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Kicking Gladstone over the Home Rule Bill in a cartoon 1886 (Getty Images) View more images
Hardly any British monarch since Elizabeth was free of the so-called Irish Question. Disraeli defined it during a speech in 1844. He said that Ireland had a starving population, an alien church, and the weakest executive in the world. England, he said, was the cause of misery in Ireland.
England's duty was to change those things by peaceful means that a revolution would effect by force. It was up to the British to care for the famished, let the Irish worship without penalty, invest rather than asset strip and establish fair and efficient government. Gladstone, in the year of the famine, 1845, proclaimed, that his mission was to pacify Ireland.
Others had different ideas. In 1879 the Irish Land League was formed. It became famous for ostracising landowners and their agents. Lord Erne's estate manager was Captain Charles Boycott. The Irish refused to trade with him. He was ostracised. It's from him that we get the term boycotting. Three 19th century Acts improved compensation payments for evicted tenants to eventually give them better tenure agreements and in some cases the right to buy.
It was now that Charles Parnell appeared in Irish politics. He was Irish but looked, acted and sounded an English upper class landowner. He was also an agitator and became the leader of Irish MPs who after the 1886 election held the balance of power at Westminster. The Fenian Society in New York supported Parnell, but there was a conflict of interest. The Fenians, known as the Clan na Gael also wanted to be a force in US politics and believed that the campaigning for Ireland would win Irish American hearts and therefore political prestige. So the Irish Question as Disraeli called it and anti-Empire speeches clearly had double motives in America.
Boycott born in Norfolk and hired as land agent by the 3rd Earl Erne in County Mayo. The Irish Land League told local labourers to go on strike and refuse to harvest the Erne estate. Boycott tried to beat the Land League and so they told the local people they should withdraw their labour and let Erne's potato harvest rot in the ground. When Boycott tried to undermine the campaign, the League launched its 'Boycott'. He couldn't sell any farm produce, stock nor even buy feed. Orangemen from County Cavan went south to save the Erne estate's harvest and soldiers and the Royal Irish Constabulary were sent to protect the Orangemen. The cost was ten times the worth of the harvest. Boycott was forced to leave Ireland.
The Fenians were formed in New York in 1858 and led by James Stephens who had escaped Ireland in 1848 after the failure of the Young Ireland uprising . They financed violence to get Irish independence. Here's the origin of American fundraisers for the IRA.
Benjamen Disrael on The Irish Question
Disraeli said to the House of commons in 1844
"I want to see a public man come forward and say what the Irish Question is. One says it is a physical question, another a spiritual. Now it is the absence of the aristocracy. Now it is the absence of the railways. It is the Pope one day and potatoes the next. A dense population inhabit an island where there is an established church which is not their church, and a territorial aristocracy, the richest of whom live in a distant capital. Thus they have a starving population, an alien church, and in addition the weakest executive in the world."
William Gladstone on Home Rule
Part of Gladstone's speech in the Commons debate on the Home Rule Bill of 1886
"I do not deny that many are against us whom we should have expected to be for us. You have power, you have wealth, you have rank, you have station, you have organization, you have the place of power. What have we? We think we have the people's heart; we believe and we know we have the promise of the harvest of the future. I believe that there is in the breast of many a man who means to vote against us tonight a profound misgiving, approaching even to a deep conviction, that the end will be as we foresee and not as you, that the ebbing tide is with you, and the flowing tide is with us. Ireland stands at your bar, expectant, hopeful, almost suppliant. She asks a blessed oblivion of the past and in that oblivion our interest is even deeper than hers. She asks also a boon for the future, unless we are much mistaken will be a boon to us in respect of honour no less than a boon to her in respect of happiness, prosperity and peace."
