the removal of a "fundamental

part of an Act would seem to involve

the rescinding ipso facto of the Act itself; so that, if the Establishment fell, the Union fell with it.

For such reasonings the politicians who were resolved on Disestablishment cared little. Times and circumstances changed, they said, and laws must change with them.

The fate of the Irish Church was one of the questions put before the electors at the General Elections of 1868, and when these resulted in the triumph of the Liberals, headed by Mr. Gladstone, the doom of that Church was sealed.

The Disestablishment of the Irish Church: Arrangements regarding the Property of the Church.-In March, 1869, Gladstone introduced in the Commons his Bill for Disestablishment. Several long debates followed, and great eloquence was displayed on both sides; but the majority of the Members evidently sided with the Government. In the Lords a stouter defence was made, and some of the spiritual peers fought a losing battle with spirit. It was, however, in vain. The Bill passed the Commons by an overwhelming majority, and the Upper House did not dare to oppose the people's will.

The Act received the Royal Assent in July, 1869. An interval for the making of needful arrangements was accorded, and then, on January 1st, 1871, the Irish Reformed Church ceased, as a State Establishment, to exist.

The task of dealing with the vast property of the late Establishment was handed over to a Commission. About half was formed into a fund to be used, as circumstances should determine, for charitable or educational purposes. The bulk of the remainder was to compensate the prelates, incumbents, curates and minor office-holders of the Church who were actually in possession, as well as the lay patrons of livings. A newly-created Board, "The Church Representative Body," dealt with the annuities, the capitalised value of which was passed over to them by the Commission. Arrangements as to the amounts to be paid by each diocese and each parish for the support of its prelate and clergy, and for the upkeep of the churches are also made by this body.

The doctrine and discipline of the Disestablished Church is under the care of a General Synod, consisting of an Upper and Lower House. In the former sit the archbishops and bishops; in the latter, elected representatives of the lower clergy and of the laity.

CHAPTER XIX

LAND LEGISLATION. THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT

SINCE the overthrow of the power of the Tenant Right League the Irish Land Question had lain more or less dormant, though the agrarian conditions were as unsatisfactory, and the discontent excited by them as great as before, and outrages following evictions continued in numbers.

The Land Act of 1870.-Some very bad cases of wholesale clearances, and especially certain incidents connected with the estate of a Mr. Scully, a Tipperary landlord, were commented on in the English Press, and excited a good deal of interest in England. It began to be understood that, in the words of a Tudor statesman, "the same order suiteth not for Ireland as for England," the conditions of the two countries being so different, and to be confessed that laws, the results of which were so deplorable, should be changed.

Gladstone, who considered that by the Disestablishment of the Church he had triumphantly and finally settled one Irish question, was confident of equal success in dealing with another. In 1870, he placed his Land Bill before Parliament, and with little opposition it passed into law. This measure legalised the Ulster Custom; entitled all tenants, if evicted for causes other than non-payment of rent, to receive both compensation for disturbance" and the value of their improvements, empowered them to sell their "interest" with the landlords' consent, and arranged for advances of money, to be given through the Board of Works to those anxious to purchase their holdings.

Owing to a variety of causes the Irish Land Act of 1870, while it cannot be fairly described as an actual failure, by no means achieved the beneficial results confidently expected from it. The intense attachment of the Irish peasant to the soil which he, and perhaps his fathers before him for many generations, had tilled, had not been sufficiently considered. The assigned compensation " for disturbance or improvements could only be obtained when he was actually evicted, and rather than be evicted he strove to pay excessive rents. At first he perhaps succeeded, often by borrowing a part of the money. Then he fell into arrears, and so was evicted finally without compensation. The Land Question was not yet solved.

The Home Rule League: Isaac Butt.-In the account of the Fenian Movement given in Chapter XVII, mention was made of the small success of the efforts of the Constitutional Irish Party to propagate their own principles, as opposed to those of the Republican Brotherhood, by the foundation of a new organisation called "The National League." By the end of the 'sixties, however, the aspect of things in Ireland had considerably changed. The failure of the Fenian risings had discredited the doctrine of Physical Force, and an opportunity appeared to be afforded for inducing the country to return to the methods of agitation within the limits of the law.

By the efforts of a small body of men, a semi-private conference was arranged, which met in Dublin in the May of 1870. The most notable figure was Isaac Butt, and it was by him that the most important resolution, which pledged the meeting to the view that "the true remedy for the evils of Ireland was "the establishment of an Irish Parliament with full control over all domestic affairs" was proposed. Butt was at this time no longer young. Born in 1815 in Donegal, the son of a Protestant rector, he had early attained success at the Bar, and afterwards no little reputation as a politician. At first he was a strong supporter of the Union; it was as a Unionist that he entered Parliament in 1852. His political opinions, however, modified and finally changed. To his skilful defence of Gavan Duffy in 1848 was generally ascribed the failure of the Crown to secure a conviction; later he defended the Fenian prisoners. In some respects he greatly resembled O'Connell; in general appearance even, and in manner he was not dissimilar, but he lacked the versatility, the force, the personal fascination of the Liberator.

