In Ulster Unionist eyes this added particular sinister significance to the whole affair, scented a political conspiracy and were outraged that a permanent official should dare to tamper with the sacred British connection. MacDonnell claimed he had written to his superior Wyndham informing him, who failed to take particular notice of the letter. When in March 1905 Unionists launched their attack and Ulster resentment became overwhelming, Wyndham, by now a broken man, was forced to retire from office. Nationalist leaders taken by surprise by the Association's proposals, reacted ambiguously, Redmond at first greeted the devolution scheme, then sided with Dillon who was vehemently against it, regarding the Irish party as the only standard bearer of self-government. Anything less than the fulfilment of the full demand for self-government was dangerous, because accepting less might postpone true self-government indefinitely. Instead the two leaders bent their energies on sounding out where the Liberals stood on the Home Rule issue in the forthcoming general election. The Dunraven group were atypical of their cast, but for a time combined with O'Brien's sense of nationalism and Healy's opportunism, produced with the Land Conference—one of the most sustained and extensive attempts at unionist-nationalist co-operation in the twentieth century. On the other hand, the Dillonite dogma of hostility towards any form of reconciliation or conference between agnostic classes and conflicting parties, that is, towards any collaboration with the hereditary enemy at any level, precipitated into subsequent events on the political stage in Ireland up to the end of the century. Notes History of Ireland (1801–1923) Land reform in Ireland Irish nationalism