Isaac Butt

Isaac Butt QC MP (6 September 1813 – 5 May 1879) was an Irish barrister and nationalist leader who, if not the originator of the term Home Rule, was the first to make it an effective political slogan. He was the founder (1870) and first chief of the Home Government Association and president (1873–77) of the Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain, but he was superseded in 1878 as head of the Home Rule movement by the younger and more forceful Charles Stewart Parnell. He served as a Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom House of Commons from 1852 to 1865 and 1871 to 1879, representing various Irish constituencies.

Of Butt, 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.

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. He dissented from the established Ricardian theories and favoured some welfare state concepts. As an editor, he created the Dublin University Magazine a leading Irish journal of politics and literature.