The National Directory, unintimidated by Mr Dillon’s pronouncement, met and calmly proceeded to formulate plans for the better working of the Purchase Act.  A clear and definite plan of campaign was outlined for the testing of the Act.  Mr O’Brien was also in favour of handling the disaffection of Mr Dillon and the Freeman in straightforward manner and of pointing out to them their duty of loyally supporting the decisions of the Party and of the League.  Mr Redmond shrank from decisive action.  It was part of the weakness of his estimable character that he always favoured “the easier way.”  He thought that when the Directory spoke out the recalcitrant elements would subside.  Little did he understand the malignant temper of the powerful group who, with the aid of the supposedly national organ, were determined to kill the operations of the Purchase Act and to destroy the policy of Conciliation which had promised such splendid fruit in other directions.  Mr Dillon went to Swinford again and he and his associates did everything in their power to stir up a national panic and to spread the impression that the Purchase Act was a public calamity, “a landlord swindle,” and that it would lead straight to national bankruptcy.

Even yet those who sought the wreck and ruin of land purchase might be met with and fought outright if the announcement had not appeared in the Freeman that Mr Redmond had sold his Wexford estate at “24-1/2 years’ purchase,” or over two years’ purchase higher in the case of second-term rents and four and a half years’ purchase in the case of first-term rents than the prices which the National Directory had a few weeks previously resolved to fight for, with all the force of the tenants’ organisation as a fair standard.  True enough Mr Redmond was able to plead later that these were not the terms finally agreed upon between his tenants and himself, and beyond all question he made no profit out of the transaction.  Where the mischief lay was in the original publication, which gave a headline to the landlords all over the country and, what was far more regrettable from the purely national standpoint, irretrievably tied the hands of Mr Redmond so far as making any heroic stand against Mr Dillon and his fellow-conspirators was concerned.  Thus the country drifted along, bereft of firm leadership or strong guidance.  Mr O’Brien had to hold his hand whilst “the determined campaigners” were more boldly and defiantly inveighing against the declared and adopted national policy and trampling upon every principle of Party discipline and loyalty.  The situation might have been saved if Mr Redmond had taken his courage in both his hands, summoned the Party together and received from it an authoritative declaration defining anew the National policy and the danger that attended it from those who had set out recklessly to destroy it; or if he sought an opportunity for publicly recalling the country to its duty and its allegiance to himself