"placemen and pensioners" on the floor of the House, to answer an observation addressed to him by another occupant of the gallery. Agreeably attracted by the appearance of his interlocutor (whose name, he presently learned, was Captain Thomas Russell) he entered into a discussion with him, and before those two left the gallery, there was laid the foundations of a friendship which was destined to become one of the supreme motive forces of Irish history.

And

Let us look at these two as they clasp hands for the first time— conscious that we are assisting at one of the great moments in our country's story. Is there need to describe Tone? Have we not felt him like a living presence in our midst all through these great, if sorrowful, days across which we are passing? A "rapid moving angular man with something of the eagle in nose and eyes, the face sallow and thin under the close-cropped upstanding hair." Thomas Russell? Does he not live for us in the portrait painted of him by the hand of dear Mary MacCracken, the woman who loved him to the end, and who claimed as the sole reward of her years of unrequited devotion the privilege of building for him the tomb in holy Downpatrick, wherein his martyred body awaits the Resurrection: the tall black-haired young soldier, built and modelled like an Apollo, with the fire and pride of his dark eyes and passionate mouth softened by the sweetness of his soul-with his voice as moving and melodious as that of Red Hugh himself? So we picture them standing together, and we keep the picture in our hearts for all time.

Tone was so taken by his new friend that he lost no time in introducing him to "the little box of a house on the seaside at Irishtown," where Mrs. Tone and her baby girl were that summer, installed for the sea bathing. A charming society soon made that "little box of a house" its rendezvous. Tom Russell frequently brought his father and his brother, John. William Tone came for week-ends from his cotton factory at Prosperous, and as often as not was accompanied by his sister, Mary. They lived a delicious, picnicky kind of life, where everybody helped with the cooking and washing-up, and then spent the long care-free hours of the afternoon camped out on the seashore, in endless discussions.

What did they talk of? Of everything under the sun-and then always they came back to the one great subject, Ireland, and how she too might take up her position in the march of liberated nations who, with France at their head, were advancing toward the supreme ideals which the French people in July, 1789, had postulated as the true basis of human society: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity."

For the French Revolution was in these days in its first generous and soul-stirring phase-in that pure dawn of which the poet has told us

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven."

And all those who gathered round Matilde Tone's board at Irishtown that summer were young-even seventy-year old Captain Russell. Here they were

"They who had fed their childhood upon dreams."

And behold! their dreams had become true, and there had sprung forth

"helpers to their heart's desire

And stuff at hand plastic as they could wish."

*

Tone has told us the enormous effect produced on the whole people of Ireland by the French Revolution. "The French Revolution," he writes in his Autobiography, "became, in a little time the test of every man's political creed, and the nation was fairly divided into two great parties, the Aristocrats and the Democrats."

The "Ascendancy Party"-the British-blooded ones, who, though only a small fraction of the population, held, "by right of conquest," five-sixths of the landed property of the country, and were in possession of all its place, power and patronage-hated the new manifestations of popular power, which threatened their old monopoly, and were, in their detestation of "French" principles, brought more close even than before to England (who was prescntly to stand forth as the arch-enemy of these principles, and the champion of reactionary aristocracy all over Europe). The Catholics were divided. The bishops, like Dr. Troy, and aristocrats like Lord Kenmare, as well as the country people of those parts of Ireland which had furnished, for generations, recruits for the "Irish Brigade in France," full of horror at the stories of Jacobin "atrocities" carefully disseminated, and full of loyalty and sympathy for the Ancien Régime, were bitterly opposed to the French Revolution. On the other hand, it was greeted with a warm welcome by the new class of educated, enlightened and progressive men among the Catholics: wealthy merchants and manufacturers like John Keogh and John Sweetman of Dublin, or Luke Teeling of Lisburn, and young professional men, trained in foreign universities, like Dr. MacNevin. These recognised that the doctrines of "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity" held in them the salvation

of the enslaved, debased, and outcast Catholics of Ireland. The Dissenters of the North, republican both by tradition, and the genius of their religion, were to a man, enthusiastic admirers of the French Revolution from the start.

One of the truths presently discovered by the keen minds which canvassed these things, that summer of 1790 at Irishtown, was that England, through the instrumentality of the "Protestant Ascendancy," had kept her hold on Ireland by the deliberate fostering of religious differences. Ergo it followed that if Dissenters and Catholics could be persuaded to make common cause, the "Protestant Ascendancy" would not only suffer a rude shock, but the supremacy of its "owners and inventors," the English Government, would meet with an immediate downfall. The first task, therefore, of anyone who wanted to free Ireland was to unite Catholics and Dissenters.

