The Land League organization gave him just the kind of political machinery he wanted, though the credit of its creation belongs more to Michael Davitt and John Dillon than to him. It soon became immensely popular in Ireland, and, for a time, its orders and decrees superseded the established law of the land, with the seeming result of replacing social order and tranquillity by a condition of widespread anarchy, confusion, and lawlessness. It is only fair to say, however, that the Land League meetings did not create but only revealed the misery, distress, and discontent of the Irish rural populace. The country had recently suffered from a severe visitation of famine. Evictions for non-payment of rent had been steadily increasing for several years past. In 1877 the number stood at 463; in 1878 it swelled to nearly 1,000; at the end of 1880 it had actually reached 2,110. A bill was introduced by one of the Irish members with a view to mitigating the rigors of the law as regarded the impoverished tenantry. The government refused to adopt the measure, but sought to meet the case by framing a remedial scheme of their own which was introduced under the name of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill. This bill, which was vigorously assailed from opposite quarters in the Commons, was unceremoniously rejected by the Lords, who denounced it as a flagrant encroachment on the rights of property. It must ever be regretted in the interests of mere humanity that Mr. Gladstone's government did not compel the recalcitrant peers to abandon their attitude of defiance in regard to that much-needed piece of ameliorative legislation. The House of Lords takes nothing so ill as open and avowed conflict with a powerful and popular ministry. In such a case the issue is never doubtful. And if the ministry had shown a determination to nail their colors to the mast, the Lords would have lost no time in unfurling a flag of truce. As it was, their practical acquiescence in the rejection of the bill consummated the rupture between the Irish party and themselves. The speeches of the chiefs of the Land League grew fierce, and at times violent, in their denunciation of Her Majesty's ministers. Mr. W. E. Forster, especially, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, a man of invincible resolution and ineradicable prejudices, and yet withal a man of much rugged kindliness of nature, became the victim of incessant interrogation and attack in Parliament, and the object of an unrelenting and quenchless hate in Ireland.