Irish Land and British Politics

The story of the British political system’s reaction to the Irish unrest is told, and an important episode in Mr Gladstone’s career fully revealed. The agrarian reform of 1870 was not only `the beginning of the undoing of the conquest’, it was also a point of departure for British legislation generally. A great deal of evidence is marshalled in the book to support its argument that the Act undermined the conception of property-rights which was central to the self-confidence of the rulers of mid-Victorian Britain. Dr Steele draws on the relatively neglected mass of evidence about the Irish peasantry, their customs and aspirations, collected and printed by British Parliamentary and official investigations during the nineteenth century. He has been able to exploit a wealth of material in the private pipers of Mr Gladstone, his cabinet colleagues and other leading political figures. Selective use has been made of the British and Irish press, to illustrate and emphasize all that was at stake.