John Mitchel one of the Confederation leaders, was very impressed by Lalor's views on land reform, and in a letter to William Smith O'Brien himself the leader of the Confederation, said of him “Mr. Lalor, …does not now go for the whole of his system, but contemplates violent pressure on the landlords of those districts to coerce them into a fair settlement of the tenure question; the coercion to take the form of non-payment to such landlords as hold out.” A policy Mitchel was later to adopt.