The cause of Home Rule was the primary focus of mainstream Irish nationalism from the mid-1870s until the Irish parliamentary party’s electoral collapse at the 1918 general election. The Home Rule movement’s predecessor as the dominant force in Irish nationalism was Daniel O’Connell’s repeal movement of the 1830s and 40s, which was the only prior coherent, constitutional nationalist movement to impinge on House of Commons business in a significant manner. During the 1850s and 1860s, constitutional nationalist agitation was greatly muted, and the repeal tendency within Irish politics was generally subsumed within the Liberal party. The Fenian movement, founded in 1865, which advocated total separation from Britain, officially ignored and forbade constitutional methods. The Home Rule movement, essentially inaugurated as the Home Government Association by Isaac Butt in 1870, emerged into Irish politics in this context.