on felt starving worse with rumors little few good seat too which The year was 1879; the country, Ireland. It was a time of great poverty and unrest. Crops had been bad for several years; the people were hungry; indeed, many children were 1 to death. Britain ruled the land then, and London, the 2 of government, was a long way off. The lawmakers in parliament heard 3 and complaints, but dismissed them impatiently. The Irish, they 4 , were unruly, troublesome, and complaining a lot. So parliament did 5 to help, and a great deal to make matters 6 . For example, Parliament had passed Land Laws to protect the big landowners, 7 required the tenant farmers to pay rents promptly or be thrown off the land. This was cruelly hard 8 the Irish farmers. Most of them rented land. They were 9 poor to buy their own. If the crops were 10 , the farmers could pay and have a little left over for themselves. If the crops were bad, they faced starvation. Nom, under the Land Laws, they couldn’t even hope for a better crop next year.