LAND LEAGUE, an Irish organization founded under the presidency of Charles S. Parnell, but of which the inspirational force was Michael Davitt, which came into being at a meeting held in Dublin, 21 Oct. 1879. The failure of the Irish crops in 1878-79 was fol lowed by distress among the Irish tenant farmers and peasantry; they were unable to meet their obligations, and the numerous evictions which took place were accompanied by outrages. The principal tenets of the as sociation formed to meet this situation were the "three F's"-- fixity of tenure, fair rent and free sale (of the tenant's interest) ; but many speakers at Land League meetings, held in different parts of the country, went so far as to demand that the soil should belong to the cultivator. Opposition by direct violence was deprecated, and recourse was had to boy cotting. (See Boycarr). This state of things continued till the end of 1880, and was greatly aggravated by the rejection by the House of Lords of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill of that year, when 14 members of the Land League, of whom the most important were Parnell, Dillon, Biggar, T. D. Sullivan and T. Sexton, were indicted. The chief counts were "conspiring to prevent payment of rents, to defeat the legal process for the enforcement of payment of rents, and to pre vent the letting of evicted farms." The trial,
which took place early in 1:2. was a fiasco, but it drew from Justice Fitzgerald the declaration that the Land League was an illegal body. The agitation increased, a coer cion act was passed and habeas corpus sus pended, and the "No Rent" cry became more frequent. Gladstone denounced Parnell, and soon afterward Parnell, Dillon. Sexton, O'Kelly and the chief officials of the League were arrested and imprisoned in Kilmainham. They issued a manifesto calling on the Irish tenants to pay no rent during their imprison ment. The government replied by declaring the Land League an illegal body, and sup pressed its branches throughout the country. All that the Land League had contended for was finally conceded when Wyndham's great land purchase scheme of 1903 was passed into law, and the dual ownership which has sub sisted from 1870 was changed into an occupy ing ownership. Consult Flatley,