Editing Independent Irish Party (section)

==Formation and early disunity==
The Tenant Right League joined tenant rights associations in largely Presbyterian districts in [[Ulster]] with tenant protection societies (often guided by local Catholic clergy) in the south. It was formed in 1850 at a tenant right convention called in Dublin by [[Charles Gavan Duffy]], editor of the revived [[Young Ireland]]er weekly ''[[The Nation (Irish newspaper)|The Nation]]''; [[James MacKnight (Irish agrarian reformer)|James MacKnight]] editor of the ''Londonderry Sentinel''; [[Frederick Lucas]], founder of the international Catholic weekly, ''[[The Tablet]]''; and [[John Gray (Irish politician)|John Gray]], owner of the leading nationalist paper, the ''[[Freeman's Journal]]''.<ref name=":03">{{Cite web|last=Lyons|first=Dr Jane|date=2013-03-01|title=Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, My Life in Two Hemispheres, Vol. II|url=https://www.from-ireland.net/charles-gavan-duffy-two-hemispheres/|access-date=2021-03-27|website=From-Ireland.net|language=en-US}}</ref><ref name=":5">{{Cite web|last=Irwin|first=Clark H.|date=1890|title=A history of Presbyterianism in Dublin and the south and west of Ireland (page 10 of 24)|url=https://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/ch-clarke-huston-1858-1934-irwin/a-history-of-presbyterianism-in-dublin-and-the-south-and-west-of-ireland-hci/page-10-a-history-of-presbyterianism-in-dublin-and-the-south-and-west-of-ireland-hci.shtml|access-date=2021-04-06|website=www.ebooksread.com}}</ref> Against the background of the distress caused by the [[Great Famine (Ireland)|Great Famine]] and by a fall in agricultural prices, Duffy believed that the demand for tenant rights could serve as the basis for a new all-Ireland movement and for a (potentially [[abstentionist]]) national party.<ref>{{cite thesis|url=https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/48609680.pdf |first=Terence |last=LaRocca |year=1974 |title=The Irish Career of Charles Gavan Duffy 1840–1855 |degree=PhD |publisher=Loyola University Chicago |page=3}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Duffy|first1=Charles Gavan|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XTnv4ryJTNIC&pg=PA15|title=The Creed of "The Nation": A Profession of Confederate Principles|date=1848|publisher=Mason Bookseller|location=Dublin|page=6|access-date=3 September 2020}}</ref>

The Westminster elections of July 1852 returned 48 MPs, including Duffy from [[New Ross]], pledged to the tenant cause. But what Duffy had projected as a "League of North and South" failed to deliver in Ulster. [[William Kirk (MP)|William Kirk]] from the border town of [[Newry]] was province's only tenant-right representative.<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Hoppen|first1=K. Theodore|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JLdnAAAAMAAJ|title=Elections, Politics, and Society in Ireland, 1832–1885|last2=Hoppen|first2=Karl T.|date=1984|publisher=Clarendon Press|isbn=978-0-19-822630-7|pages=267|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Courtney|first=Roger|title=Dissenting Voices: Rediscovering the Irish Progressive Presbyterian Tradition|year=2013|isbn=9781909556065|location=Ulster Historical Foundation|pages=156–160, 192}}</ref> In Monaghan, the Rev. [[David Bell (Irish Republican)|David Bell]] was to find that of his 100 Presbyterian congregants who had signed the requisition asking [[John Gray (Irish politician)|John Gray]] to stand in their constituency only 11 voted for him.<ref name="Bell22">{{cite journal|last1=Bell|first1=Thomas|date=1967|title=The Reverend David Bell|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/27695597|journal=Clogher Historical Society|volume=6|issue=2|pages=253–276|doi=10.2307/27695597|jstor=27695597|s2cid=165479361 |accessdate=3 October 2020}}</ref> In [[County Down]], [[William Sharman Crawford]], who as MP for [[Rochdale (UK Parliament constituency)|Rochdale]] in England had been the author of a tenant right bill, had his meetings broken up by Orange vigilantes.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Bew|first=Paul|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MSQSDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA238|title=Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789–2006|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2007|isbn=9780198205555|location=Oxford|pages=238–239}}</ref>

An early difficulty in appealing to Protestant tenants and voters in the north was the declared intention of many League-endorsed candidates to repeal the [[Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1851]]. Together with the presence among them of so many sitting [[Repeal Association]] MPs, their determination to remove the Act's restrictions on a restored [[Catholic Church in the United Kingdom|Catholic Church]] hierarchy heightened the suspicion that the League was being used for political purposes beyond its declared agenda.<ref name=":3">{{Cite book|last=Beckett|first=J.C.|title=The Making of Modern Ireland|publisher=Faber and Faber|year=1969|isbn=0571092675|location=London|pages=354–355}}</ref> In this, the prominent [[County Down]] tenant-righter, Julius McCullagh, argued the 1851 Act worked its purpose: to "afresh old grudges and differences - to divide a people now happily uniting".<ref name=":12">{{Cite book|last=Courtney|first=Roger|title=Dissenting Voices: Rediscovering the Irish Progressive Presbyterian Tradition|year=2013|isbn=9781909556065|location=Ulster Historical Foundation|pages=181}}</ref> It was the case as well that landowners in the north threatened to withdraw their consent for the existing Ulster Custom if their [[Irish Conservative Party|Conservative]] nominees were not elected.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Bardon|first=Jonathan|title=A History of Ulster|publisher=Blackstaff Press|year=1992|isbn=9780856404764|location=Belfast|pages=316}}</ref>

In November 1852, [[Who? Who? ministry|Lord Derby's short-lived Conservative ministry]] introduced a land bill to compensate Irish tenants on eviction for improvements they had made to the land. The Tenant Compensation Bill passed in the [[House of Commons]] in 1853 and 1854, but failed in the [[House of Lords]]. The bills had little impressed the League and its MPs as landlords would have been left free to pass on the costs of compensation through their still unrestricted freedom to raise rents.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Shields|first=Andrew|date=2009|title=John Napier and the Irish Land Bills of 1852|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340885255|journal=The Australasian Journal of Irish Studies|volume=9|pages=31–51}}</ref>

Holding the balance of power in the House of Commons, the Independent Irish MPs voted to bring down the government. But in the process two of the leading members, [[John Sadleir]] and [[William Keogh]], broke their pledges of independent opposition and accepted positions in a new Whig-[[Peelite]] ministry of [[Lord Aberdeen]]. Twenty others followed as reliable supporters. While Aberdeen opposed to the Ecclesiastical Titles Act, his government gave no undertakings in regard to tenant-right policy<ref>{{Cite book|last=McCaffrey|first=Lawrence|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_dPNCR4-4LIC&pg=PA145|title=The Irish Catholic Diaspora in America|publisher=The Catholic University of America Press|year=1976|isbn=9780813208961|location=Washington DC|pages=145}}</ref><ref name=":0"/> Significantly in a League debate in February 1853 MacKnight, wary of any sign of Irish separatism, did not support Duffy in condemning these desertions. Rather, he protested the increasingly strident nationalism of southern League spokesman.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|title=MacKnight (McKnight), James |website=Dictionary of Irish Biography|url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/macknight-mcknight-james-a5242|access-date=2021-03-27}}</ref>