It was more mercantilism than capitalism. The same ism that resulted in the American Revolution in which one set of mercantilists overthrew another set. Capitalism was arising at the time but was not yet ascendant.
Well, I am talking about the enforcement of private property of the landowning class, landlords and middlemen extracting rents for them — quintessential parts of Capitalism. And the Whigs explicitly going for laissez faire and attributing the famine to laziness — are not unlike the Republicans today, though today we have far more safety nets for everybody!