Shawe-Taylor’s Mansion House
In 1902 Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom, governed through the Lord Lieutenant, the Chief Secretary and the Dublin Castle administration, while Irish MPs sat at Westminster. Yet the year’s most consequential Irish political development did not begin as a parliamentary measure. It emerged from the long and bitter argument over land: who should own it, who should set the rent, and whether the occupier of a farm might finally become its proprietor. By December, that argument had brought landlords and tenant representatives into the Mansion House in Dublin. Their meeting did not settle the matter within the calendar year, but it marked a striking change in political method: men associated with opposed interests agreed to negotiate face to face.