Isaac Butt

Isaac Butt QC MP
Isaac Butt, portrait by John Butler Yeats
1st Leader of the Home Rule League
In office 21 November 1873 – 5 May 1879
Succeeded by	William Shaw
Member of Parliament for Limerick
In office 1871–1879 Serving with George Gavin (to 1874) Richard O'Shaughnessy (from 1874)
Preceded by	Francis William Russell George Gavin
Succeeded by	Daniel Fitzgerald Gabbett Richard O'Shaughnessy
Member of Parliament for Youghal
In office 1852–1865
Preceded by	Thomas Chisholm Anstey
Succeeded by	Joseph Neale McKenna
Personal details
Born	6 September 1813 Glenfin, County Donegal, Ulster, Ireland
Died	5 May 1879 (aged 65) Clonskeagh, Dublin, Ireland
Political party	Home Rule League (from 1873)
Other political affiliations	Home Government Association (1870–73) Irish Conservative Party (until 1870)
Alma mater	Trinity College Dublin
Occupation	Professor, lawyer, politician, and Queen's Counsel

Isaac Butt QC MP (6 September 1813 – 5 May 1879) was an Irish barrister, editor, politician, Member of Parliament in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, economist and the founder and first leader of a number of Irish nationalist parties and organisations. He was a leader in the Irish Metropolitan Conservative Society in 1836, the Home Government Association in 1870, and the Home Rule League in 1873. Colin W. Reid argues that Home Rule was the mechanism Butt proposed to bind Ireland to Great Britain. It would end the ambiguities of the Act of Union of 1800. He portrayed a federalised United Kingdom, which would have weakened Irish exceptionalism within a broader British context. Butt was representative of a constructive national unionism.^[1] As an economist, he made significant contributions regarding the potential resource mobilisation and distribution aspects of protection, and analysed deficiencies in the Irish economy such as sparse employment, low productivity, and misallocation of land.^[2] He dissented from the established Ricardian theories and favoured some welfare state concepts.^[3] As editor he made the Dublin University Magazine a leading Irish journal of politics and literature.^[4]