86 THE IRISH AGRARIAN PROBLEM. 



movement going and the hope of forcing the 

 Fenian party into the background.^ The out- 

 come of this movement was the " Plan of 

 Campaign." iVccording to this plan the tenants 

 offered to the landlord, as rent, whatever sum 

 they thought good; if he rejected it they handed 

 the sum over to a triumvirate who were to defray 

 out of it the cost of the agitation.' The whole 

 affair was forced by William O'Brien against 

 the will of Parnell. 



Meantime the Government had appointed a 

 new Commission, the * Cowper Commission,' 

 which had recommended a revision of rents and 

 alterations in the existing tenure. When the 

 Protestant farmers of Ulster, who were against 

 Home Rule, became restless, the Government 

 brought in new legislative proposals. These 

 permitted the judicial rents already fixed by 

 the Land Commission to be altered during the 

 next three years in accordance with the fall in 

 prices.^ Further, the leaseholders were admitted 

 to the benefit of the Act of 1881 and thus 

 150,000 new tenants were brought under its 

 operation.* The same thing took place in the 



* Morley's "Gladstone," III., p. 373. 



^ Morley's "Gladstone," III., pp. 369-370. 



^ [A fall of prices takes place not only in consequence of 

 foreign competition, but also of abundant harvests at home. 

 The prosperity of the farmer, therefore, might sometimes 

 constitute a claim to reduction of rent. The circumstance is 

 one of these which display most vividly the economic absurdity 

 of the dual system of land tenure as conceived at Westminster. 

 — Tra7isl.'\ 



* Montgomery, " Land Tenure in Ireland," p. 179. 



