The Irish Church had been disestablished, and the Fenian prisoners had been set free.

The Irish Land Act of 1870 had recognised the Irish tenant's right to a partnership in the soil.
Although Froude had no sympathy, ecclesiastical or political, with Gladstone, he did think that the Land Act was a just and beneficent measure from which good would come.

In the firm belief that he could vindicate the statesmanship of his own country before American audiences without sacrificing the paramount claims of truth and justice, he accepted the invitation.
-- + Table Talk of Shirley, p.

149.
* Table Talk of Shirley, p.

151.
-- After a summer cruise in a big schooner with his friend Lord Ducie, whose hospitality at sea he often in coming years enjoyed, Froude sailed from Liverpool in the Russia at the end of September, 1872, with the distinguished physicist John Tyndall.