“It was distinctly stipulated that the enormous privileges which were suddenly and unexpectedly conferred upon the tenants were to be enjoyed by them conditionally upon the fulfilment on their part of the statutory obligations specified in the Act.  Of those, by far the most important was the punctual payment of the rent fixed by the Court for the judicial term.

“This obligation being unfulfilled, the landlord might reasonably claim that he should be free to exercise his own discretion in determining whether any given tenancy should or should not be perpetuated.

“In many cases [such cases are probably not so numerous on my estate as upon many others] the resumption of the holding, and the consolidation of adjoining farms, would be clearly advantageous to the whole community.  In the congested districts the consolidation of farms is the only solution that I have seen suggested for meeting a chronic difficulty.

“I have no reason to believe that the Judicial Rents in force on my estate are such that, upon an average of the yield and prices of agricultural produce, my tenants would find it difficult to pay them.”

In spite of all these considerations Lord Lansdowne instructed Mr. Trench to grant to these tenants under judicial leases an abatement of 20 per cent. on the November gale of 1886.  This abatement, freely offered, was gladly accepted.  There had been no outrages or disturbances on the Kerry properties, and the relations of the landlord with his tenants, before and after this visit of Lord Lansdowne to Kerry, and these reductions which followed it, had been, and continued to be, excellent.

But the tale of Kerry reached Luggacurren; and certain of the tenants on the latter estate were moved by it to demand for the Queen’s County property identical treatment with that accorded to the very differently situated property in Kerry.

The leaders of the Luggacurren movement, I gather from Mr. Hind, never pretended inability to pay their rents.  They simply demanded abatements of 35 per cent. on non-judicial, and 25 per cent. on judicial, rents as their due, on the ground that they should be treated like the tenants in Kerry:  and the Plan of Campaign being by this time in full operation in more than one part of Ireland, they threatened to resort to it if their demand was refused.  Lord Lansdowne at once declared that he would not repeat at Luggacurren his concession made in Kerry as to the rents judicially fixed; but he offered on a fair consideration of the non-judicial rents to make abatements on them ranging from 15 to 25 per cent.

The offer was refused, and the war began.  On the 23d of March 1887 Mr. Kilbride was evicted.  One week afterwards, on the 29th of March, he got up in the rooms of the National League in Dublin, and openly declared that “the Luggacurren evictions differed from most other evictions in this, that they were able to pay the rent.  It was a fight,” he exultingly exclaimed, “of intelligence against intelligence; it was diamond cut diamond!” In other words, it was a struggle, not for justice, but for victory.