tion of the civil power has proved ineffectual, We, the Lord-Lieutenant and Council, determined to suppress such attempts, and desirous to prevent the evildisposed or misled from falling into dangers to which ignorance may expose them, do forewarn all men from entering into the said societies. We charge all persons having knowledge of those meetings to give information of them; and as it has become necessary to employ military force, we have ordered all officers to oppose such as should resist them in the execution of their duty with the exertion of the utmost force. We command our officers, civil and military, and all other subjects, to use their utmost endeavors to discover pikes, guns, swords, weapons, and ammunition of all kinds concealed. We charge all persons having such arms in their hands to deliver them at their peril. Believing that many of his Majesty's subjects may have joined these societies without knowing their nature, or from intimidation, and may be willing to return to their allegiance, we promise full pardon to all persons so seduced who, before the 24th of June, will surrender to any magistrate of the country where they reside, take the oath of allegiance, and give recognizances for their good behavior."

A copy of this proclamation was sent to every magistrate and to every officer in command of a detachment. Precise directions accompanied it to disarm the people everywhere, to send parties of troops to search where arms were supposed to be concealed, and to treat every person as a rebel who resisted them in the discharge of their duty.

The gauntlet was thus thrown down. The Government had given a clear intimation that they would yield no further, and now was the time for the United

Irishmen to show of what metal they were made. The French negotiation was hanging fire. The precious interval of the mutiny was passing away. On the appearance of the proclamation a secret meeting of Delegates, from all parts of Ireland, was held at Dublin to decide what they should do. The Ulster men were for an instant rising. The Militia they believed to be disaffected to a man. They asserted, with or without ground, that they had friends in the Castle garrison who would assist in a surprise. There were depôts of arms and ammunition at Athlone and Mullingar which they were confident of being able to secure. If they had Athlone in their hands, the country was expected to rise between that place and Drogheda. Communication with the North would thus be cut off, and Lake could be overpowered. Arthur O'Connor was for immediate action also, and undertook to raise twenty thousand men in the South.

At that time, and while the disarmament had been only commenced, they might doubtless have effected something considerable. But the Dublin Committee, magnificent on platform or in leading articles, were in action arrant cowards. They insisted that the French must be waited for. High words rose. The hard republican Northerners, when they went into a conspiracy, meant business by it, not blatant timidity. When the Dublin men refused to go with them, they thought at one time of attempting the Castle alone. There were seventy or eighty of them who could depend on one another. They trusted that the mob would join when a beginning had been made; and only an accidental change of the guard made them relinquish their purpose after all.

They returned to Belfast, meaning to rise alone against Lake, but they were embarrassed and alarmed by the frequent arrests of their leaders. Treachery of some kind was evidently at work. A coolness arose between them and the Southern Catholics. They distrusted their allies; they doubted whether, in company with cowards, they could make the revolution the glorious thing which they had anticipated. They began to think it was time to take care of themselves some went abroad, others stayed at home, and meddled no more in politics, and from that moment the interest of Ulster in the rebellion began to decline.1

Wolfe Tone, in France, bewailed bitterly his Dublin friends' poltroonery. Keogh he had long known to be a poor creature, but he confessed himself astonished that Emmett had not shown more energy. The labor of years was crumbling away. One after another his comrades joined him with the same pitiful story, that the United Lodges throughout the Northern counties were disheartened and dissolving. The people waited till the last day mentioned in the proclamation, and then, seeing their leaders passive and no help reaching them from abroad, "submitted almost entirely," gave up their arms, and took the oath of allegiance.2 Tone consoled himself with the hope that when the French landed the oath would be forgotten, or, as he expressed it, "that their present submission would not prevent the people from doing what was right." But the loss of Ulster was, in fact, the loss of the right arm of the insurrection.

1 "See a most curious account of the Dublin meeting, and the consequences of it, given by one of the Ulster Delegates to Lord Downshire in London, October 1797." -S. P. O.

2 Wolfe Tone's Journal, August 5, 1797.

The Presbyterians fell away, and gradually reunited themselves to their own Orange kindred. The conspiracy declined rapidly into the form which rebellions in that country inevitably assume, and became a strictly nationalist movement of the Catholic Irish, with a few foolish enthusiasts of no religion at all in the Committee by which it was nominally ruled. The supreme direction passed now to the Dublin executive. Wolfe Tone was not completely in their confidence. An attorney named Lewines, who had been bred as a Jesuit, was sent to Paris as their resident agent with the Directory. A memorial was drawn up, indicating the points of the coast where an invading force could most easily be landed, and where it would be most certain of receiving support from the people. Doctor MacNeven, the ablest member of the association that remained, undertook the delivery of it, and followed Lewines 1 to France. Difficulties had arisen with the French Government as to the scale on which assistance was to be rendered. The Directory, if it meddled with Ireland, preferred to invade with a force which would make France master of the country after the English had been expelled. The Irish Committee desired to limit their dangerous auxiliaries to numbers which would be insufficient to enable them to make Ireland a second Italy. Suspicions, which had arisen on both sides, were now dispelled. MacNeven's memoir was

1 "Doctor MacNeven is a physician, very eloquent and very clever; a member of the Catholic Committee, and calculated by his talents to take a lead in the treason intrusted to him. He has been in close habits of intimacy with Lord Edward Fitzgerald. I did not know this person was

He must be strictly watched,

so much employed as he appears to be. both here and in England; and an exact description of his person, which is a very remarkable one, shall be transmitted."

"Camden to Portland,

received, and favorably considered. The Irish agents pressed for immediate assistance. The Directory promised to use the very first opportunity, and undertook meanwhile to make no peace with England of which the independence of Ireland was not a condition.

Thus on all sides the situation was clearing. The memoir said that the Irish priests were no longer alarmed at French irreligion, and were now wellaffected to the cause.1 The English Cabinet ceased to worry Lord Camden with suggestions of a change of policy. Their hearts had failed them after Grattan's secession. The hatred of Carhampton had led them to think of superseding him by a more popular Commander-in-Chief. Lord Cornwallis had been spoken of, and Carhampton and Camden, who had no love for their ungrateful office, were but too willing too pass over to him the responsibility both of the command of the troops and of the Viceroyalty itself, if he would accept it.2 Cornwallis's solid qualities were unequal to the understanding of the Irish problem. He believed, perhaps under the influence of his friend Lord Moira, in the common platitudes of the Liberal party. In a conversation with Pitt and Dundas he declared it impossible for him "to engage in the business . unless means were taken immediately to separate the Catholics and Dissenters.” He considered that "very great concessions, little, if at all, short of what was called Catholic Emancipa

1 It is remarkable that although MacNeven himself carried the memoir to Paris, and no suspicion has been suggested of MacNeven's treachery, the original document, not a copy, but the memoir itself, was in a few days in the hands of the English Cabinet, and was by them forwarded to Lord Camden.

2"Camden to Lord Cornwallis, May 23, 1797." - Cornwallis Letters, vol. ii. p. 327.