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This chapter examines the contribution of Isaac Butt in the agitation for Irish self-government in 1870. Butt proposed not only the dismantling of the United Kingdom but its federalisation, with England, Scotland, and Ireland having local parliaments subordinate to Westminster. He also envisaged the Irish parliament having a house of lords with veto powers. Though the home rule of 1874 failed, it was a considerable achievement for Butt because it was particularly important in keeping the land question alive. The chapter discusses the split of the home rule party in parliament during the 1877 political campaign, and describes the conflict between Butt and Charles Stewart Parnell.

This chapter discusses fenianism, a form of militant Irish American nationalism after the failed 1848 rebellion in Ireland. The first section of this chapter describes the attempts to combine north and south Ireland for the public end. This development owed everything to an unusual friendship between two rather different and very remarkable men, Charles Gavan Duffy and Dr. James McKnight. The second section looks at the rebirth of the Irish revolutionary tradition. Fenianism, as the new movement came to be called, linked the concerns and passions of patriotic young men in the homeland with the Irish-born of America and of England and Scotland. The third section examines the transition of fenianism from military elitism to popular politics. The fourth section reports on Isaac Butt, and the case for home rule.

This chapter examines ideas of environmental justice in nineteenth-century Ireland through the prism of Isaac Butt. Butt was one of the most prominent champions of agrarian reform from the 1830s to the 1870s. His desire for change was rooted in ideas of humanist justice and political economy: the land question, for Butt, was primarily an issue concerning those excluded from legal right to their holdings. The chapter highlights Butt’s radical rhetoric concerning the land question during the 1860s, and how the failure of the British state to ‘settle’ the question contributed to his move towards Home Rule. By 1870, Butt reasoned that only an Irish parliament could legislate to produce justice on the land. The environment was, in Butt’s estimation, a constitutional issue.

This chapter reminds us of the importance of Irish lawyers in nineteenth- century political and constitutional debates. Utilising the treason-felony and sedition charges that were brought against the young Irelanders in 1848, the essay shows that their legal defences were ‘saturated in political dissent’ and makes the often-overlooked point that the courtroom was a theatre not only for the accused but for those who held the defence and prosecution briefs as well. The impassioned ‘speeches from the dock’ of successive Irish political prisoners—from tone and Emmet through to the young Irelanders and the Fenians—formed a cornerstone of Irish nationalist culture and development during the nineteenth century. As the essay brings to light, however, the lawyers also helped secure their place in the public spotlight through the medium of judicial rhetoric. For men such as Isaac Butt and James Whiteside in 1848, the courtroom provided a forum to express Irish Conservative unease with the workings of British constitution in Ireland.

This chapter recounts the responses of Ireland’s MPs and peers in the British Houses of Parliament between 1853 and 1856; a period when there was no nationalist party that opposed the war. It will be shown that during the conflict Irish MPs and peers were largely indistinguishable from their British colleagues and counterparts. This chapter will show that the holders of Irish seats were largely absent from the ranks of the Conservative rebels and they did not participate in the goading and divisive tactics of Benjamin Disraeli, but also that Irish Liberals were absent from the anti-war and often anti-ministerial section of the Liberal benches. Irish members also responded to a number of distinctly Irish issues, and although they never moulded imperial issues into Irish ones, they did use the perceived valour and actual participation of Irish soldiers and sailors in the war to defend other distinctly Irish interests. It will be seen that the war represents a distinct period in Ireland’s parliamentary relationship with the British Empire, during which Irish members supported its defence and its interests in what they saw as a just and necessary war.