Next, he could continue to hold his farm, provided he paid the rate determined on, for a period of fifteen years, during which time the rent could not be raised nor the tenant evicted except for violation of agreement or persistent neglect or waste of the land.  Finally, he could sell his tenancy whenever he saw fit to the highest bidder.  This law was later amended and extended in the interest of the peasant farmer (1887).

The year following the passage of this second Land Act, Lord Frederick Cavendish, chief secretary of Ireland, and Mr. Burke, a prominent government official, were murdered in Phoenix Park, Dublin (1882).  Later, members of the Fenian society, and of other secret organizations sympathizing with the small Irish farmers, perpetrated dynamite outrages in London and other parts of England for the purpose of intimidating the Government.  These acts were denounced by the leaders of the Irish National Party.  They declared that “the cause of Ireland was not to be served by the knife of the assassin or by the infernal machine.”

Notwithstanding the vindictive feeling caused by these rash deeds, despite also the passage of the Coercion Bill (1887), the majority of the more intelligent and thoughtful of the Irish people had faith in the progress of events.  They believed that the time would come when their country would obtain the enjoyment of all the political rights which England so fully possesses.  It will be seen (S620) that about ten years later they did gain a very important extension of the right of local self-government.[1]

[1] See Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p.xxvii, S33.

606.  The Darwinian Theory of Evolution, 1859; the Persistence of
     Force.

In the progress of science the Victorian period surpassed all previous records in England except that made by Sir Isaac Newton’s discovery of the law of gravitation (S481).  That great thinker demonstrated in 1684 that all forms of matter, great or small, near or distant, are governed by one universal force of attraction.  In like manner the researches and investigations of the nineteenth century led to the conviction that all forms of life upon the earth obey a universal law of development.  By this law the higher are evolved from the lower through a succession of gradual but progressive changes.

This conception originated long before the beginning of the Victorian era, but it lacked the support of carefully examined facts, and most sensible men regarded it as nothing more than a plausible conjecture.  The thinker who did more than any other to supply the facts, and to put the theory, so far as it relates to natural history, on a solid and lasting foundation, was the distinguished English naturalist, Charles Darwin.[1]

[1] Alfred Russel Wallace, also noted as a naturalist, worked out the thoery of evolution by “natural selection” about the same time, though not so fully, with respect to details, as Darwin; as each of these investigators arrived at his conclusions independently of the other, the theory was thus doubly confirmed.