PotI•rif nation. This period opened with the lye, in power, the Home Rulers split into Cliques and factions, and the Liberals de• moralized and lukewarm toward the cause of the Irish Nationalists. The Conservatives, believing that Irish discontent had its source in economic eonditions, in poverty and want, passed. under the cry of 'killing Borne Rule by kindness.' a land act which simplified the rent problem. pro vid(al for land purchase. tended to bring a peas ant proprietor class into being, and in general ameliorated economic. conditions. In 1 S9S a Local Government Bill was introduced, and became a law in 1899. which placed county and municipal governments in the hands of the people, with pro visions for an almost universal suffrage. In part Bite to improved conditions. in part tine to these reforms, public agitation had almost ceased, and it seemed as if Talfourian amelioration' was on the point of success, when the Boer War broke out. tinder the impulse of this war, the warring Irish factions came together, accepted John E. Redmond as a common leader, revived their de mand for an Irish Parliament, and in the election of 1900 chose 81 members to the House of Com to press their cause. Believing that the Local Government Act had already proved the capacity of the Irish people for self-government, asserting that the British Parliament had too much to do to do it well, and insisting on the justness of their cause, Redmond and his SO followers intend to block legislation whenever they can and whenever it will benefit their cause, until the British people and Parliament are forced to accede to Ireland's demand for Home Rule.
The literature on Home Rule in Ireland is very extensive, and only a few of the best works can be mentioned: McCarthy, The Case for flame Rule (London. 1887) ; O'Brien. Irish Wrongs and English Remedies (London. 1887) ; Chamberlain, Home Rule and the Irish Question, speeches, 1881-85 (London. 1887) ; Dicey. England's Case Against Home Rule (London, 1887) ; Gladstone and others, Handbook of Home Rule, Being Articles on the Irish Question (London. 1SS7) ; Hurlburt, Ireland Under Coercion (2 vols., Bos ton, 1SSS) ; the London Times, Report of the Proceedings of the Special Committee (4 vols., London, 1890) ; Gladstone. special Aspects of the Irish Question( London, 1892) ; Lloyd, Ireland Under the Land League (London, 189,2) ; and Pollock, "Home Rule and Imperial Sovereignty," published in Oxford Lectures and Other Dis courses (London, LS90). There is also an almost unlimited amount of magazine literature.