are aristocrats at heart; that the barrier of nationalities, which you believe effaced, remains almost entire. All those people whom you believe so near, are five hundred leagues from you."* This in the abstract, is true, varying with the necessities of the people; but one is not bound to believe a man free, because he is satisfied with his life; nor regard as liberty what would satisfy an individual. It is the philosophy that is embodied, the principle to be maintained, the truth to be asserted, and not the individual that embodies, maintains, or asserts.

"Mr. Byrne," said a notorious slave of the Commons, Sir Henry Cavendish, to Tone's publisher, the day after the publication of the pamphlet quoted above, "Mr. Byrne, if the author of that work is serious, he ought to be hanged." So unaccustomed was he to such language, Cavendish, no doubt, thought the writer mad. Tone tells us that an English Bishop with five or six thousand a year, laboriously earned in the church, also said to his publisher: "Sir, if the principles contained in that abominable work were to spread, do you know that you would have to pay for your coals at the rate of £5 a ton?" The pamphlet, however, created little impression, the timid publisher having suppressed it.

It was now some years after the great display of the Volunteers, when the nation had been declared "independent;" but the Irish Parliament was only a shadow of the English one. Reform was

The People. By J. Michelet.

demanded, conventions of the Volunteers met, plans were proposed, but nothing effected. There were able minds who espoused the national cause in the Parliament, but the patriotism of even the most gifted was displayed in a modified form. It all arose from the sophistication of the people into the belief that they were independent when they were not. Lord Edward Fitzgerald denounced Grattan for his unrepublicanism, and for his avowing that the Irish would back up the English in the war. This came of acknowledging the king over the Lords and Commons. But men in Parliament like Fitzgerald, and out of it like Wolfe Tone, were noble exceptions to the rule of men engaged at that period in the politics of their country. The action of the few great men of the opposition, was to be sure, not so much their own fault as the position into which they were thrown and strange as it may seem they were looked upon in the senate as seditionists and rebels. Parliament in possession of the Protestants, was a mere caucus of the aristocracy. "To the English," says an able writer, "it was a convenient servant and a helpless antagonist."

The Protestant party had been for above a century in easy enjoyment of the church, the law, the revenue, the army, the navy, the magistracy, the corporations, and all institutions receiving or extending patronage. Not one-tenth of the entire population, and descended from foreign plunderers and usurpers, in English connection they alone beheld security; and England, profiting by their weaknesses, augmented their fears,

gave them her protection, and took in exchange the commerce, the liberties of Ireland. The events of the American Revolution emboldened the Catholics and Presbyterians, and thus forced the Protestants into some slightly-beneficial measures of redress, but they remained attached to their protectress; a property party, an aristocracy.

The Dissenters-double in numbers to the Protestants-were chiefly manufacturers and traders, and did not believe their existence depended on the immutability of their slavishness to England. They formed the flower of the army of '82. They were the first to demand parliamentary reform. The first to come forward in vindication of the principles of the French Revolution.

The Catholics, numerically were the most formidable, embracing, as they did, the peasantry of three provinces, and a considerable portion of the business class. The exactions of the Penal Laws had left them but a small proportion of the landed interest. "There was no injustice, no disgrace, no disqualification, moral, political or religious, civil or military that was not heaped upon them."

Thus stood the island.

Tone threw himself into the Catholic cause. He wisely saw that to effect anything for the country they should think and speak boldly; and so determined to amalgamate them with the Presbyterians. He saw that in the identification of their interests and affections the interests and affections of the people as they were-lay the only foundation-the sole hope

of the liberty of either or the glorious desire which inspired his heart and soul. "To unite the whole people of Ireland; to abolish the memory of past dissensions; and to substitute the common name of Irishman in place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenter,"-these were the means he employed, or ambitioned to employ, in the assertion of the final independence of his land.

With these views he wrote his "Argument in Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland," addressed to the Dissenters. He was the apostle of union, consolidation, strength, liberty; and enjoyed the gratification of finding that his arguments and doctrines fell wholesomely on the ear of the North, for which they were intended. Through the instrumentality of this pamphlet he became acquainted with Keogh, McCormick, Sweetman, Byrne, and other leaders of the General Catholic Committee. His reputation spreading rapidly, the Volunteers of Belfast elected him an honorary member; a favor never bestowed but in one other instance, on Harry Flood.

Following up these flattering tokens of approval, he went to Belfast, in company with his friend Thomas Russell, and on the 12th October, 1791, he founded the Society of United Irishmen. On the 18th the first regular meeting was held. The club consisted of thirty-six original members, and Tone wrote all the resolutions as well as the declaration of the society; which expressed emphatically that idea of fraternity which the name indicated. Thus were planted the seeds of that organization which was destined to con

vulse the empire, and exhibit the Irish in a noble and unfortunate, though gloriously-fought assertion of their rights. In November Tone returning to Dublin, set about making the acquaintance of some prominent men, and on the 9th of the same month a Dublin branch of the United Irishmen was held; Hon. Simon Butler being the chairman and Napper Tandy the secretary. So progresses the organizer and his organization.

"It is worthy of attention," says Dr. Madden, "that both Tone and Tandy at this period were republicans, and yet the society they founded was formed expressly to obtain a reform in Parliament, and the abolition of the Penal Code."* Tone knew well that he could not effect anything by such a premature movement as plunging them, from their comparative darkness, into the full light which illumined his principles. They should be led boldly, though with a self-preservative caution, which, without breeding timidity in the bold, would make bold the timid. Tone himself says: "At this time the establishment of a Republic was not the immediate object of my speculations, my object was to secure the independence of my country under any form of government to which object I was led by a hatred of England, so deeply rooted in my nature that it was rather an instinct than a principle."

The new society grew rapidly into stateliness and strength by the adhesion of the Catholics and many

* Lives and Times of United Irishmen.