hall be very glad if you will associate me with
yourself."

"The plan of campaign," said Mr. Gladstone, "was one of those devices that
cannot be reconciled with the principles of law and order in a civilised
country. Yet we all know that such devices are the certain result of
misgovernment. With respect to this particular instance, if the plan be
blameable (I cannot deny that I feel it difficult to acquit any such plan)
I feel its authors are not one-tenth part so blameable as the government
whose contemptuous refusal of what they have now granted, was the parent
and source of the mischief."(227) This is worth looking at.

The Cowper Commission, in February 1887, reported that refusal by some
landlords explained much that had occurred in the way of combination, and
that the growth of these combinations had been facilitated by the fall in
prices, restriction of credit by the banks, and other circumstances making
the payment of rent impossible.(228) Remarkable evidence was given by Sir
Redvers Buller. He thought there should be some means of modifying and
redressing the grievance of rents being still higher than the people can
pay. "You have got a very ignorant poor people, and the law should look
after them, instead of which it has only looked after the rich."(229) This
was exactly what Mr. Parnell had said. In the House the government did not
believe him; in Ireland they admitted his case to be true. In one instance
General Buller wrote to the agents of the estate that he believed it was
impossible for the tenants to pay the rent that was demanded; there might
be five or six rogues among them, but in his opinion the greater number of
them were nearer famine than paying rent.(230) In this very case ruthless
evictions followed. The same scenes were enacted elsewhere. The landlords
were within their rights, the courts were bound by the law, the police had
no choice but to back (M133) the courts. The legal ease was complete. The
moral case remained, and it was through these barbarous scenes that in a
rough and non-logical way the realities of the Irish land system for the
first time gained access to the minds of the electors of Great Britain.
Such devices as the plan of campaign came to be regarded in England and
Scotland as what they were, incidents in a great social struggle. In a
vast majority of cases the mutineers succeeded in extorting a reduction of
rent, not any more immoderate than the reduction voluntarily made by