le. But
its very success led to trouble, because on one side of a boundary fence
there would be farmers who had purchased and whose annual instalments of
purchase money were lower than the rents paid by their neighbours on the
other side of the mearing. Renewed struggle against rent led to new
eviction scenes on the grand scale; and by this time landlord opinion
was half converted to the purchase policy, as a necessary solution. The
persistency of one young Galway man, Captain John Shawe Taylor, brought
about the famous Land Conference of 1902, in which Mr. O'Brien, Mr.
Healy, Mr. Redmond and Mr. T.W. Russell on behalf of the tenants met
Lord Dunraven, Lord Mayo, Colonel Hutcheson Poe and Colonel Nugent
Everard representing (though not officially) the landlord interest: and
the result of the agreement reached by this body was seen in Mr.
Wyndham's Land Purchase Act of 1903. This great and drastic measure
altered fundamentally the character of the Irish problem. Directly by
its own effect, and indirectly by the example of new methods, it changed
opinion alike in Ireland and Great Britain. In Ireland hitherto, as has
been already seen, resistance to Home Rule had come primarily from the
landlord class, by whom the Nationalist desire for self-government was
construed as a cloak for the wish to revive or reverse the ancient
confiscations. Now, the land question was by general consent settled, at
least in principle; in proportion as landlords were bought out the
leading economic argument against Home Rule disappeared. The opposition
reduced itself strictly to political grounds; and it began to be plain
that the true heart of resistance lay in Ulster.

Also, lines of cleavage in the Unionist camp began to appear. Already,
landlords in the South and West had found a common ground of action with
representatives of the tenants. It was felt, alike in Ireland and
England, that this precedent might be developed further.

In England political opinion was much affected by the apparent success
of an attempt to deal with the Irish problem piecemeal. The Congested
Districts Board had done much to relieve those regions where famine was
always a possibility; Local Government had given satisfactory results;
and now Land Purchase was hailed as the beginning of a new era. The idea
of seeing how much farther the principle of tentative approach could be
carried took strong hold of many minds, and the word "devolution" came
into fashion.

Wh