and feathering committee, the city mob was in perfect enmity against the authors of the tyrannous Police Bill.

In union alone was there to be found strength. The Protestant reformers who were in earnest felt that they were nothing without the Catholics. Paris had abolished distinctions of creed. Ireland's first cry was to recall three million fellow-citizens to the national standard. Catholic and Protestant were to shake hands over the buried memories of ancient quarrels, and combine in a glorious struggle against the common foe.

SECTION II.

THE character of the new movement may be conveniently studied in the person of its most celebrated representative. Theobald Wolfe Tone was born on the 20th of June, 1763. His grandfather was a farmer at Naas; his father a coachmaker in Dublin. Theobald was the eldest son. He was educated at a good school, where he showed talents, but was incurably idle. His fancy was for the army, but his father, ambitious for him of a higher career, sent him instead to Trinity College, where, though the idleness was uncured, he maintained his reputation for ability. When he was nineteen he was second in a duel between two fellow-students, where his friend killed his antagonist. Such a misfortune was too common to attract notice. Tone finished his college career as if nothing had happened, and immediately after he fell in love. His fair one returned his affection. As neither of them possessed a sixpence, they feared their parents might interpose delays, so they shortened the road to happiness by an elopement. This, too, was in keeping with the general recklessness of the time. The young couple were forgiven, but Theobald, leaving his airy ways, was condemned to a profession. The wife remained in Dublin. The husband was sent to London, according to Irish custom, to study law for two years at the Temple. The responsibilities of matrimony failed to steady so mercurial a tempera

ment. Young Tone hated law as he hated all regular studies. He never opened his Blackstone. He eked out his resources by writing articles for newspapers. He meditated emigration to the South Sea Islands, and addressed a memorial to Pitt on the propriety of founding a military college there. His communication being left unnoticed, he vowed that he would make Pitt smart for neglecting him. He returned to Dublin to be called to the bar in 1789, "knowing," he says, "as much of law as he knew of necromancy." He went circuit and paid his expenses; but preferring to conquer fame and fortune by a less tedious process, he turned to politics, composed a patriotic pamphlet on the Round Robin, and attracted the favorable notice of the Opposition leaders. George Ponsonby smiled upon him. The Northern Whig Club, the brother society of the club in Dublin, established by Lord Moira and Lord Charlemont, elected him a member.

Tone, however, had already outgrown the Whig philosophy. He had found a friend in the gallery of the House of Commons of more congenial temperament, a retired ensign, who had been in India, named Russell. These two, with Tone's young wife, spent the summer of 1790 together by the sea. They had little hopes of their own country. Tone turned his thoughts again to emigration, a second time he drew an outline of his colonial scheme, and sent it, not again to Pitt, but to Lord Grenville. The project was not without sense, for Lord Grenville sent him a courteous acknowledgment, and promised to bear his overtures in mind.

"If the plan had been followed," says Tone, "Russell and I were both going instead of planning revolu

tions in Ireland; "but Lord Grenville thought no more of the matter, and confessing frankly that personal resentment was the explanation of his subsequent conduct, he renewed his vow to make the Cabinet repent. In the winter he founded a rival club in Dublin, composed of spirits like his own. Among the members were Mr. Stack, a clerical fellow of Trinity; Whitly Stokes, the dean, keeper of the college lions, as Tone nicknamed him; Dr. Drennan, a physician; Peter Burrowes, a rising barrister; Thomas Addis Emmett, a barrister also, elder brother of Robert, all of whom left their mark in the development of the Irish drama.

Of this party, Tone liked Whitly Stokes the best, their opinions most nearly coinciding; the sole fault of Stokes being that he was not for lawless measures. "What he would highly that he would holily." A reservation which Tone early concluded it would be impossible to allow.

The Bastile fell in July 1789; in 1790, Burke published his letters on the French Revolution, to which Tom Paine replied with "The Rights of Man." Tone and his friends were for Tom Paine, and young Ireland was of the same way of thinking. In Tone's own words, "oppressed, plundered, insulted Ireland" was electrified into life.1 The Northern Whig Club, spite of its aristocratic connections, was scarcely less sympathetic. The Irish Parliament was dissolved in the summer, and the members spared neither their fortunes nor their energies to defeat the Castle candidates. Robert Stewart,2 then an ardent patriot, carried Down in the popular interest after a struggle of fifty-four days. Sir Hercules Rowley and Mr.

1 Memoirs of Theobald Wolfe Tone, by himself.

2 Afterwards Lord Castlereagh, then twenty-one years old.

O'Neil, both members of the club, were returned for Antrim. They were carried through Belfast in a triumphal car with cannons firing. Volunteers revived for the occasion, marched at their side; and Hibernia walked before them with a wreath in one hand and a pole with a cap of liberty in the other. The town was illuminated at night. Fires blazed on all the adjoining hill-tops, and the Volunteer Light Dragoons met on Bunker's Hill, name of significant omen, to swear that they would never lay down their arms till their country was free. The city determined that in the ensuing year it would observe the 14th of July with becoming solemnity as the anniversary of the fall of the Bastile.

Fired with these scenes, and seeing, as he supposed, the fields ripening rapidly for the harvest, Ensign Russell, who was now living at Belfast, invited Tone to sketch an outline of policy to be ready for the celebration. Tone replied with composing a singular and characteristic paper, which, however extravagant and absurd it may appear, yet must be read also with the recollection that it kindled a fire in Ireland which a hundred thousand men scarcely sufficed to extinguish, and which cost sixty thousand Irish lives. The object was to form a society of "United IrishIt was to be instituted" with the secrecy and something of the ceremonial of Freemasonry; secrecy to pique curiosity; ceremonial to strike the soul through the senses, and addressing the whole man, animate his philosophy by the energy of his passions."

men."

"Secrecy," writes Tone, "is expedient and necessary. It will make the bond of union more cohesive and the spirit of union more ardent and more condensed. It 1 History of Belfast, p. 345.