Ireland As President of the Board of Trade, Chamberlain took a special interest in Ireland. Chamberlain strongly opposed the Irish Home Rule movement on the belief that home rule would lead to the eventual break-up of the empire; he declared, "I cannot admit that five millions of Irishmen have any greater right to govern themselves without regard to the rest of the United Kingdom than the five million inhabitants of the metropolis". In an effort to quiet agitation in Ireland through appeasement, Chamberlain supported calls for a Land Bill and opposed Chief Secretary William Edward Forster's tactics of lethal force and mass imprisonment. In April 1881, Gladstone's government introduced the Irish Land Act, but Charles Stewart Parnell encouraged tenants to withhold rents. As a result, Parnell and other leaders were imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol on 13 October 1881.
Ireland As President of the Board of Trade, Chamberlain took a special interest in Ireland. Chamberlain strongly opposed the Irish Home Rule movement on the belief that home rule would lead to the eventual break-up of the empire; he declared, "I cannot admit that five millions of Irishmen have any greater right to govern themselves without regard to the rest of the United Kingdom than the five million inhabitants of the metropolis" In an effort to quiet agitation in Ireland through appeasement, Chamberlain supported calls for a Land Bill and opposed Chief Secretary William Edward Forster's tactics of lethal force and mass imprisonment In April 1881, Gladstone's government introduced the Irish Land Act, but Charles Stewart Parnell encouraged tenants to withhold rents. As a result, Parnell and other leaders were imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol on 13 October 1881.