Lord Salisbury and Lord Randolph Churchill, the Conservative leaders who came into power in 1885, enjoyed a brief and troubled tenure of office. The general election of 1885 was the first to be held under the Reform Law of the previous year, which had given to Ireland the same freedom of electoral franchise which had existed in the English and Scottish boroughs since 1869. The result was a great increase in the number of Nationalist members in Parliament. Of the one hundred and three members for Ireland no less than eighty-four were returned as Home Rulers, a compact and formidable body acting as a unit under the leadership of Mr. Parnell. The first leader of the little company of Irish Home Rulers that had appeared in Parliament in the early '70's was Isaac Butt. His repeated attempts to have the subject considered were as often rejected with derision. In his own party he was opposed by an element which desired to resort to aggressive measures to compel the English to heed Ireland's demand for local self-government. Prominent in this radical wing was a young Protestant, Charles Stewart Parnell, the grandson of Commodore Stewart of the United States Navy. In 1880 he was recognized as the chairman of the Irish Home Rulers in Parliament. For many years he continued to exercise a control over this party and over the Irish people such as no one, save perhaps O'Connell himself, had ever attained. He conceived and enforced the obstructive policy which so embarrassed the second Gladstone administration. By exasperating tactics, which we Americans call "filibustering," the obstructionists, unable to secure what they wanted for Ireland, succeeded in paralyzing the law-making branch of the British constitution. It was only by adopting new and arbitrary rules for choking off debate that any legislation could be passed in the stormy decade beginning with 1881. Arrests, suspensions, and expulsions of Irish members repeatedly disturbed the dignity of the House of Commons, and kept ever present before the English representatives the temper of the subject kingdom.