In truth, the man’s nature was kindly and tolerant; courtesy came more natural to him than invective.  Above all, he was sensitive for the reputation of his country in the eyes of the world, and the spectacle of Irishmen heaping vilifications on each other always filled him with distaste.  Whether the taunts passed between Nationalist and Unionist or Nationalist and Nationalist made little difference to his feeling.  With him it was no empty phrase that he regarded all Irishmen in equal degree as his fellow-countrymen.

In 1902 he was once more a party to a continued effort made by Irishmen outside of party lines to solve a part of the national difficulty.  The policy of land purchase had proved its immense superiority over that of dual ownership and had even been introduced on a considerable scale.  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.