. Mediæval and modern history . one, being then Premier for the fourth time,brought in a new Home Rule bill, which in its essential featureswas like his first. There followed a long and bitter debate betweenthe partisans of the measure and its opponents. The bill passedthe Commons, but was rejected by the House of Lords by analmost unanimous vote. The following year, owing to the infirmities of advanced age,Gladstone laid down the burdens of the premiership and retiredfrom public life. He died in 1898 at the age of eighty-eight,and, amidst unusual demonstrations of national grief, was buriedin
. Mediæval and modern history . one, being then Premier for the fourth time,brought in a new Home Rule bill, which in its essential featureswas like his first. There followed a long and bitter debate betweenthe partisans of the measure and its opponents. The bill passedthe Commons, but was rejected by the House of Lords by analmost unanimous vote. The following year, owing to the infirmities of advanced age,Gladstone laid down the burdens of the premiership and retiredfrom public life. He died in 1898 at the age of eighty-eight,and, amidst unusual demonstrations of national grief, was buriedin Westminster Abbey. His name has a sure place among thegreat names in English history. §614] AGRARIAN LEGISLATION 537 614. Agrarian Troubles and Agrarian Legislation. Beforethe relief legislation, of which we shall speak directly, very muchof Irish misery and discontent arose from absentee great part of the soil of Ireland was owned by a few hundredEnglish proprietors, who represented in the main, either as heirs. Fig. 99. William Ewart Gladstone. (A_ Lenbach) or as purchasers, those English and Scotch settlers to whom thelands taken away from the natives were given at the time of theCromwellian and other Protestant settlements of the was often the case that the agents of these absentee landlordsdealt harshly with their tenants and exacted as rent every pennythat could be wrung from their poverty. If a tenant made im-provements upon the land he tilled, and by ditching and subduingit increased its productive power, straightway his rent was raised. 538 ENGLAND AFTER WATERLOO [§ 615 If he failed to pay the higher rent, he was evicted. The records of eviction form a sad chapter in the history of the Irish peasantry. A long series of Irish land laws marks the efforts of the BritishParliament to alleviate the distress of the Irish tenant 1903 an Irish land-purchase bill, more sweeping and liberalthan any preceding measure, was enacted into a law.
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