the English to agree to it."

But although Isaac Butt was a fine intellect and an earnest patriot he
never succeeded in rousing Ireland to any great pitch of enthusiasm
for his policy. It was still sick, and weary, and despondent after the
Fenian failure, and the revolutionary leaders were not prone to
tolerate or countenance what they regarded as a Parliamentary
imposture. A considerable body of the Irish landed class supported the
Butt movement, because they had nothing to fear for their own
interests from it. They were members of his Parliamentary Party, not
to help him on his way, but rather with the object of weakening and
retarding his efforts.

It was at this stage that Parnell arrived. The country was stricken
with famine--the hand of the lord, in the shape of the landlord, was
heavy upon it. After a season of unexampled agricultural prosperity
the lean years had come to the Irish farmer and he was ripe for
agitation and resistance. Butt had the Irish gentry on his side. With
the sure instinct of the born leader Parnell set out to fight them. He
had popular feeling with him. It was no difficult matter to rouse the
democracy of the country against a class at whose doors they laid the
blame for all their woes and troubles and manifold miseries. Butt was
likewise too old for his generation. He was a constitutional statesman
who made noble appeal to the honesty and honour of British statesmen.
Parnell, too, claimed to be a constitutional leader, but of another
type. With the help of men like Michael Davitt and John Devoy he was
able to muster the full strength of the revolutionary forces behind
him and he adopted other methods in Parliament than lackadaisical
appeals to the British sense of right and justice.