The Real Author of the "Plan of Campaign"

Thames Star, Volume XIX, Issue 5671, 31 March 1887, Page 4

The Real Author of the "Plan of Campaign"

Although the initial velocity of the "Plan of Campaign" was given to it by the Chicago Convention, still it would be a mistake to imagine the idea is a new one. It is, in fact a correspondent of the Times points ont, only an old suggestion. The author of Young Ireland admitted this as far back aa November 27th, and disclosed the startling fact that Archbishop Croke had been one of the original patentees of the present anti-rent conspiracy. ' That paper said :—" Mr Dillon's rent audit at Portumna will be an historic scene. It appears that it is the simplest thing in the world, now that it has been shown that it can be done, that the Irish tenantry, instead of paying fifteen millions of money a year to enable a handful of worthless and heartless idlers to evict, should keep the money in their own hands to prevent extermination. Yet what a weary age of suffering for the Irish peasantry there elapsed since the days when Archbishop Croke, John Mitchel, and James Finton Lalor first broached the idea, until last Thursday, when the Clanricarde tenants brought their rent into a common war chest, and sent the dread estate agent home with a heavy heart and empty pockets." Whatever share Archbishop Croke had in the original scheme, is impossible to say, but the entire " Plan of Campaign" was published and signed by James Finton Lalor in a paper called the Irish Felon, which was started when Mitchel was transported, in order to carry out the views of the United Irishmen, and has been suppressed by the Government. Only three numbers of the Irish Felon were published—June 24 to July, 8, 18d8~and in them the entire "Plan of Campaign" is elaborately described. Lalor had been one of a small group of men who bad broken away from O'Connel and formed the Irish con federation. He entirely disbelieved in Repeal as a national cry, and he wished to substitute for it a strike against rent.