In 1870, the same year that the Government undertook to provide for the education of the masses (S602), Mr. Gladstone, who was still Prime Minister and head of the Liberal Party (S601), brought in a bill for the relief of small Irish farmers, those who had to support themselves and their families from the little they could get from a few hired acres. Since the union (S562) much of the general policy of England toward Ireland had been described as "a quick alternation of kicks and kindness." Mr. Gladstone did not hesitate to say that he believed the misery of the island sprang mainly from its misgovernment. He thought that the small farmer needed immediate help and that it was the duty of the Liberal Party to grant it.
The circumstances under which the land was held in Ireland were peculiar. A very large part of it was owned by Englishmen whose ancestors obtained it through the wholesale confiscations of James I, Cromwell, and later rulers (SS423, 453). Very few of these English landlords cared to reside in the country or to do anything for its improvement. Their agents or overseers generally forced the farm tenants to pay the largest amount of rent that could be wrung from them, and they could dispossess a tenant of his land whenever they saw fit, without giving a reason for the act. If, by his labor, the tenant made the land more fertile, he seldom reaped any additional profit from his industry, for the rent was usually increased, and swallowed up all that he raised. Such a system of extortion was destructive to those who tilled the soil, and if it brought in more money for the landlord, it produced nothing but misery and discontent for his tenant.
Mr. Gladstone's new law endeavored to remedy these evils by the following provisions:
1. In case a landlord ejected a rent-paying tenant, he was to pay him
damages, and allow him a fair sum for whatever improvement he had
made.
2. It secured a ready means of arbitration between landlord and
tenant, and if a tenant failed to pay an exorbitant rate he could
not be hastily or unjustly driven from his farm.
3. It made it possible for the tenant to borrow a certain sum from the
government for the purpose of purchasing the land in case the owner
was willing to sell.
604. Distress in Ireland; the Land League (1879).
The friends of the new Irish land law hoped it would be found satisfactory; but the potato crop again failed in Ireland (1876-1879), and the country seemed threatened with another great famine (S593). Thousands who could not get the means to pay even a moderate rent were now forced to leave their cabins and seek shelter in the bogs, with the prospect of dying there of starvation.
The wrected condition of the people led an number of influential Irishmen to for a Land League (1879). This organization sought to abolish the entire landlord system in Ireland and to secure legislation which should eventually give the Irish peasantry possession of the soil they cultivated.
In time the League grew to have a membership of several hundred thousand persons, extending over the greater part of Ireland. Finding it difficult to get parliamentary help for their grievances, the League resolved to try a different kind of tactics. Its members refused to work for, buy from, sell to, or have any intercourse with landlords, or their agents, who extorted exhorbitant rent, ejected tenants unable to pay, or took possession of land from which tenants had been unjustly driven. This process of social excommunication was first tried on an English agent, or overseer, named Boycott, and soon became famous under the name of "boycotting."
As the struggle went on, many of the suffering poor became desperate. Farm buildings belonging to landlords and their agents were burned, many of their cattle were horribly mutilated, and a number of the agents shot. At the same time the cry rose of "No Rent, Death to the Landlords!" Hundreds of Irish tenants now refused to pay anything for the use of the land they cultivated, and attacked those who did.
Eventually the lawlessness of the country compelled the Government to take severe measures. It suppressed the Land League (1881), which was believed to be responsible for the refusal to pay rent, and for the accompanying outrages; but it could not extinguish the feeling which gave rise to that organization, and the angry discontent soon burst forth more violently than ever.