On 25th March 1903 Mr Wyndham introduced his Bill.  It adopted fully the fundamental principles of the Land Conference and undertook to find Imperial funds for the complete extinction of landlordism in Ireland within a period which Mr Wyndham estimated at fifteen years.  Furthermore the tenants were to obtain the loans on cheaper terms than had ever been known before—­viz. an interest of 2-3/4 per cent. and a sinking fund of 1/2 per cent., being a reduction in the tenants’ annuity from L4 to L3, 5s. as compared with the best of the previous Acts.  In addition a State grant-in-aid to the extent of L12,000,000—­roughly equivalent to three years’ purchase—­was produced to bridge the gap between what the tenants could afford to pay and the landlords to accept.  The Bill fell short of the requirements of the Land Conference in certain respects, notably in that it proposed to withhold one-eighth of the freehold from the tenants as an assertion of State right in the land, and that the clauses dealing with the Evicted Tenants and Congested questions were vague and inadequate.  Other minor defects there also were, but nothing that might not be remedied in Committee by conciliatory adjustments.  A National Convention was summoned for 16th April to consider whether the Bill should be accepted or otherwise.  Previously there was much subterranean communication between Messrs Dillon, Davitt, Sexton and T.P.  O’Connor, all with calculated intent to damage or destroy the Bill.  And it is also clear that certain members of the Irish Party (Messrs Dillon and T.P.  O’Connor), who were pledge-bound to support majority rule “in or out of Parliament,” were carrying on official negotiations of their own with the Minister in charge of the Bill and were using the organ of the Party to discredit principles and proposals to which the Party had given its unanimous assent.  It would not, in the circumstances, be unjust to stigmatise this conduct as disloyalty, if not exactly treachery, to the recorded decisions of the Party.  At any rate it was the source and origin of incredible mischief and the most deplorable consequences to Ireland.  The opponents of the Bill made a concerted effort to stampede the National Convention from arriving at any decision regarding the Bill.  They wanted it to postpone judgment.  But the Convention, in every sense magnificently representative of all that was sound and sincere in the constitutional movement, was too much alive to all the glorious possibilities of the policy of national reconciliation which was taking shape and form before their eyes to brook any of the ill-advised counsels of those who had determined insidiously on the wreck of this policy.

In all the great Convention there were only two voices raised in support of the rejection of the Bill.  And when Mr Davitt moved the motion, concerted between Mr T.P.  O’Connor, Mr Sexton and himself, that the Convention should suspend judgment until it was brought in its amended Third Reading Form before an adjourned sitting of the Convention, he was so impressed by the enthusiastic unanimity of the delegates that he offered, after some parley, to withdraw his motion, and thus this great and authoritative assembly pledged the faith of the Irish nation to the policy of national reconciliation and gave its loyal adhesion to the authors of that policy.