James Mullin, Law Librarian

In 1995, James Mullin began putting together a synopsis on the famine for the New Jersey Holocaust Commission, which was assembling similar guides on the persecutions and mass deaths of Cambodians, Armenians, American Indians and African slaves.

... The heavily footnoted and attributed guide takes Ireland through Neolithic times through the Viking and Norman invasions and into the era of colonial domination, British plantations and the absentee landlord system, laissez-faire economics, the poorhouses, the relief efforts and the anti-relief efforts, and the emigration in what were called coffin ships. >>> more

The New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education approved The Great Irish Famine curriculum, prepared by the Irish Famine Curriculum Committee, James Mullin, Chairman, for use in secondary level schools on September 10th, 1996. The curriculum was updated by the Irish Famine Education Institute in Chicago, IL in 2014.
Download a copy of the curriculum in PDF format here:
The Great Irish Famine Curriculum (pdf)

Irish Famine Education Institute
Excerpt:
The Irish Famine of 1845-1852 (also known as the Great Hunger) was one of the most catastrophic famines in modern history. During these years, starvation and related diseases claimed as many as a million Irish lives, while perhaps 2.5 million Irish immigrated.

The famine deeply impacted the United States. The Irish accounted for more than half of all immigrants to the United States in the 1840s. According to the United States’ 2010 census, more than 34.7 million Americans considered themselves to be of Irish ancestry, making Irish-Americans the country's second-largest ethnic group.

There has been a wide array of recent scholarship on the Irish Famine, much of it focusing on the role that government policies played in the tragedy.

This new scholarship provides an excellent opportunity for educators to teach many critical lessons of that era to students. A rich multitude of sources from the famine - such as newspaper accounts, drawings, letters, poems and government reports - are available for examination and provide students with a compelling picture of life and death during the famine year. >>>more

Across the 1800s, the Irish people's concerns were aligned with the English Chartists' campaign, first, from 1836 to 1842, and, again, with the Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884, in the struggle for the right to vote and hold title to land:

UK Historian Professor Malcolm Chase RIP (1957-2020), (Guardian Obituary). Professor Chase wrote about the significance of The Chartist petition of 1842, (2016) which, among other aims, called for widening political participation and was signed by 3.3 million people. . . . Chartism took its name from The People’s Charter (1838), a manifesto for reform to complete the work of widening political participation that (it was thought) the 1215 Magna Carta had begun. . . Despite social media and new technology, the twenty-first century has yet to surpass Chartism in the organisation, passion and sheer numbers brought to petitioning. >>> more 

See the House of Commons Early Day Motion on Chartism 
and Parliament’s on-line exhibition on Chartism. 

"There is a time when individuals can bear to be rallied for their past follies and absurdities, after they have acquired new habits and a new consciousness. Nations, as well as individuals, gradually lose attachment to their identity, and the present generation is amused, rather than offended, by the ridicule that is thrown upon its ancestors" - Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent, 1895

John Stuart Mill - Principles of Political Economy
with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy,
Book IV, Ch. II, On the General Principles of Taxation:
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) states:

The land of Ireland, the land of every country, belongs to the people of that country.
The individuals called landowners have no right, in morality and justice, to anything but the rent, or compensation for its saleable value. With regard to the land itself, the paramount consideration is, by what mode of appropriation and of cultivation it can be made most useful to the collective body of its inhabitants. To the owners of the rent it may be very convenient that the bulk of the inhabitants, despairing of justice in the country where they and their ancestors have lived and suffered, should seek on another continent that property in land which is denied to them at home.
>>> more

"a major decolonizing project harking back to the Irish Revivals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries."

Field Day Revisited (I): An Interview with Seamus Deane, (pdf)
by Yu-chen Lin, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan, March 2007
Keywords: Field Day, Northern Ireland, Decolonizing Project, Seamus Deane

Abstract
Intended to address the colonial crisis in Northern Ireland, the Field Day Theatre Company was one of the most influential, albeit controversial, cultural forces in Ireland in the 1980’s. The central idea for the company was a touring theatre group pivoting around Brian Friel; publications, for which Seamus Deane was responsible, were also included in its agenda. As such it was greeted by advocates as a major decolonizing project harking back to the Irish Revivals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its detractors, however, saw it as a reactionary entity intent on reactivating the same tired old “Irish Question.” Other than these harsh critiques, Field Day had to deal with internal divisions, which led to Friel’s resignation in 1994 and the termination of theatre productions in 1998. Meanwhile, Seamus Deane persevered with the publication enterprise under the company imprint, and planned to revive Field Day in Dublin. The general consensus, however, is that Field Day no longer exists. In view of this discrepancy, I interviewed Seamus Deane and Declan Kiberd to track the company’s present operation and attempt to negotiate among the diverse interpretations of Field Day. In Part One of this transcription, Seamus Deane provides an insider’s view of the aspirations, operation, and dilemma of Field Day, past and present. By contrast, Declan Kiberd in Part Two reconfigures Field Day as both a regional and an international movement which anticipated the peace process beginning in the mid-1990’s, and also the general ethos of self-confidence in Ireland today...

Of interest:
PhD dissertation: Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc, 2014
The Anglo-Irish Truce:
An analysis of its immediate military impact, 8-11 July 1921