This official declaration gave an importance and a significance to Captain Shawe-Taylor’s letter which otherwise would never have attached to it.  The confession that “no Government can settle the Irish Land Question” was in itself a most momentous admission.  It was the most ample justification of nationalism, which held that a foreign Parliament was incompetent to legislate for Irish affairs, and now the accredited mouthpiece of the Government in Ireland had formally subscribed to this doctrine.  This admission was in itself and in its outflowing an event comparable only to Gladstone’s conversion to Home Rule.  It amounted to a challenge to Irishmen to prove their competence to settle the most sorely-beset difficulty that afflicted their country.  Not only were Irishmen invited to settle this particularly Irish question, but they were given what was practically an official assurance that the Unionist Party would sponsor their agreement, within the limits of reason.

Immediately Captain Shawe-Taylor’s proposal became canvassed of the newspapers and the politicians.  Mr Dillon seemed to be sceptical of it, as a transparent landlord dodge.  It was, however, enthusiastically welcomed by the Freeman, whilst The Daily Express, the organ of the more unbending of the territorialists, denounced it mercilessly, and no sooner did the Duke of Abercorn, Lord Barrymore, the O’Conor Don and Colonel Saunderson learn that Mr Redmond, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr T.W.  Russell and Mr O’Brien were willing to join the Conference than they wrote to Captain Shawe-Taylor declining his invitation.  The Landowners Convention, the official landlord organisation, also by an overwhelming majority decided against any peace parley with the tenants’ representatives.  But the forces in favour of a conference were daily gaining force even amongst the landlord class; whilst on the tenants’ side a meeting of the Irish Catholic Hierarchy, attended by three archbishops and twenty-four bishops, with Cardinal Logue in the chair, cordially approved the Land Conference project and put on record their earnest hope “that all those on whose co-operation the success of this most important movement depends may approach the consideration of it in the spirit of conciliation in which it has been initiated.”  The Irish Party, on the motion of Mr Dillon, also unanimously adopted a resolution approving of the action taken by Messrs Redmond, O’Brien and Harrington in expressing their willingness to meet the landlord representatives.  The mass of the landlords were so far from submitting to the veto of the Landowners’ Convention that, headed by men of such commanding position and ability as the Earl of Dunraven, Lord Castletown, the Earl of Meath, Lord Powerscourt, the Earl of Mayo, Colonel Hutcheson-Poe and Mr Lindsay Talbot Crosbie, they formed a Conciliation Committee of their own to test the opinion of the landlords over the heads of the Landowners Convention.  The plebiscite taken by this Committee more than justified them.  By a vote of 1128 to 578 the landlords of Ireland declared themselves in favour of a Conference, and empowered the Conciliation Committee to nominate representatives on their behalf.