sible blending of moral righteousness and physical force that would later come to define Irish nationalism. Although he was largely an outcast from the real demands of the farming class during this period, James Fintan Lalor began agitating for a form of guerilla warfare that would exalt the tenantry as a unified and oppressed subject class. This agitation for guerilla warfare to further "oppressed Ireland's" aims would be repeated with greater force and reception in the early part of the twentieth century. However, the Tenant Protection Societies formed locally during 1849-50 were more representative of tenants' claims. These societies were headed by "respectable farmers" who campaigned for rents fixed by independent valuation and tenant solidarity. These societies attempted to follow constitutionally sanctioned measures to achieve their aims. Thus, they were faced the problem of how to break in to the enclosed subculture of Irish politics dominated by the landed classes.
The inclusion of the Societies in Parliament was facilitated by a movement led by Sharman Crawford to legalize Ulster customary tenant rights. This Parliamentary movement led to the formation of an all-Ireland Tenant League that Foster characterized as "the first Irish political organization with a social, rather than a political, platform" (383). This blending of what had formerly been recognized as solely "social" issues with the political was what would eventually lead to the blending of morality with the political. The lines between landlord and tenant rights in the League were muddied, however, and the League was itself questionable as a force in favor of tenant rights. The Tenant Right Movement also briefly spawned an Independent Irish Party in the early 1850s, but this party never sufficiently infiltrated Irish politics to make a difference. Its spirit was continued in the Farmers' Clubs of the mid-1860s, which articulated the interests of the la...