THE ULSTER CONFLICT majority of those in the impoversihed west) and all leaseholders. The revolutionary wing of the Land League quickly grasped that this Act would soon recuperate a large percentage of their militants and were opposed to any co-operation with the courts. Parnell, although personally convinced that the Act would make landlordism impossible for the landlords, pretended to be dissastisfied with the Act and persuaded the Land League convention to «test» the Act with trial cases to prove its «hollowness». He deliberately used very provocative language to denounce the Act so that he would be arrested as an « agitator ». Whilst he was in prison those tenants eligible to « test » the Act discovered that the land courts would reduce rents by up to 20%, and the courts were soon flooded with eligible tenants, including many from Ulster. But the tenants most in need of relief, those still in arrears of rent, were ineligible to go before the courts. This, coupled with the imprisonment of Parnell led to such an increase in agitation and outrages that Gladstone was virtually compelled to concede all Parnell's demands (specific assurances that the repressive legislation would be dropped and that arrears of rent would be wiped clean by the English government so that previously ineligible tenants could take advantage of the land courts) for a set of vague, almost meaningless counter-concessions by Parnell. The Arrears Act was a small farmers' charter. The state paid £800,000 for 130,000 tenants who immediately scurried to get into the land courts. Although the 1881 Act made provision for purchase by the tenants, the terms (25% down payment with the balance to be repaid at 5% over 35 years) were less favourable than a cancellation of arrears and a 20% reduction in rent. The peasants made economic choices by the cold light of realism rather than by the hazy illumination of bourgeois nationalism. The Arrears Act defused a potentially explosive situation and swung the balance of power inside the Land League away from the social revolutionary wing towards Parnell's much more modest constitutionalist demands. Henceforth the Land League became the National League dedicated to the achievement of Home Rule by parliamentary means. Parnell demonstrated his organizational strength by helping to turn Gladstone out of office in June 1885 and by winning 85 out of the 103 Irish seats in the subsequent November 1885 general election. In the election campaign Parnell displayed his astute judgement of the political game by directing the Irish in England to vote for the conservative party. 89
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