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A new historiography of the courtroom locates it not just as a place of top-down power, but a space to negotiate social order that included men and women of different ranks. Using evidence from the Irish petty sessions reported in the local press in the 1820s, this article argues that an ideal of 'impartiality', common to the law and to elite masculinity alike, provided an opportunity for Protestants and Catholics to discuss and contest the relative power of different social groups within Irish society in a context where political speech was constrained. The courtroom became a space both within and outside of society, allowing a broader range of political debate and expression that was typically allowed. When reported in the press, such discussion could have political import. Moreover, due to the pressure on magistrates to appear impartial, lower order Irish men and women could use the desire to appear impartial as an opportunity to contest traditional power structures and to use the courts to their advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contends that the Irish policy of both the Whig and Tory parties has received rather short shrift in the historiography surrounding Britain's decade of reform. In an attempt to rectify this gap, the article traces the emergence of the Whig policy of ‘justice to Ireland’ between 1835 and 1839; a policy championed by an emerging activist leadership within the party that promoted Catholics in Irish administration and attempted to pass substantial legislative reform. This ambitious Whig agenda upended a thirty-five-year consensus that relied on coercion to rule Ireland's recalcitrant population. Tories vehemently opposed this change, and used Irish agrarian violence – so-called ‘outrages’ – to undermine the success of the Whigs’ novel approach to governing Ireland through remedial legislation. This confrontation over Irish policy led to an 1839 House of Lords committee on Irish crime that passed a vote of censure on the Whigs’ Irish policy and nearly toppled Melbourne's government. However, the article demonstrates how the Whigs’ Irish policy was the one question that held together their big tent coalition of Whigs, English radicals, and O'Connellites, thus extending their administration for another two years. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on Ulster opposition to Catholic emancipation and examines the concept of a Protestant class alliance in Ireland in the period 1828-1829. The massive Protestant political campaign in Ireland centred on the new Brunswick Clubs and Ulster. The Catholic Association appears to have reduced Ulster's importance in shaping political developments in the island as a whole from its high-water mark of the 1790s.

The article focuses on the state of politics in Ireland between the period 1800 to 1848. It describes the political situation, government administration, the judicial system and the condition of farmers in rural Ireland during the period. It also discusses the movement of nationalist peasants in attempting to gain freedom from the feudal order.