Tenant League

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Tenant League. The Irish Tenant League was formed in 1850 to agitate for tenants' rights, in part to replace the repeal campaign. One objective was to extend the Ulster custom, which gave some protection over rents and evictions. The league offered support to sympathetic parliamentary candidates and organized petitions, but its tenants' rights bills made little progress. The Ulster supporters, who had feared an erosion of their own rights, soon parted company from the catholic south and the revival of agricultural prosperity took the edge off discontent. Gladstone's Land Act of 1870 conceded some of the rights claimed.

J. A. Cannon

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