16 April 1886

The Liberal government introduces a Land Purchase Bill in the House of Commons

The bill provided for Irish landowners to give up their Irish estates on a voluntary basis and, using credit guaranteed by the government, made provision for existing tenants to buy their land holdings. The bill immediately ran into trouble with Radicals seeing it as too lenient to the landlords, while Unionists urged the landlords not to sell. The bill was linked to the Home Rule, Government of Ireland Bill which had been introduced a week earlier and could not become law without Home Rule. It might have been better to merge the two bills into one. As it was, government ministers quickly realised that the bill was a non-starter and it never made it to a parliamentary division.