to constant disrepute.On land tenure Butt had been a pioneer in advancing the cause of the Irish tenant farmers against prevailing assumptions about the ownership of agricultural land.He argued that this issue involved ‘the very life of the nation, the right of the Celtic race to live in their own land – it is one that approaches the very foundation of society and proprietary rights’ (The Irish people and the Irish land, 253).He disputed the view that in Ireland the letting of farms could be governed by a competitive market.The concept of a single, capitalist market for the whole of the United Kingdom, assimilating Irish agriculture to that of Britain, he rejected on the ground ‘that it involves the extermination of the people’ (Land tenure in Ireland, 64).The impact of the FamineOn both education and land Butt argued consistently for solutions based on an understanding of the problems as they existed in Ireland, rather than on prevailing doctrine or ideology.He advocated remedies that grew out of and accommodated the aspirations and wishes, not only of one community, but of all – catholic, anglican, and presbyterian; he sought not lowest common denominators, but robust recognition of the best principles arising out of all Ireland's traditions.While by the mid 1860s this was expressed in terms different from the 1840s, the lines of development from the one to the other are clear.Joseph Spence has shown how Butt's views of the union had been influenced by the Irish poor law and the Famine (Spence, 236–51).But subsequently there had also been important changes of circumstance which contributed to the evolution of his ideas.The Famine itself