In this manner the “three F.s,” which the Land League demanded, and which were secured by the Act of 1881, were conceded against the will of the Government by sheer force of circumstances.  A rumour which gained currency early in 1880, that the Bessborough Commission would report in their favour, was stigmatised by Mr. Gladstone as incredible, and the adoption of the principle enunciated by the Commissioners resulted in the resignation from the Cabinet of the Duke of Argyll.  The demands which had been made in 1850 by the Tenant League, the first concerted action of North and South since the Union, were repeated.  They included a fair valuation of rent, the right of a tenant to sell his interest at the highest market value, and security from eviction so long as he paid his rent.  Their claims were scouted in 1870, and it was not till eleven years had passed that in 1881 these “three F.s”—­fair rent, free sale, and fixity of tenure, the notion of which had so recently been repudiated by Mr. Gladstone—­were secured by the Land Act of that year, which recognised to the full the dual ownership of Irish land by occupier and landlord.  Under this Act also was created a Court to fix fair rents for judicial periods of fifteen years.

Mr. Gladstone himself had admitted that the Land Act of 1870, which a Conservative member, destined to be a future Chief Secretary—­Mr. James Lowther—­described as “pure Communism,” together with the Church Act of 1869, was the outcome of the Fenian agitation of the sixties, which drew the attention of English statesmen to the Irish question.  In the same way the passing of the Act of 1881, which made a far more active assault upon their prerogatives, secured from a house of landlords through fear that which they denied on grounds of equity.  “In view of the prevailing agitation in Ireland,” said Lord Salisbury of this measure which assailed every Tory principle as to the sacredness of property, “I cannot recommend my followers to vote against the second reading of the Bill.”  What Fenianism had effected in 1870 the Land League secured in 1881.  “I must record my firm opinion,” said Mr. Gladstone ten years later, “that the Land Act of 1881 would not have become the law of the land if it had not been for the agitation with which Irish society was convulsed.”

The Bill was denounced by the Tories as one of the most unquestionable and, indeed, extreme violations of the rights of property in the whole history of English legislation.[4] Lord Salisbury declared that it would not bring peace, and that henceforth the Irish landowner would look upon Parliament and the Imperial Government as their worst enemies.  The Earl of Lytton declared that it was revolutionary, dangerous, and unjust; that it would organise pauperism and paralyse capital; yet for all that he warned their lordships that its rejection might be the signal for an insurrection, of which the whole responsibility would be thrown on the House of Lords.  But perhaps Lord Elcho expressed the feeling which predominated in the Gilded Chamber when he expressed the opinion that the Bill was the product of “Brummagem girondists.”  In the event, as we have seen, Lord Lytton’s warning bore fruit, and the Bill was passed.  “There is scarcely a less dignified entity,” as Disraeli had said in Coningsby thirty years before, “than a patrician in a panic.”