HOME RULE, the domestic control of local affairs in a province, colony, dependency or integral part of an empire. The term has been employed in recent history most especially with regard to Ireland, which became a depend ency of England ever since Pope Hadrian, as is averred, handed it over to Henry II of England in 1155, on condition that a certain portion of its revenue should flow into the treasury of the Holy See. Since that time Ireland has been more or less subject to English government. The Irish are a high-spirited and proud nation, and the history of their subjugation has been a bloody one. For many years, however, they had their own Parliament and managed their own domestic affairs. 'then came what is called the Union. The Irish Parliament was abolished, and Irish constituencies were ac corded representation at Westminster to the number of 103. This was in 1801. The Irish Parliament which passed the bill for its own destruction was bribed or cajoled into what the majority of Irishmen of to-day consider a fatal and suicidal act. The first Irishman of note to attempt a remedy for Irish grievances was Daniel O'Connell and his aim, the repeal of the Union, was much more drastic than that of his successors in leadership, who only desire self-government in local affairs, leaving the Imperial Parliament with control over other matters. Catholic emancipation had been won largely through his agitation, seconded by the strong and clear-headed statesmanship of Wel lington. In 1834 O'Connell brought forward in the House of Commons his motion for a repeal of the Union. By recent act of Parliament the municipal councils of Ireland had been thrown open to Roman Catholics. O'Connell was elected lord mayor of Dublin, and while his motion for repeal was supported with but 40 votes in Parliament, he carried it by 45 to 15 votes in the municipal chamber at Dublin. This was undoubtedly the earliest step in the movement toward Home Rule, which from that time to the present moment has agitated Ire land. In the town council at Dublin one of
the 15 who had voted against O'Connell's motion for the repeal of the union was a brilliant young lawyer named Isaac Butt. Glad stone's measure passed in 1869 for the dis establishment of the Episcopal Church in Ire land was followed by the formation in Dublin in 1870 of the "Home Government Association of Ireland* (later changed to the Irish Home Rule League), with Isaac Butt as one of its founders. Its aim was the establishment of a subordinate parliament in Dublin responsible to an Irish executive. In 1871 Butt was elected member for Limerick, and with him the Home Rule party in the British Parliament was born. From that time Butt brought forward an annual motion in favor of Home Rule, which attracted little public attention in Great Britain; but so effectively was the question agitated in Ireland that at the election of 1874, 60 Home Rulers were returned from that country. With the return of Charles Stewart Parnell in 1875 a new force took the field. He counseled ob structive courses in Parliament with a view to forcing Irish demands on the government —a course that was distasteful to Butt, who, al though a true Home Ruler, was conservative in his instincts, and abhorred the obstructionist policy of his younger colleague. Butt died in the spring of 1879, and he was succeeded by William Shaw, who was presently ousted in the leadership by Parnell. With his assumption of the leadership came also a readjustment of the forces behind the Home Rule movement. Butt had received his strength to a considerable extent from the prosperous middle class and Protestant sources, and this was largely with drawn after 1880. Although Parnell was him self a Protestant, he succeeded, by uniting the Home Rule movement with the agrarian agita tion with which the name of the Land League is associated, in winning the support of the `physical force" party, which had hitherto stood aloof, and in obtaining the whole-hearted sup port of the tenant-farmers.