Gladstone wrote in his diary that he ensured he visited "farms, cottages & people", including conversing with Irishmen and "turning my small opportunities to account as well as I could".

Gladstone wrote to the Duke of Argyll on 14 June, regarding the eviction of tenants: "We never considered the question of ejectments connected with the present distress in Ireland....

I was under the impression that ejectments were diminishing, but I now find from figures first seen on Saturday [12 June] that they seem rather to increase... the duty of enquiring, where I had not previously known there was urgent cause to inquire".

[4] A Royal Commission under Lord Bessborough (who held an Irish earldom) was set up in June to enquire into the workings of the 1870 Act and it sat between September and January 1881.

[7] Gladstone wrote to the Chief Secretary for Ireland, William Edward Forster, on 10 January 1881 to enquire from him an assessment of Irish demands in order to discover "a definitive settlement" of the land question.

He added that "there is no country in the world which, when her social relations come to permit it, will derive more benefit than Ireland from perfect freedom of contract in land.

The court would inject order into the confused state of Irish social relations, creating stability and reconciliation where coercion could not reach.

He added that it was a "right and needful measure" but was also a "form of centralization, referring to public authority what ought to be transacted by a private individual" and urged the Irish not to "stereotype and stamp [it] with the seal of perpetuity".