on. A delegation of the leading
citizens of Cork travelled all the way to Mayo to entreat him to
reconsider his decision. To them he said: "There is not the smallest
danger of any split either in the Party, or in the League, or in the
country. There will be a perfectly free field for the development of
any alternative policy; and I will not use my retirement in any way
whatever to criticise or obstruct; neither, I am certain, will anybody
in the country who has any regard for my wishes."

But having got all they wanted, "the determined campaigners"
mysteriously abandoned their determined campaign. Mr Dillon's health
again required that he should bask 'neath the sunny southern skies of
Italy, whilst Mr Davitt betook himself to the United States, without
either of them making a single speech or publishing a single
suggestion to the tenants how they were to guard themselves against
the "inflated prices" and the national insolvency they had been
threatening them with. Having destroyed the plans of the National
Directory for testing the Purchase Act they had no guidance of their
own to offer. The tenants were left leaderless, to make their own
bargains as best they could, with the inevitable result that the
landlords, thanks to "the determined campaigners," were able to force
up prices two years above the standard which the Directory of the
League had decided to stand out and fight for.

It used to be said of Daniel O'Connell that whenever _The Times_
praised him he subjected himself to an examination of conscience to
find out wherein he had offended as against Ireland. Likewise one
would have supposed that when Mr Dillon found himself patted on the
back by the extreme Orange gang he might have asked himself: "Wherein
am I wrong to have earned the plaudits of these people?" For if Mr
Dillon was rabid in his opposition to the policy of Conciliation the
Ulster Orangemen were ferocious in their denunciation of it, Mr Moore,
K.C., referred to it as "the cowardly, rotten, and sickening policy of
Conciliation." Small wonder that the Orange extremists should have
dreaded this policy, since it had already been the means of creating
in the North an Independent Orange Order, who unhesitatingly declared
as the first article of their creed that they were "Irishmen first of
all," and who had an honest and enthusiastic spokesman in the House of
Commons in the person of Mr Thomas Sloane, and an able and, indeed, a
brilliant leader in Ire