They are not capitalist farmers at all, and few of them are able to average the profits of their industry, setting the gains of a good, against the losses of a bad, season.

In October 1886, while Mr.Dillon was organising his Plan of Campaign, Lord Lansdowne visited his Kerry property to look into the condition of the people.

The local Bank had just failed, and the shopkeepers and money-lenders were refusing credit and calling in loans.

The pressure they put upon these small farmers, together with the fall in the price of dairy produce and of young stock at that time, caused real distress, and Lord Lansdowne, after looking into the situation, offered, of his own motion, abatements varying from 25 to 35 per cent, to all of them whose rents had not been judicially fixed under the Act of 1881, for a term of fifteen years.
As to these, Lord Lansdowne wrote a letter on the 21st of October 1886 (four days after the promulgation of the Plan of Campaign at Portumna on the Clanricarde property), to his agent, Mr.Townsend Trench.

This letter was published.