As in the previous, so in the present, Gladstone administration the question of Ireland loomed up above all others. While Beaconsfield remained Premier Ireland was lost sight of, quite dwarfed by the Eastern question upon which the two life-long adversaries measured their strength. But as Turkey went down in public interest Ireland rose. The Irish people were gaining a vivid sense of their power under the Constitution. And another famine came to put the land laws and government of Ireland to a severe test. Still more, Ireland gained a leader, a man of remarkable ability, who was to play as great a part in its history as O'Connell had done half a century before. This was Charles Stewart Parnell, the founder of the Irish Land League--a powerful trade-union of tenant farmers--and for many years the leader of the Irish party in Parliament. In the Parliament of 1880 his followers numbered sixty-eight, enough to make him a power to be dealt with in legislation. Gladstone, in assuming control of the new government, was quite unaware of the task before him. When he had completed his work with the Church and the Land Bills ten years before, he fondly fancied that the Irish question was definitely settled. The Home Rule movement, which was started in 1870, seemed to him a wild delusion which would die away of itself. In 1884 he said: "I frankly admit that I had had much upon my hands connected with the doings of the Beaconsfield Government in every quarter of the world, and I did not know--no one knew--the severity of the crisis that was already swelling upon the horizon, and that shortly after rushed upon us like a flood." [=The Famine and the Bill for Irish Relief=] He was not long in discovering the gravity of the situation, of which the House had been warned by Mr. Parnell. The famine had brought its crop of misery, and, while the charitable were seeking to relieve the distress, many of the landlords were turning adrift their tenants for non-payment of rents. The Irish party brought in a Bill for the Suspension of Evictions, which the government replaced by a similar one for Compensation for Disturbance. This was passed with a large majority by the Commons, but was rejected by the Lords, and Ireland was left to face its misery without relief. [=Mr. Forster's Policy of Coercion=]