Land and Politics, 1879– 1903

Abstract

Land was the substance of revolution in late-nineteenth-century Ireland. It was a revolution effected from above and below. From above, governments responded to pressures from the Irish countryside with legislative changes which fundamentally altered the relationship of landlord and tenant. These changes from above further fuelled the demands from below, to which they were responses, and so reshaped the possibilities for further change. To begin with, legislation emphasised the protection of tenants. The Land Acts of 1870 and 1881 effectively established for tenants what they had long demanded by conceding the ‘three Fs’: fair rent, to be assessed by arbitration; fixity of tenure, so long as the rent was paid; freedom for the tenant to sell his right of occupancy at the best market price. These measures were the product of Liberal policy, part of Gladstone’s mission to pacify Ireland, and they were designed to rectify what were seen as the peculiar problems of landlord-tenant relations in Ireland. Devised as a response to economic grievances, however, these changes gave greater legitimacy to claims against the whole institution of landlordism in the Irish context, claims which had cultural and political, rather than economic, foundations.