The Dublin Society, formed within a month of Belfast, declared that it was to be a "principal rule of conduct... to attend those things in which we all agree, to exclude those in which we differ". This did not imply an indifference to the issues. But the result was that "as a movement", the United Irishmen were not associated with what could later be recognised as an economic or social programme. Given the central role it was to play in the eventual development of Irish democracy, the most startling omission was the absence, beyond the disclaimer of wholesale Catholic restitution, of any scheme or principle land reform. Jemmy Hope might be clear that this should not be "a delusive fixity of tenure [that allows the landlord to continue to draw the last potato out of the warm ashes of the poor man's fire". But for the great rural mass of the Irish people this was an existential question upon which neither he nor any central resolution spoke for the Society.