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9 Liam Kennedy Farmers, Traders, and Agricultural Politics in Pre-Independence Ireland Introduction In the last quarter of the nineteenth century Irish political institutions were being recast in a form that brought them into a more sensitive relationship with the body of popular political feeling. The ballot act of 1872, though it did not initiate major new political trends,l at least lowered the cost of exercising electoral rights in accordance with the voter's own preferences rather than with those of landlord or priest. As a result of the extension of the franchise in 1884, smaller property holders and laborers participated directly for the first time in the process of returning M.P.s. Prior to 1884 members of these social groups were involved only indirectly in the political system, most effectively when organized into large intimidatory crowds.2 The electoral process as well as the heads of luckless opponents sometimes bore the clear imprint of their collective action. With the fusion of parliamentary and agrarian struggles during the first phase of the land war (1879-82), a strong countrywide organizational base was grafted onto the structure of parliamentary representation in nationalist Ireland. Such a broadening of the base of the political pyramid necessarily entailed the provi1 . See Michael Hurst, "Ireland and the ballot act of 1872" in Hist. In., viii, no. 3 (1965) pp. 326-52. 2. J. H. Whyte, "The influence of the Catholic clergy on elections in nineteenth-century Ireland" in E.H.R., lxxv, no. 295 (Apr. 1960), pp. 244-6; K. T. Hoppen, "Landlords, society, and electoral politics in mid-nineteenth-century Ireland" in Past & Present, no. 75 (May 1977), p. 89. 339 340 CHANGING LINES OF CLEAVAGE AND COHESION sion of services by an increased number of political figures at the local level. The turn of the century saw further democratization in the Irish countryside , as popular local government, county committees of agriculture, and other administrative innovations were introduced.3 Thus, in an era of democratic reform, when political opportunities were being opened up on a broad front, the issue of how the chief beneficiaries of these reforms responded assumes major significance. Did the lower and middle strata of Irish society- rural and town laborers, tenant farmers, traders, small businessmen - now come to enjoy political representation and power in rough proportion to their numbers in the population? If not, can deviations from such a distribution be explained? Are the deviations so marked as to suggest varying levels of organizational strength and political awareness within Irish society? In exploring aspects of these and related issues, this essay analyzes the exercise of power by farmers and traders during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Social change in the decades of reconstruction after the great famine, signified especially by a reshaping of the occupational structure,4 strongly influenced the power relationships examined here. In the agricultural sector of the economy the proportion of the work force engaged in farming declined during the second half of the nineteenth century. The more politically significant developments, however, relate to occupational shifts within that sector. The greatest decline occurred among laborers and cottiers, groups whose interests, when not in direct conflict with those of tenant farmers, were less easily harmonized with the concerns of other agriculturalists. By contrast, the middle peasantry consolidated its position, as indicated by the rise in the number of holdings above 15 acres from 276,600 in 1845 to 303,500 in 1910.5 The postfamine pe3 . An important recent work by W. L. Feingold demonstrates that the boards of poorlaw guardians provided an outlet for local political activity throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. But it was not until the 1880s that control of these bodies was wrested from the landlord class and its representatives. See W. L. Feingold, "The Irish boards of poor-law guardians, 1872-1886: a revolution in local government" (Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago, 1974). 4. A rough summary of occupational trends in postfamine Ireland may be found in Charles Booth, "The economic distribution of population in Ireland" in W. P. Coyne (ed.), Ireland, industrial and agricultural (Dublin, 1902), pp. 64-72. 5. The figures for 1845 are taken from P. M. A. Bourke, "The agricultural statistics of the 1841 census of Ireland: a critical review" in Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., xviii, no. 2 (Aug. 1965), pp. 376-91. For statistics on farm size in 1910, see Agricultural statistics of Ireland . .. , 1910, p. 16 [C 5964...

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