That this and similar information which came in to them from a hundred quarters contained the exact truth the Irish Council were painfully aware. They were in the extraordinary position of an executive administration in possession of the inmost secrets of an intended and already organized insurrection. They had the names in their hands of most, if not all, of the leaders. They had evidence which, if they could have produced it, would have enabled them at once, and almost without effort, to have trampled out the danger; yet they could not publish what they knew, and appeal for permission to suspend the Constitution, for the Whigs in England would have clamored that they were seeking excuses for introducing arbitrary power. Every witness that they possessed would have forsworn himself if dragged forward into a court, and thus they were condemned to sit still, as if enchanted, to watch the approach of a convulsion which, had they been free to act, they could have checked with the touch of a finger; and to bear the reproach in later times of having wickedly encouraged the rebellion, that they might ask afterwards for a renewal of the lease of tyranny.

To Lord Camden the prospect became daily more gloomy. A tree of liberty was planted in Antrim; passengers on the road were made to stop and touch their hats to it, and shout for France and freedom. The militia camp at Limerick "was so infected with disloyalty" that General Dalrymple recommended the dispersion of the division stationed there. A soldier suspected of giving information to his officers was murdered. A sergeant of a Fencible regiment was shot at and mortally wounded for the same reason. Lord Carhampton had secreted two informers in his

own park at Luttrell's Town. It did not save them. They were tracked out and found dead. So profound and so well-founded was the distrust of the militia that the country gentlemen applied for permission to raise companies of Yeomanry out of persons on whom they knew that they could depend. It was the Volunteer movement once more, but entered on by men who were now "clothed and in their right minds." The Government was reluctant. Lord Camden shivered at the thought that "he would be charged with arming Protestants against Papists." But "in a moment of danger there was no remedy."1 Permission was given. Loyal Protestant Ireland drew its breath at last, and flew to arms in town and country.

The Orangemen, disowned in their special corporate existence, entered by hundreds into the Ulster regiments. The Corporation of Dublin raised four regiments of infantry, and four troops of horse. The Dublin Bar raised a corps. Lord Ormond brought into the field two troops of light cavalry at his own expense.2 The national press screamed its loudest. Keogh and his friends applied for leave to raise Catholic corps beside the Protestant. Pelham congratulated them on their anxiety to defend their country, and told them that "their services would be most welcome if they pleased to enter the regiments of their Protestant fellow-subjects; the Crown knew no differences of religion." The Catholics turned off in pretended resentment. The movement went forward the more earnestly. In a few weeks more than 30,000 men were enrolled, and with the help of the Govern

1 "Camden to Portland, August 24, 28, September 3. Portland to Camden, August 29."-- S. P. O.

2"Camden to Portland, September." —S. P. O.

ment stores most of them were armed. The militia were no longer masters of the situation; and with renewed confidence at the spirit which had shown itself Camden ventured a blow at the insurgent leaders. Napper Tandy, scenting danger, had fled, but Keogh was arrested in Dublin; and on the same day Downshire and Castlereagh stooped down on Belfast with a regiment of dependable troops, seized Neilson, Orr, Russell, the two Simmses, and five other gentlemen, and brought them as prisoners to the Castle. Struck thus on the brain at a critical moment, and overawed by the rapidly-forming Yeomanry, the rebel organization was embarrassed by its own completeness, and for many months- months, it will be seen, in which Ireland's fortunes were hanging in the balance-they were unable to rally from the blow. The Viceroy called Parliament together to legalize the Yeomanry and to justify these prompt measures by suspending the Habeas Corpus Act.

The autumn session was made as brief as possible, for the country gentlemen were needed at their homes. But though brief it was stormy. The Opposition, who had counted on the agitation to terrify the Government into conceding the Catholic claims, were furious at the success of measures which threatened the reassertion of Protestant ascendancy. They professed to abhor rebellion: that the country should be kept upon the brink of it was vital to their hopes, and within the limits of the Constitution they played upon Irish passion with as much zeal as the Belfast Committee.

1 "The Opposition are endeavoring to inflame the minds of the people; and as the channel of the House of Commons is the most legal, so it is the most dangerous mode of infusing that poison."—"Camden to Portland, October 13."

An amendment to the Address was moved again by Grattan, who inveighed, as in the spring, on the impunity of the Orange outrages. He insisted that England should capitulate, as he called it, recall Fitzwilliam, and restore peace by abolishing distinctions of religion. To every one, who desired that Ireland should remain connected with Great Britain it was by this time certain that distinctions of religion could not be abolished there so long as a separate Parliament sat in Dublin. To propose the admission of the Catholics under a menace of invasion and insurrection was to presume on the presence of the House of a degree of folly and cowardice which even Grattan could not believe to exist there. His aim was not to convince the House, but to inflame the people out of doors. Pelham told him calmly that his speech might have come more fitly from a member of the French Convention, and that the exclusion of the Catholics from Parliament was necessary for the maintenance of the empire.

"Will the Catholics," shrieked Grattan in reply, "will the Irishmen suffer a stranger to tell us on what proud terms the English Government will consent to rule in Ireland? - to dictate the incapacity of the nation as the term of their dominion, and the base condition of our connection and allegiance?"

To this question, in a house of a hundred and sixtyone members, a hundred and forty-nine were found to answer yes, for twelve only followed Grattan to a division.

Undaunted by his friend's defeat, George Ponsonby opposed the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. “The Irish Ministers," he said, "were men of vindictive spirit, and he would not sacrifice the liberty of the subject to the lovers of vengeance."

The times were too serious for folly. Ponsonby was defeated more heavily than Grattan, by a hundred and thirty-seven to seven.

But the object was the publication of the speeches in the Dublin journals. Again Grattan brought up Emancipation, and let loose upon it the torrent of his eloquence. His motion was that the admission of the Catholics to Parliament was consistent with the security of the empire; his argument, the so-called Liberal assertion that the demands of the majority of a nation ought to be and must be conceded.

"It has come to this," said Mervyn Archdall; "in 1793 the Catholics were to be eternally grateful for admission to the franchise; they say now, Admit us to Parliament, and we will not thank you-refuse, and we will rebel."

"Mr. Grattan tells us," said Dr. Duigenan, "that if his motion is not complied with, three million Catholics will rise in rebellion and join the Gallic murderers in an invasion. The agitators in Dublin are to a man republicans and democrats. The enemy

Mr.

which we have to confront is hatred to England and to the principles of the Revolution of 1688. Grattan speaks of the people of Ireland as if there were none but Catholics. Are we nothing, then! we Protestants? I said that the admission of the Catholics to Parliament had been the cause of all the trouble in Ireland from the time of Elizabeth to the Revolution, and I was called a prejudiced fool. Then were Burghley, Walsingham, Hampden, Russell, Somers, Hardwicke, all prejudiced fools, for the reason which influenced them in England exists at this moment in Ireland in all its forms?"

Grattan was of course defeated almost by as large