Isaac Butt (1813-79) was a foremost figure in nineteenth-century Ireland and a substantial one in British politics. A brilliant graduate of Trinity College Dublin, he was a famous advocate of the Irish and English Bars, MP for English and Irish constituencies, leader of the tenant movement for reform of the land laws in Ireland, and founder and chairman of the Home Rule party of the 1870s. He exemplified a new, admittedly minority creed of progressive Protestant Toryism that sought to adapt Ascendancy privilege to make Ireland safe for his own kind. Butt was an Irish 'patriot' concerned about the effects of British policy in Ireland, the laggard economic development of his country and wished to see Catholics and Protestants reconciled.
Isaac Butt