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.