To Gordon's appeal on behalf of Ireland no one was more ready to listen with sympathy than the Prime Minister himself. The claims and grievances of the people whose magnanimous endurance, self-restraint, and patience had so excited Gordon's admiration and called forth his warmest words of praise, the great Liberal statesman had never been slow to recognize. Ireland has not always been willing to be grateful to him; but he has always striven to be more than just to her, and has more than once incurred the odium and reproach of the aristocracy of England, and even the disaffection of many of his followers, in his truly heroic "attempts to mitigate the miseries of the Irish people." When he surprised the country by his sudden and unexpected dissolution of Parliament in 1874, he had certainly done something to earn the gratitude and confidence of Ireland. He had disestablished the Irish Protestant Church. He had passed a Land Act, which at the time (1870) was regarded as a valuable contribution to the settlement of the land problem, aiming, as it did, first, to give the tenant some security of tenure where, as in the majority of cases, he had been practically unable to plead any rights as against the landlord; second, to encourage the making of needful improvements throughout the country; and, thirdly, to promote the establishment of a peasant proprietorship. In the attempt to confer a third great boon on the discontented nation in the shape of the Irish University Education Bill, he and his administration went to pieces on the immovable rock of Protestant prejudice.
Of course the provisions of the Land Act, while they occasioned some fretting and exasperation among the land-owners, who are in the habit of regarding every effort of legislation for the benefit of their tenants with a fixed sense of calamity, failed entirely to satisfy the more aggressive and eager of the Irish Parliamentary party. The Land Act had not taken its place upon the statute book before a meeting of representative Irishmen was called in Dublin with the view of framing some scheme of Home Government, and organizing measures for its advocacy in Parliament, and in the towns and cities of Ireland. In the course of discussion, one of the speakers used the words "Home Rule," and they were formally and forthwith adopted as the war-cry of the Nationalist party.