124 THE IRISH AGRARIAN PROBLEM. 



thorough knowledge of the country. As Chan 

 cellor of the Exchequer Ritchie had succeeded 

 the energetic but parsimonious Hicks-Beach. 

 Chamberlain had, as yet unnoticed by the public, 

 begun to transform the commercial attitude of 

 the Unionist party — a circumstance which might 

 easily weaken it, and in the case of new elections 

 render it dependent on the votes of the Irish, 

 who had already come forward as a prop of the 

 Conservative party in the case of the Education 

 Act. The Irish, it is true, had lately formed a 

 new organization for themselves in the United 

 Irish League ; but agrarian burdens were no 

 longer oppressive enough to raise the popular 

 feeling to fever-heat, nor was agitation so 

 dangerous as it had been some years before.^ 



^ In 1901 the House of Lords, through its decision in the 

 Taff Vale case, had made it possible to hold the Trade 

 Unions legally responsible for the acts of their officials. The 

 Irish organizations for agrarian agitation were modelled, in 

 principle, on the Trade Unions, and were defended by the 

 same arguments as those which were used in their time to 

 defend the Unions. There are, however, certain differences 

 between an industrial strike and a strike against rent. The 

 workingman who strikes gives no labour and receives no pay ; 

 the Irish peasant, however, refuses to pay rent for the land 

 which he has already tilled, and regards his eviction for non- 

 payment of rent as an act of the bitterest injustice. Since the 

 decision in the so-called Tallow case, the practice of boycotting 

 has involved serious legal consequences. The defendant was 

 condemned to pay to the plaintiff, whom he had injured by 

 causing him to be boycotted, damages to the extent of ;^5,5oo 

 (March, 1903). 



