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RESOLUTION ADOPTED AT THE TENANT LEAGUE CONFERENCE

8 September 1852

At a conference in Dublin held in September 1852 and attended by forty-one Liberal MPs, the delegates adopted a policy (set forth in the document below) of independent opposition to any government at Westminster that refused to endorse the tenant-right principles advanced by the prominent northern landlord William Sharman Crawford. The general election of July 1852 saw the return of fifty Irish MPs supposedly committed to tenant-right, but the movement disintegrated after the Independent Irish Party proved unable to preserve its cohesion.

SEE ALSO Land Questions

That in the unanimous opinion of this conference it is essential to the proper management of this cause that the members of parliament who have been returned on tenant-right principles should hold themselves perfectly independent of, and in opposition to, all governments which do not make it a part of their policy and a cabinet question to give to the tenantry of Ireland a measure fully embodying the principles of Mr [William] Sharman Crawford's bill.

FREEMAN'S JOURNAL, 9 September 1852.