For Daly, by 1879 the time for action was right. He was expressing impatience in the "Connaught Telegraph" with achieving anything for the tenants, either through constitutional means or John Devoy's 'New Departure' (an 'unholy alliance' between pragmatic Fenians prepared to delay their resort to force, and radical Home Rulers). Delay could mean desperate men resorting to another failed uprising which he abhorred. Parnell was positioning himself to take over the Home Rule League after Isaac Butt died, and a growing land campaign would give him an issue for the coming election. Daly was not a Fenian but was prepared to accept any meaningful assistance short of violence from them. The current climate of the New Departure offered a perhaps short-lived opportunity to combine Fenian mass mobilisation and muscle, with activism within the constitutional system provided by Parnell and O'Connor Power, with Michael Davitt the key man in both camps.