ment lasted but an hour or two. On his release he commenced a prosecution against the Viceroy, by which Dublin was entertained and excited for the remainder of the year.

SECTION VII.

So far the Catholic Committee had trusted to expectations held out by England, and had turned a deaf ear to the blandishments of Tone. Their petition had been flung back into their faces. Pitt, if still in their favor, was unwilling or unable to force his wishes on the Parliament. Further pressure was evidently necessary. Their difficulty hitherto had been from the secession of the moderates. The claim of the Committee to represent the Catholics of Ireland had been disallowed; they had been termed in contempt "shopkeepers and shoplifters," and Keogh and Byrne, the principal leaders, resolved on a bold stroke. The Volunteer Convention of '83 had failed because it was a body in arms and illegal. The Congress of '84 could not get itself chosen, for the High Sheriffs were afraid to hold the elections. If the Catholic bishops would assist, a Catholic Convention could be elected to which no valid objection could be made, and of the right of which to speak for the general body there could be no uncertainty. There would be difficulty. The Protestant gentry would do their utmost in opposition. The Bishops were timid, accustomed many of them to depend on the Castle, and unwilling to offend the leading Catholic nobility. In was unlikely that they could be brought to act without support from other quarters, and Keogh now boldly called in Wolfe Tone, and with Tone the alliance with the United Lodges. Keogh himself was more or less

serious in his religious belief. Tone and his friends were frank in their admissions that they believed nothing. The Catholic Committee were not particular. They desired to show the world that sooner than fail they would fling themselves on the Revolution. Wolfe Tone was appointed their special agent. Richard McCormick, a United Irishman also, became their secretary. The combination and the intentions of the Convention were no sooner formed than they were known at the Castle. Fitzgibbon, who alone was under no illusions, was for taking measures as prompt and decisive as those with which he had crushed the Congress in '84. If an independent representative assembly was allowed to meet and debate, he was confident that it would overset the Parliament. It would be better to act at once, he said, when the Committee were weak, than to wait till they had collected money and had gained the confidence of the people. He proposed to issue a proclamation against unlawful assemblies, and to intimate privately to the principal Catholics that if they took part in elections they would be prosecuted. Neither the Chancellor nor Lord Westmoreland had any doubt of their power to check this new movement, on one condition, that they could be sure of being backed by the Cabinet. Here was the real doubt. From some quarter, perhaps from Beaconsfield, Keogh had learnt that he had nothing to fear in that quarter. The object of the Convention was to petition the King in the name of the Catholics of Ireland; and the Committee asserted in a manifesto, with the use of the largest capitals, that "they had the FIRST AUTHORITY for saying that the application would have infinite weight.”

Could it be true that, notwithstanding their disclaimer of Richard Burke, the Cabinet were still secretly encouraging Irish agitation unknown to the legitimate authority to whom they had delegated the Government? Major Hobart was in London. The Viceroy directed him to see Pitt and Dundas, and ascertain their real sentiments. Nothing could be more dangerous, nothing more fatal to the respect which, in Ireland, beyond all countries in the world, the executive administration required to maintain, than the belief that some other body was the true representative of the opinion of the advisers of the Crown. "If," Westmoreland wrote, "you can plainly ascertain from them that they will support the existing Establishment, if they will treat with decided coldness any ambassador or address from any other body, no mischief can happen. It is the suspicion of English toleration that causes the present bustle. I am as sensible as they can be that it is good policy that the Catholics should be attached to the English Government, but we must take care that in the flirtation we do not lose our power. If the dislike they manifest to Reform in England extends to Ireland, we may be confident of their support. No English Reform is so dangerous as this Catholic National Assembly. Endeavor to sift what steps Pitt thinks we might venture. If the Assembly is bona fide elected and subsists, we must decide whether we will oppose or submit." 1

Mr. Pitt, like other sanguine statesmen before and since, had discovered that Ireland had been troublesome for want of "Irish ideas" in the management of her. The Protestant gentry had made themselves 1 "The Earl of Westmoreland to Major Hobart, June 7, 1792."- S. P. O.

a by-word. The Protestant Parliament, in the debates on the Commercial Propositions and on the Regency, had behaved like an assembly of Bedlamites. The Belfast Whig Club was in open sympathy with the Jacobins. In the well-disposed, loyal, and pious Catholics he was hoping to find a conservative element to cool the revolutionary fever. He would have been less confident of his own judgment could he have seen the party who, under Keogh's auspices, were preparing for a summer campaign to agitate for the assembly of the Catholic Convention. They appear in Tone's Diary, half-a-dozen of them in all, and each passing by a nickname. Tone himself passed modestly under the soubriquet of Mr. Hutton; Keogh, the moving spirit, was Gog; McCormick, the committee's secretary, was Magog; Whitley Stokes, the Dean of Trinity, was the Keeper; Napper Tandy was the Tribune; "the Hypocrite" was Dr. MacDonnell, a distinguished Dissenting leader in Ulster. The first object being to secure the thorough support of the Presbyterians, Belfast was chosen for the opening of the operations, where the ground was already prepared. The Belfast petition for the removal of the Catholic disabilties having been rejected by Parliament, the Republicans had replied by a demonstration. On the 19th of April there had been a United dinner there of Catholics and Protestants, where the toasts had been "Tom Paine and the Rights of Man," "Napper Tandy and the Rights of the Subject," "Wolfe Tone and Reform of Parliament," while the Catholic parish priest had proposed "Religion without Priestcraft." 1 On the 14th of July there was to be a second revolutionary celebra

1 History of Belfast, April 19, 1792.