self modified it, they made a display of force, and the Goldsmiths' corps of Volunteers reappeared in arms and paraded in defiance of the proclamation. The Corps were ordered to disperse instantly under threat of having their arms taken from them. They thought of resisting, but they reflected that there were now 2,500 soldiers in Dublin, and obeyed. Dr. Troy and five other bishops published a Pastoral to be read in every chapel in the kingdom. " Loyalty and obedience to law had ever peculiarly distinguished the Roman Catholics of Ireland." Those qualities "should be more than ever conspicuous when the beloved Sovereign, the father of all his people, with unprecedented benevolence and condescension, had recommended their claims to the Legislature." 1 Wolfe Tone began to perceive that he and the United Irishmen had been used by the Catholic Committee to frighten the Government, and had been flung over when the end was gained. "Will the Catholics be satisfied?" he wrote. "I believe they will, and be damned.” 2

Dundas was scarcely less alarmed for the opposite reason. The Cabinet had consented to the limitation, "to gratify the prejudices of the Protestants, and from a belief that larger concessions could not be carried in the Irish Parliament." He was led to fear "that the British Government had been the dupe of men who were either insincere in their expressions of apprehension, or had got the better of them when it suited their purpose." The Catholics, he was afraid, would reject the Bill, and the national party in Par

1 "Address of the five bishops, January 25, 1793." — Plowden, vol. iv. 2 Journal, February 4, 1793.

8 "Dundas to Westmoreland, February 9."—S. P. O.

liament would outbid the Government, again appeal to national sentiment, and raise the cry of a United Ireland.

Amidst these various alarms and distractions, Major Hobart's own opinion remained unchanged, that to yield to Irish intimidation never had and never would or could come to good. On the 4th of February, however, he fulfilled the task imposed upon him, and explained the details of the intended measure. The Catholics had been for ten years restored to their civil rights. The Act of '92 had opened the bar to them. But on the novel theory that no man was free who was not a consenting party to the laws by which he was governed, they were still slaves. Their shackles were now to be struck off. Their unremitting loyalty for a hundred years, Major Hobart said, showed the continuance of these political disabilities to be no longer necessary. He proposed to admit Catholics to the franchise, to the magistracy, and the grand juries, on the same terms as Protestants. An English Act was about to open the army and navy to them. The Arms Act was to be repealed so far as affected Catholics possessing real estate or moderate personal property, and was to be extended to Protestants who had none.1

Sir Hercules Langrishe seconded Hobart with peculiar grace. The Catholics, he said, had come forward on earlier occasions to resist the invasion of a foreign enemy. They were coming forward now to resist the invasion of foreign principles more dangerous than armies, more cruel than the sword. The old dangers from Popery were extinct; new dangers had

1 Irish Debates, February 4; compare Irish Statutes, 33 George III. cap. 21.

arisen against which the Catholics would be the truest allies.

If this was true, all would be well; but there followed Langrishe a speaker to whom it appeared not to be true, and who could give a reason for the faith that was in him. There had entered the House in 1790, among other new members, a certain Dr. Duigenan, sprung from the old stock of the O'Dewgenans, born in a mud cabin, Catholic of the Catholics, Irish of the Irish. Educated at a hedge school, and designed for the priesthood, young Duigenan had caught the eye of a Protestant clergyman, who introduced him into a grammar school. Thence having changed his religion and modified his name he found his way to a fellowship at Trinity College, and thence to distinction at the bar and to Parliament. Coarse in manners, rough in tongue, exactly informed of his country's history, and acquainted with his countrymen's character, he was a vulgar edition of Fitzgibbon, and resembled him as the buzzard resembles the eagle.

This man rose to speak for the first time when Langrishe ended. He held in his hand the Catholic petition, which he described as uprooting the policy which had resisted the shock of three general rebellions. He denied the loyalty of the Irish Catholics. He pointed to the Irish brigade in France. He spoke of the Irish regiments in the French service who had fought under La Fayette in America. More justly he pointed to the Whiteboys and Defenders, and to the midnight incendiaries who were plundering Protestant houses of arms these at least the spontaneous growth of the Irish soil, who in all that they did "were manifesting immortal hatred to the British

name and nation." "The Irish Catholics," he said,1 "to a man esteem all Protestants as usurpers of their estates. To this day they settle those estates on the marriage of their sons and daughters. They have accurate maps of them. They have lately published in Dublin a map of this kingdom cantoned out among the old proprietors. They abhor all Protestants and all Englishmen as plunderers and oppressors, exclusive of their detestation of them as heretics. If the Par

liament of this kingdom can be so infatuated as to put the Irish Catholics on a better footing than the English Catholics, and if the English nation shall countenance such a frenzy, either this kingdom will be forever severed from the British Empire, or it must be again conquered by a British army. The Protestants of Ireland are but the British garrison in an enemy's country, and if deserted by the parent State must surrender at discretion. English ministers are simply blind. I tell them they are greatly deceived if they have been induced to believe that an Irish Catholic is, ever was, or ever will be, a loyal subject of a British Protestant King or a Protestant Government."

Not a man in the House, not Grattan himself, if put on his oath, could have denied that in this last sentence Duigenan was speaking more than the bitter truth; but nothing is so unpalatable as truth when it cannot be acted on. Speaker after speaker rose to deny what it was inconvenient to admit. Sir Henry Cavendish said that not another member in the House

agreed in it. One member only, Mr. Ogle, of Wexford, had the courage to say that he did agree.

1 And if Ireland was to remain a separate kingdom, his argument was as unanswerable as his facts were authentic.

"The effect of the measure proposed," Mr. Ogle said, "must be either a total separation or a union. I have always thought I would rather lay my head on the block than consent to a union. But I declare before the Almighty, I would rather pass an Act of Union than the Bill before the House."

Duigenan's and Ogle's words, though unsupported in debate, found an echo in too many hearts to fail of their effect. Major Hobart sent word to the Catholic Committee that unless he could tell the House that they were satisfied, unless they would pledge themselves to dissolve, and cease to agitate thenceforward, the Bill would be dropped. The Parliament would prefer to resist where they stood, rather than give their opponents additional strength by yielding.1

The Committee received at the same moment a most significant intimation that whatever the English Cabinet might say or think, the Irish Executive did not mean to be trifled with. A secret committee of the House of Lords had sat under Fitzgibbon's directions from the first day of the session to inquire into the causes of the general disorder. They had reported against Volunteer Corps and pseudo-representative conventions as incompatible with tranquillity. The day after the introduction of Hobart's Bill, the Attorney General alarmed the House with the information that large quantities of arms were being imported and distributed. A Bill was introduced and rapidly passed forbidding the importation or possession of guns or powder wi license, or the removal of cannon or powder from one part of the country to another, and giving the magistrates power to search either ship, dwelling-house, or store where they had

1 Tone's Journal, February 8.