Mr. O'Brien has been endeavouring to show that the "
Plan of Campaign " stops murder. He has just said that five fear- ful murders took place on the Clanricarde Estate before the " Plan of Campaign" was put in force, but that there has been none since. And in a letter to yesterday's Times, he in- creases the number to seven. To this Lord Clanricarde replied in Monday's Times that, since the "Plan of Campaign" was put in force, there have been five fearful attempts to murder on his estate, and that, though they did not succeed, their failure was certainly not due to the " Plan of Campaign," since Campaigners were pointed at by the evidence as the originators of these attempts, and that in one case where the skull was fractured, the crime was done in cold blood before a crowd of witnesses. And it is, indeed, intrinsically improbable in the highest degree, that any unsuccessful con- spiracy to lower rents in violation of the terms of a contract, should reduce the temptation to murder. So far as such an attempt was successful it might, because the tenant would have got what he wanted without it. But where the landlord held out, there can be no doubt that the existence of such a con- spiracy would deepen in each conspirator the feeling that he. had popular sympathy on his side, and that his neighbours would excuse any crime by which he might intimidate those who try to enforce a tenant's fulfilment of his engagements. If murders have diminished since the "Plan of Campaign" was produced, the credit is with Mr. Balfour, not with the authors of that conspiracy.
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