700 Ch. 1 8 • The Dominant Powers in the Age of Liberalism
Protestant landlords were not about to turn over land in Ireland to thepeasants who rented from or worked for them. The fall in the price of agri
cultural commodities made it more difficult for tenant-farmers to meet
their rent payments. In 1879, the Irish Land League, drawing on the rem
nants of the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood (known in Gaelic as the
Fenians) and sworn to win independence, began to pressure Parliament for
land reform.
Gladstone’s determination to make Ireland his ongoing moral crusade
met with opposition within his own Liberal Party, which depended on sup
port from Whig landowners in Ireland to maintain a parliamentary major
ity. Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-1891), a Liberal Irish Protestant, began
to build a small parliamentary coalition in favor of Home Rule, which
meant the establishment of a separate Irish Parliament, but not outright
independence. The Irish Catholic Church supported Home Rule. Parnell’s
program, however, fell short of the demands of the Land League, which
wanted immediate and sweeping land reform, and the revived Irish Repub
lican Brotherhood, which insisted on complete Irish independence.
During 1879-1882, Irish farmers undertook a “land war” of protest. Irish
tenants and laborers began to shun farmers who took over the leases of peas
ants evicted for nonpayment of rent. A certain Captain Boycott, the agent of
a large landowner, was one of the first targets; his name became synonymous
with such a strategy. The British government replied with repression, sus
pending the writ of habeas corpus in Ireland in 1881. However, that same
year, Gladstone also pushed through a bill (by threatening to dissolve Parlia
ment) protecting any Irish tenant from eviction who could pay one year’s
back rent. Parnell was sent to prison for his violently anti-British speeches.
Moreover, opposition to Home Rule mounted in Parliament among MPs
who argued that concessions had encouraged violence. A year later, the
British government ordered Parnell’s release from prison, in the hope that he
would help end disorder in Ireland in exchange for the future passage of
another bill to help Irish tenants.
In 1882, Irish republicans hacked to death two British officials who had
been walking in Phoenix Park in Dublin. The assassinations shocked the
English public. In response to the murders, and to more than thirty other
deaths in Ireland at the hands of Irish republicans, a Coercion Act facili
tated the British government’s repression of the republicans by eliminating
some rights of those arrested. Five of those responsible for the Phoenix Park
assassinations were arrested and hung.
Gladstone (who served as prime minister four different times) proposed
Home Rule in 1886, but the issue divided the Liberal Party and the bill
failed. Joseph Chamberlain (1836-1914) led the defection of the “Liberal
Unionists” over Home Rule. Parnell fell into disgrace three years later when
news broke of his affair with Kitty O’Shea, the wife of a Liberal Irish MP
active in the campaign for Home Rule. Another bill failed in 1893, defeated
in the House of Lords.