Land League
an association projected by Charles S. Parnell, which came into being at a meeting held in Dublin, Nov. 18, 1879. Nominally the programme was the "three F's"-fixity of tenure, fair rent, and free sale (of the tenant's interest); but many speakers at Land League meetings, demanded that the soil should belong to the cultivator.
Opposition by direct violence was deprecated, and recourse was had to boycotting. This state of things continued till the end of 1880, when 14 members of the Land League, of whom the most important were Parnell, Dillon, Biggar, T. D. Sullivan, and T. Sexton, were indicted. The trial, which took place early in 1881, was a fiasco, but it drew from LANDOR Justice Fitzgerald the declaration that the Land League was an illegal body.
A Ladies' Land League, under the presidency of Miss Anna Parnell, was then formed. The agitation increased, and the "No Rent" cry became more frequent.
On Oct. 7 Gladstone denounced Parnell, and soon afterward Parnell, Dillon, Sexton, O'Kelly, and the chief officials of the League, were arrested and imprisoned in Kilmainham. They issued a manifesto calling on the Irish tenants to pay no rent during their imprisonment. The government replied by declaring the pressed its branches throughout the country.
Land League an illegal body, and sup-