Butt, ISAAC

Butt, ISAAC, a great Irish patriot, the first to make political use of the phrase 'Home Rule,' was the son of a Protestant rector, and was born in County Donegal in 1813. Educated at Raphoe and at Trinity College, Dublin, he gained a brilliant reputation for his accomplished scholarship, edited the Dublin University Magazine from 1834 to 1838, and filled the chair of Political Economy in his university from 1836 to 1841. He was called to the Irish bar in 1838, and ere long became a foremost champion of the Conservative cause, actively opposing O'Connell's Repeal Association in 1843. His political conversion occurred early, for in 1852 he was returned as a 'Liberal Conservative' for Youghal, for which constituency he sat until 1865. He defended Smith O'Brien and others in the state trials of 1848, and with equal fearlessness and self-devotion all the Fenian prisoners between the years 1865 and 1869. In 1871 Butt was returned for the city of Limerick to lead the Home Rule party, but soon found that he could not control them. He died 5th May 1879.