The friends of the new Irish land law hoped it would be found
satisfactory; but the potato crop again failed in Ireland (1876-1879),
and the country seemed threatened with another great famine (S593).
Thousands who could not get the means to pay even a moderate rent were
now forced to leave their cabins and seek shelter in the bogs, with
the prospect of dying there of starvation.
The wrected condition of the people led an number of influential
Irishmen to for a Land League (1879). This organization sought to
abolish the entire landlord system in Ireland and to secure
legislation which should eventually give the Irish peasantry
possession of the soil they cultivated.
In time the League grew to have a membership of several hundred
thousand persons, extending over the greater part of Ireland. Finding
it difficult to get parliamentary help for their grievances, the
League resolved to try a different kind of tactics. Its members
refused to work for, buy from, sell to, or have any intercourse with
landlords, or their agents, who extorted exhorbitant rent, ejected
tenants unable to pay, or took possession of land from which tenants
had been unjustly driven. This process of social excommunication was
first tried on an English agent, or overseer, named Boycott, and soon
became famous under the name of "boycotting."
As the struggle went on, many of the suffering poor became desperate.
Farm buildings belonging to landlords and their agents were burned,
many of their cattle were horribly mutilated, and a number of the
agents shot. At the same time the cry rose of "No Rent, Death to the
Landlords!" Hundreds of Irish tenants now refused to pay anything for
the use of the land they cultivated, and attacked those who did.
Eventually the lawlessness of the country compelled the Government to
take severe measures. It suppressed the Land League (1881), which was
believed to be responsible for the refusal to pay rent, and for the
accompanying outrages; but it could not extinguish the feeling which
gave rise to that organization, and the angry discontent soon burst
forth more violently than ever.