The long history of tension between the mainly Catholic Irish, and the predominantly Protestant British, has been primarily due to uneven wealth distribution in Ireland. A small class of Anglo-Irish Protestant gentry known as "the Ascendancy" owned nearly all of the land right up until the late 19th century thereby disenfranchising and impoverishing the Catholics who made up nearly all of Ireland's working class population and peasantry at the time. During the 1880's and 1890's, a number of reforms were made. These initiatives were pursued by Liberal PM William E Gladstone, whose government passed an important Act that ensured some security for tenants and that led to future progressive law reforms for the people of Ireland. During the late nineteenth century, these various concessions were effective in quelling short-term anger and upheaval in the countryside but, unfortunately, never solved the underlying economic divide that existed in the country.
From the 1870's until the late 1880's, Charles Parnell (Protestant) led the Irish Party. It was primarily concerned with the implementation of Home Rule, a system that would give Ireland independence in all areas except foreign policy and in which allegiance to the British crown would remain. At the same time in Ireland, a secret and much more extreme nationalist group, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), was in discussion about ways and means to establish a completely independent Irish republic. These two conflicting nationalist groups illustrated the fragmented nature of the Irish reform movement of the time. A crowning moment for the Irish Party occurred in 1884, when PM Gladstone announced his support for Home Rule and introduced a bill to Parliament on the formation of an independent Irish government. The bill was defeated, and only a few short years later, Parnell was involved in a scandal concerning his relationship with the wife of a fellow parliamentarian that split the Irish Party and marked the end of an otherwise illustrious career.
