to out of a total of 20 million in the country. It can be said, that with the Wyndham Land Act the state moved to subvent the process of land purchase in Ireland by means of state loans "as a healing measure". It was precisely the policy which Parnell enunciated in the 1880s.<ref>Bew, Paul: Ireland', The Politics of Enmity 1789–2006', p. 362, Oxford University Press (2007), </ref> Conference versus confrontation Although the Act resulted in vastly extended sales of entire estates – and in this regard deserves to be characterised as revolutionary, the adversary campaign led by Dillon, Davitt and Sexton which claimed it was a landlord victory, created a climax of disillusionment. Not the Act was in question but the manner in which it was won by O'Brien. The issue was – should nationalists co-operate with a minority of Irishmen whose political background was so fundamentally different from theirs? The adversaries said no, O'Brien said yes, pointing to the successful Land Conference as the precursor of further partnerships between nationalists and Unionists. A few weeks after the Act was passed, the precarious consensus achieved by the party was shattered by John Dillon who openly aired his hostility to the Land Act and its underlying premise that it could serve the cause of reconciliation between agnostic classes and conflicting parties during a speech to his constituents at Swinford, County Mayo. O'Brien, who fervently believed in the power of conciliation and the conference approach, never forgave Dillon for his "Swinford revolt". It marked the end of a close friendship going back to the Plan of Campaign years in 1880s. Added aggravation came from Arthur Griffith who denounced the Land Conference as a landlord swindle and seized on Dillon's reaction to prove the party self-confessed incompetents. O'Brien, who had up to then held the initiative, and saw Dillon wantonly attacking a policy which the Irish party and the UIL had approved of and which had begun to reap considerable advantages for the country at large, tried to use his influence with his party leader and conciliation colleague Redmond to crush the opposition of Dillon, Davitt and the Freeman's Journal, but could not get the chairman to act. Redmond balked fearing a rupture with Sexton, Dillon and Davitt, all respected veterans of the Land War, would cause a split and the end of unity in the party. Dillon on the other hand, financially