 Agitation by tenant farmers continued to press for compulsory land purchase, but the four years of almost ceaseless activity that O’Brien put into the League had not brought the benefits for the tenants he had hoped for, apart from giving the Parliamentary party a new lease of life.Nevertheless, the Chief Secretary for Ireland Wyndham came to recognise the dire situation of the starved population of the west of Ireland.The existence of the United Irish League, the conversion of the Ulster Protestant tenant leader T. W. Russell to compulsory land purchase, O'Brien whipping up enthusiasm for his winter program of boycotting and agitation together with the cost of maintaining a huge police force to quell agrarian unrest, influenced Wyndham to recognise that the time had come to construct a Land Bill for Ireland.