GKEAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



359 



prisoned only friends of the land act ; and, 

 in spite of the appeal of the confined Land 

 Leaguers to the tenantry to postpone applica- 

 tions under the act until they were liberated, 

 the latter applied to the land courts by thou- 

 sands. Nevertheless, the act would not work. 

 The landlords would not accept it. All the 

 resources of legal skill were employed to frus- 

 trate its provisions. A large proportion of the 

 decisions were appealed from. The existing 

 law was taken advantage of to oust tenants by 

 wholesale. As evictions multiplied, outrages 

 increased, and, although every district was gar- 

 risoned with soldiers, the jails were choked 

 with Land Leaguers, and the organization, 

 which had served as a scape-goat for the 

 troubles in Ireland, was completely stifled, yet 

 the state of Ireland at the close of the year was 

 much worse than at the commencement. 



The foreign complications of Great Britain, 

 which usually tend to multiply under Conserv- 

 ative administration, and to vanish when the 

 Liberals come into power, all cleared away 

 during the year. The British troops were 

 withdrawn from Afghanistan as soon as the 

 rule of Abdurrahman was established. In 

 South Africa, the war with the Transvaal 

 Boers was continued, until, after three severe 

 British defeats, the independence of the South 

 African republic, subject to the British reg- 

 ulation of the relations with native tribes 

 and foreign nations, was conceded, an act 

 which, though denounced as cowardly by the 

 opponents of the Government, was accounted 

 wise and magnanimous by the whole world 

 outside of England. In the Greek boundary 

 settlement, Gladstone's Philhellenic sympathies 

 betrayed him into meddling and muddling. He 

 sought to secure for Greece a more favorable 

 adjustment than the Berlin protocol provided 

 for, but the silent workings of the German 

 Chancellor's deep-laid plans, and the voice of 

 the European concert, forced him and the mis- 

 led Greeks to accept one which was even less 

 favorable. In Egypt, the Government adhered 

 to the line of policy laid down by the Beacons- 

 field Government, to the extent of continuing 

 the joint control of the finances with France, 

 and, when the arrangement was menaced in 

 the political crisis in Egypt, asserting in dip- 

 lomatic communications the paramount inter- 

 ests of Great Britain in that country. The 

 French commercial treaty which the Govern- 

 ment promised, and which was to be more ad- 

 vantageous to England than the expired treaty 

 of 1860, was not consummated. The French 

 Government were under the influence of a high 

 protectionist faction, who would agree to noth- 

 ing between the exclusion of British iron and 

 cotton fabrics from France, and the abolition 

 of the English wine and silk duties. Negotia- 

 tions were broken off and begun again repeat- 

 edly, without obtaining any proposals not in- 

 volving sacrifices either of British commerce or 

 of British revenue. 



The balance of parties remained materially 



the same as before, though Conservative suc- 

 cesses in some of the by-elections indicated an 

 ebb in the popular enthusiasm for the Govern- 

 ment. The death of the Earl of Beaconsfield 

 (see DISRAELI, BENJAMIN) bereft the Conserva- 

 tive party of a leader who had not only been 

 the strategic head of the party organization so 

 long, and by so indisputable a title, that no 

 successor was found ready to take the direction, 

 but of the brain which supplied its ideas. It 

 was agreed that the leadership should devolve 

 jointly upon the Marquis of Salisbury, who 

 should succeed Lord Beaconsfield in guiding 

 the Opposition majority in the House of Peers, 

 and upon Sir Stafford Northcote, who should 

 lead the minority in the Commons. The latter, 

 with industry and prudence, acquitted himself 

 fairly well, while Lord Salisbury somewhat 

 lost prestige through the rash impetuosity of 

 his utterances. A want of unity of purpose 

 and of discipline was observable in the Con- 

 servative ranks, due not to dissensions among 

 the leaders, but to the loss of their great leader. 

 On moving an address to the crown for the 

 erection of a monument to Lord Beaconsfield, 

 May 9th, as " one who has sustained a great 

 historic part, and done great deeds written on 

 the page of parliamentary and national his- 

 tory," paying a tribute to his persistency of 

 purpose, his power of self-government, his 

 great parliamentary courage, his generous fidel- 

 ity to his race, and kindness to struggling au- 

 thors, and expressing the conviction that, in 

 all the judgments delivered by Disraeli upon 

 himself, his late antagonist was never actu- 

 ated by sentiments of personal antipathy. The 

 Prime Minister kept his parliamentary major- 

 ity perfectly under control. Besides the de- 

 fection of some representatives of the Whig 

 aristocracy, such as the Duke of Argyll and 

 the Marquis of Lansdowne, on account of his 

 Irish policy, he lost none of his supporters. 

 The division which was anticipated on account 

 of the supposed radical leanings of the Premier 

 had not occurred. In putting forward men 

 and announcing measures which were formerly 

 considered extreme, he providently took ac- 

 count of the shifting downward of the center 

 of political power. New party lines are likely 

 to be formed when the reforms he proposes in 

 the laws of the transmission of real property 

 are brought forward ; but it is likely also that 

 he will have the country with him in an Eng- 

 lish land reform. 



The session of 1881 was a memorable one in 

 the history of the British Parliament. Almost 

 the entire session was consumed in the discus- 

 sion of a single measure, which was finally 

 passed in a shape wholly inadequate to afford 

 the public relief demanded, although Parlia- 

 ment was called together a month before the 

 usual date, and its sittings were continued long 

 beyond the time of adjournment which usage 

 has fixed. The vicissitudes of the Irish Land 

 Bill revealed the defects of the British Consti- 

 tution, which has long been held up to the 



