Cratlagh, Exams and Sunday Doors
Ireland in 1878 was not yet in the Land War, and the Irish National Land League had not yet been founded. Yet the year made several of the forces that would soon drive national politics much more visible: the insecurity of tenant farming, the strain of falling agricultural returns, the increasingly assertive politics associated with Charles Stewart Parnell, and demands for social provision shaped by Irish circumstances rather than by Westminster convenience. Two Acts of Parliament passed in August touched ordinary routines directly: one reorganised the terms on which post-primary schooling could be rewarded, while another altered Sunday drinking across most of the island. A third measure recast the machinery of public health. The year also brought a murder in Donegal that became an enduring symbol of landlord–tenant antagonism.