orator but not a statesman; his ideas were wild, fanciful dreams.  Whilst vehemently upholding the English connection he was playing into the hands of England’s opponents by reminding them that England’s difficulty was Ireland’s opportunity; whilst hating the very idea of a Union, he was making the existing system impossible by preventing the passing of a commercial treaty; whilst passionately supporting Protestant ascendancy, he was advocating a measure which at that moment would have brought about the establishment either of a Roman Catholic ascendancy or more probably of a Jacobin Republic.  He saw his supporters dwindling slowly from seventy-seven in 1783 to thirty in 1797.  Men were now alive to the fact that the country was in an alarming condition.  They saw what had happened in France but a few years before, and how little Louis XVI had gained by trying to pose as a liberator and a semi-republican; and, knowing that the rebellion with which they were faced was an avowed imitation of the French Revolution, they were coming to the opinion that stern measures were necessary.  In almost every county of three Provinces conspirators were at work, trying to bring down on their country a foreign invasion, and stirring up the people to rebellion and crime by appealing to their agrarian grievances and cupidity, their religious passion, and the discontent produced by great poverty.  For a second time it appeared that Wolfe Tone would succeed in obtaining aid from abroad—­this time from Spain and Holland; and the rebel party in Ireland were now so well organized, and Jacobin feeling was so widespread, that had he done so, it was almost inevitable that Ireland would have been lost to England.  But once more the unexpected was destined to occur.  Early in February Jervis shattered the power of the Spanish Fleet off Cape St. Vincent; and in the summer, just when the Dutch ships, with 14,000 troops on board, were ready to start, and resistance on the part of England seemed hopeless, a violent gale arose and for weeks the whole fleet remained imprisoned in the river; and when at length they did succeed in making a start, the English were ready to meet them within a few miles of the coast of Holland; after a tremendous battle the broken remnant of the Dutch fleet returned to the harbour defeated.  The rage and mortification of Wolfe Tone at his second failure knew no bounds.

In the North of Ireland, however, the rebellion had practically begun.  The magistrates were powerless; the classes who had supported the gentry during the Volunteer Movement were amongst the disaffected.  The country was in a state of anarchy; murders and outrages of every sort were incessant.  That the measures which the Government and their supporters took to crush the rising rebellion were illegal and barbarous, cannot be denied; that they in fact by their violence hurried on the rebellion is not improbable.  But it is still more probable that they were the means of preventing its success; just as, had the Government