Their similarity of views on the French Revolution was a first step to this union-and we shall presently see how skilfully Tone and his friend, Tom Russell, manœuvred from it.

Other things we shall see, likewise: how England, and the servile Irish Parliament, which was the instrument moulded to her hand, set themselves with demoniac fury to break the union of Irishmen, making of it a crime punishable by tortures terrible and fearful death.

CHAPTER LVIII

THE UNITED IRISHMEN

DURING the leisure of these days, Tone, who had a ready pen and an extraordinary gift of convincing exposition, dashed off a pamphlet addressed to the (Presbyterian) Dissenters, and entitled "An Argument in behalf of the Catholics of Ireland," in which he demonstrated that Dissenters and Catholics had "but one common interest and one common enemy: that the depression and slavery of Ireland was produced and perpetuated by the divisions existing between them, and that consequently, to assert the independence of their country and their own individual liberties, it was necessary to forget all former feuds to consolidate the whole strength of the entire nation, and to form for the future but one people.'

The pamphlet had an enormous and immediate success, and though it was signed "A Northern Whig," the identity of its author was no secret. Presently Counsellor Tone found himself quite a personage, and he was assiduously cultivated by the two sections of the people whom it was his object to unite. The leaders of the advanced party among the Catholics-John Keogh, Byrne, Braughall, Sweetman, etc., showed their appreciation of his efforts. on their behalf, not only by inviting him to all their splendid social gatherings but, in a still more practical way, by appointing him (at a salary counted liberal in those days) to the post of Assistant Secretary to the Catholic Committee, left vacant by the departure of Richard Burke, son of the great Edmund.

At the same time the Dissenters of the North were eager to do him honour their eagerness to meet the author of the pamphlet being doubtlessly increased by the encomiums of his friend Captain Russell, who had, since the close of those pleasant days at Irishtown, been stationed at Belfast on regimental duty. The Volunteers of the Northern capital, "of the first or green company" paid him the rare compliment of electing him an honorary member of their corps (a privilege never before extended to any one except Henry Flood) and they invited him to Belfast, in the words of the Autobiography, "to assist in forming the first club of United Irish

men."

The idea of the United Irishmen as a political organisation

originated with Samuel Neilson (son of a Presbyterian minister), a prosperous woollen merchant in Belfast. Some months before Tone first set foot in the North, he had discussed the matter very fully with Henry Joy MacCracken and Thomas Russell, and won over to his views other enlightened Belfast merchants like the Simmses, MacCabe, Sinclair, MacTier, etc. Tone's services were sought, probably at the suggestion of Russell, to organise the Society, frame its declaration, elaborate its constitution, etc.

The first general meeting of the United Irishmen was held on 18th of October, 1791, and the following resolutions were proposed and carried:

(1) That the weight of English influence in the Government of this country is so great as to require a cordial union among all the people of Ireland, to maintain that balance which is essential to the preservation of our liberties, and the extension of our

commerce.

(2) That the sole constitutional mode by which this influence can be opposed is by a complete and radical reform of the representation of the people in Parliament.

(3) That no reform is just which does not include Irishmen of every religious persuasion.

There we have the original programme of the United Irishmen-no other than the reform programme of the Volunteers, strengthened by the frank and free adoption of the principles of religious equality, and united action, among all sections of the Irish people.

Shortly after its establishment in Belfast, a branch of the Society was started by Tone in Dublin-his chief adjutant in the business being that sturdy veteran, Napper Tandy, whose cannon had played a great, if silent, part in the early successes of the Volunteers.

The new Society went ahead by leaps and bounds, and the establishment in Belfast early in 1792 of the famous newspaper, The Northern Star, under the editorship of Samuel Neilson, did much to spread its principles. Neilson and his friends took the greatest possible interest in the Catholic Convention, which the Catholic Committee, and their energetic Assistant Secretary, Tone, were organising at the time; and the union between Dissenters and Catholics was demonstrated in a dramatic and startling way at the end of the Convention. The delegates chosen to go to London to bear to the King of England that assembly's demand for the complete emancipation of the Catholics chose (for reasons we can conjecture) to make the journey via Belfast, and their presence was made the occasion of a unique demonstration. "Upon their