ABSTRACT
The chief Ministers in William Ewart Gladstone’s Government were aware in the summer of 1880 that they had on their hands in Ireland a very difficult and urgent problem. As early as 1872 Gladstone’s mind had turned to the problem of Irish government and he was drawn again to the subject both by the state of Ireland and by the state of the House of Commons. Gladstone, always ahead of his party where Irish government was concerned, was, as he himself said to Argyll, one of the most conservative in his Cabinet when first the Land Bill was in preparation. Childers, whose mind turned towards Irish self-government, wished to expand Bright’s plan by forming County Boards who were to be the authorities for carrying out the schemes. The report of the Bessborough Commission played, in the history of the Irish agrarian problem, the part played by the Factory Commissions in the history of Factory reform.