The programme of the "Home Rule League" differed considerably from that of O'Connell. Not" Repeal," or a reversal of the Act of Union, was sought, but the creation in Ireland of a subordinate Parliament which, with limitations and under conditions to be afterwards arranged, should deal with affairs affecting Ireland alone, while Imperial matters remained under the control of the Assembly at Westminster. This scheme had the advantage of enlisting the support of many whom a more ambitious project would have alarmed, for it appeared not incompatible with the maintenance of some part of the " Act of Union."

The Home Rule propaganda spread rapidly, and within the next few years its adherents gained several seats in Parliament. The Ballot Act of 1872, by which secret voting was established, robbed landlordism of much of its political power, and it began to be possible for the tenants, without risk to themselves, to give expression at the polling booth to their real wishes and opinions.

-A great

Home Rule Conference: Home Rulers in Parliament. Conference in Dublin was arranged. In November 1873, the Rotunda, which had witnessed the meeting of the Volunteer Conference in November 1783, and seen it end in disaster and defeat, was now, after ninety years, the scene of another assembly, which, in different ways and by different means, sought, like the earlier one, a remedy for the ills of Ireland, but of an Ireland real and national, not merely of the narrow community for whom mainly, if not exclusively, the men of 1783 had interested themselves. The outcome of this conference was a decision that all the forces of the League should be employed to contest every possible constituency at the next General Election, and that the Members returned should band themselves together in Parliament in a solid body, independent of British Parties and intent only on obtaining, from Conservatives or from Liberals, the object for which they strove.

A General Election came sooner than was expected. In January, 1874, Gladstone dissolved Parliament. The Home Rulers' success at the polls exceeded anything for which they had dared to hope. Sixty members pledged to their principles were returned. It is true that, even then, not all those who triumphed under the aegis of the League genuinely wished for the success of the cause for which they were supposed to fight. In the bye-elections of the next few years this was still more the case. Many gentlemen, at heart Unionists, considered "Home Rule " merely a convenient cry by which the votes of the Irish people might be secured.

In England, naturally, the Home Rule cause found few friends; in Ireland even, it had many enemies. Besides the Unionists, it had against it the believers in " Physical Force," the remnants of the '48 men and the Fenians, or the inheritors of their traditions.

The fortunes of the Home Rulers in Parliament were, during the next few years, not such as could afford much encouragement to their friends. Keeping together and voting on important Irish questions as one man, they were yet constantly defeated by a British majority. Session after session the story was the same. Even the most hopeful began to lose heart. Whether at Ballingarry or at Westminster; whether with gunpowder or with words the battle was fought, the result for Ireland was, it seemed, the same. Generation after generation of her sons went out to combat for her cause, but victory was never theirs.

CHAPTER XX

PARNELL AND THE NEW PARLIAMENTARY TACTICS

Charles Stewart Parnell: The Obstruction Policy. In 1875, a new member, recently elected for Co. Meath, and who had contested the seat on Home Rule lines, made his first appearance in the House of Commons. This was Charles Stewart Parnell, then a young man of 29, the greatgrandson of Sir John Parnell, whose opposition to the Legislative Union had cost him his post. Parnell may be considered as having inherited a tradition of Irish public service, but most of his own childhood and youth had been spent in England or abroad. In spite of the physical advantages of a fine figure and a handsome face, he seemed very little fitted for the part of a popular leader anywhere, and least of all in Ire.and. His manners were cold and distant; his style of speaking a measured statement of facts or arguments, in no way appealing to passion or even to imagination, and accompanied by few gestures. Yet, such as he was, he was destined to become, for a time, the most powerful and most trusted Irish political leader since the days of O'Connell.

At first Parnell did not take an active part in the work of Parliament. He employed himself in studying his future battle-field and the forces arrayed both for and against the party to which he belonged. He was not long in perceiving that, if the Irish cause were to make any headway, new tactics must be pursued. To enable an Irish vote, which, even if unanimous, most of necessity be in a minority, to prevail over that of the representatives of the rest of the United Kingdom was evidently impossible. Some means to induce a considerable number of the latter to alter their position in regard to Home Rule must, therefore, be found; that they could, as Butt still hoped, be convinced by the force of mere reason, Parnell did not for a moment believe.

Already (1875) the Member for Cavan, Mr. Joseph Biggar, had inaugurated a method of procedure from which something might be hoped. Unable to prevent the passage of an Irish Coercion Bill, he had aimed at delaying it, and at the same time punishing its authors, by talking about it at enormous length, while the House listened, enraged at the waste of time, but unable to prevent it, for the Honourable Member afforded no opportunity, either by irrelevancy or the use of "unparliamentary language," to those anxious to have him "called to order." This performance he later repeated in regard to other measures.