All the trouble at Gweedore, he thought, came of the agents.

"Agents had been the curse both of Ireland and of the landlord.
The custom being to pay them by commissions on the sums collected, and not a regular salary, the more they can screw either out of the soil, or out of any other resources of the tenants, the better it is for them.

At Gweedore the people earn what they can, not out of the soil, but out of their labour exported to Scotland, or England, or America.

Only yesterday," he continued, turning to his neat mahogany desk and taking up a letter, "I received this with a remittance from America to pay the rent of one of my people." "This was in connection," I asked, "with the 'Plan of Campaign' and your contest here ?" "Yes," he replied; "and a girl of my parish went over to Scotland herself and got the money due there for another family, and brought it back to me here.

You see they make me a kind of savings-bank, and have done so for a long time, long before the 'Plan of Campaign' was talked about as it is now." This was interesting, as I had heard it said by a Nationalist in Dublin that the "Plan of Campaign" was originally suggested by Father M'Fadden.
He made no such claim himself, however, and I made no allusion to this aspect of the matter.