Above : Picture Of Gladstone

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.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.

Above : Photo Of John Sadleir

As the new league therefore, scarcely at all diminished the grievances under w h the people suffered, the discontent continued to grow, and soon an outcry arose all over the country against the injustice of the Land over was accompanied by an insistent demand for their alteration. In the Northern Province a custom prevailed by which a tenant acquired what was called an ” interest ” in the land which he cultivated, and could dispose of this when he vacated the farm. The value of this ” Interest ” varied largely, according chiefly to the amount of ” unexhausted improvements ” made by the seller, but even when no improvements had been made, something was paid.