a regime of benevolent paternalism to be a full and sufficient
compensation for cruel coercion and crueller neglect. In this paternal
regime it is impossible to include those great measures of land reform
passed in 1870, 1881, and 1887, which revolutionized the agrarian
system, and converted the cottier tenant into a judicial tenant.[42]
Although these measures, which fall into an altogether different
category from the subsequent policy of State-aided Land Purchase,[43]
were inspired by an earnest desire to mitigate frightful social evils,
they cannot be regarded as voluntary. They were extorted, shocking as
the reflection is, by crime and violence, by the spectacle of a whole
social order visibly collapsing, and by the desperate efforts of a
handful of Irishmen, determined at any cost, by whatever means, to save
the bodies and souls of their countrymen. The methods of these men were
destructive. They were constructive only in this, the highest sense of
all, that while battling against concrete economic evils, they sought to
obtain for Ireland the right to control her own affairs and cure her own
economic evils. It is often said that Parnell gave a tremendous impetus
to the Home Rule movement by harnessing it to the land question. True;
but what a strange way of expressing a truth! Anywhere outside Ireland
men would say that self-government was the best road to the reform of a
bad land system.

With the tranquillity which was slowly restored by the alterations in
agrarian tenure and the immense economic relief derived from the
lowering of rents, a change came over the spirit of British
statesmanship. With the exception of the short Liberal Government of
1892-1895, which failed for the second time to carry Home Rule,
Conservatives were responsible for Ireland from 1886 to 1905. They felt
that opposition to Home Rule could be justified only by a strenuous
policy of amelioration in Ireland, and the efforts of three Chief
Secretaries, Mr. Arthur Balfour, Mr. Gerald Balfour, and Mr. George
Wyndham--efforts often made in the teeth of bitter opposition from Irish
Unionists--to carry out this policy, were sincere and earnest. The Act
of 1891, with its grants for light railways, its additional facilities
for Land Purchase, and its establishment of the Congested Districts
Board to deal with the terrible poverty of certain districts in the
west, may be said to mark the beginning of the new era. The Land Act of
1896 was another ste