I say it with full and perfect knowledge of the facts, that it was the dishonest policy of Mr Dillon, Mr T.P.  O’Connor and the men who, blindly and weakly, and with an abominable lack of moral courage, followed their leadership, which has kept one hundred thousand tenants still under the heel of landlordism in Ireland.  These men, in driving a nail into the policy of Conciliation, drove a nail far more deeply into their own coffin.  In burying the Land Act of 1903 they were only opening graves for themselves, but, in the words of Mr Redmond, they were “so short-sighted and unwise” they could not see the inevitable result of their malicious side-stepping.

I know of no greater glory that any man, or Party, or organisation could aspire to than to be, in any way, however humble, associated with the policy which made three hundred thousand of the farmers of Ireland the owners of their own hearths and fields.  Where the Land Purchase Act operated it gave birth to a new race of peasant owners, who were frugal, industrious, thrifty, and assiduous in the cultivation and improvement of the soil.  In a few years the face of the country was transformed.  A new life and energy were springing into being.  The old tumble-down farm-houses and out-offices began to be replaced by substantial, comfortable, and commodious buildings.  Personal indebtedness became almost a thing of the past, and the gombeen man—­one of Ireland’s national curses—­was fast fading out of sight.  The tenant purchasers, against whose solvency the “determined campaigners” issued every form of threat, took a pride in paying their purchase instalments as they fell due.  The banks began to swell out into a plethoric affluence on their deposits.  And who can estimate the social sweetness that followed on land purchase—­the sense of peace and security that it gave to the tenant and his family, the falling from him of the numbing shadows of unrest and discontent?  Also with the disappearance of agrarian troubles and the unsettlement that attended them there has been a notable decline in the consumption of alcohol.  To reverse an old saying:  “Ireland sober is Ireland free”—­it may be said that “Ireland free (of landlordism) is Ireland sober.”  And then the happiness of being the master of one’s own homestead!  No race in the world clings so lovingly to the soil as the Irish.  We have the clan feeling of a personal love and affection for the spot of earth where we were born, and when the shadows of evening begin to fall athwart our lives, do we not wish to lay ourselves down in that hallowed spot where the bones of our forefathers mingle with the dust of ages?  Truly we love the land of our birth—­every stone of it, every blade of grass that grows in it, its lakes, its valleys, and its streams, each mountain that in rugged grandeur stands sentinel over it, each rivulet that whispers its beautiful story to us—­and because we would yet own it for our very own, we grudge not the sacrifices that its final deliverance demands, for it will be all the dearer in that its liberty was dearly purchased with the tears and the blood of our best!