Background
In February 1870 the Land Conference, at a public sitting, passed resolutions condemning "capricious evictions" and demanding
- "permanent fixture of the tenant in the soil"
- eviction only on non-payment of rent
- right of sale of interest by the tenant
- the establishment of local land tribunals and the valuation of rent.
At this point, most Irish tenant farmers outside Ulster had few rights at law. The "Ulster Custom" was itself an informal extra-legal business practise designed to attract busier and richer tenants. Tenant farmers had no right to be given a written lease, and when a rental agreement (usually for 12 months) ended they could be evicted. When evicted they could not claim compensation for any improvements they had made on their farm, which was not the case in Britain or Ulster. If they had a lease they could not sell the remaining term.
Later in 1870 James Godkin's influential book "The Land-War In Ireland A History For The Times" was published, listing the long-standing nature of the tenants' grievances and giving the name to the ensuing dispute.
Read more about this topic: Land War
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)