*

but he is parsimonious; he may be unwilling to do business, but he is equally unwilling to spend money; he may not be fond of comfort, but he is inordinately fond of cash. Thus we find that the spies and informers of all grades and denominations, of whom Mr. Fitzpatrick writes, took good care that their valuable services should be obtained only for valuable consideration; and after spending the public money with a free hand in the agreeable discharge of their public duties, they usually died, not as the moralist would describe, in poverty, obscurity, and remorse, but with a proud look and a high stomach, and a very satisfactory balance at their banker's. The rich men in Ireland are generally those who have nothing of their own. The man of property, as a rule, is poor. And in Dublin a hundred years ago it is at least certain that the men who lived the most luxuriously were those who lived on public plunder. For the superior classes, rich sinecures, flagrant jobs, 'pen'sions on the Irish establishment;' for the middle-class informer, the Secret Service money; for the humbler servant of Government, mere robbery. The grossest frauds prevailed in almost every department of State. The public stores were plundered with impunity in open day; the arms, ammunition, and military accoutrements condemned as useless were boldly taken out of one gate of the magazine and brought in at the other, and charged anew to the public account. Journeymen armourers who worked in the arsenal seldom went home to their meals without conveying away a musket, a sword, or brace of pistols, as lawful perquisites sanctioned by the connivance of their superiors.† Clerks in subordinate departments, with salaries not exceeding 1001. a year, kept handsome houses in town and country, with splendid establishments; insolvent squires kept open house, and were lavish of their wine-merchant's claret; parsimonious curmudgeons accumulated large fortunes; rich usurers acquired old estates. There was a great deal of what was called pleasure; there was nothing that anyone could call business, and the poor devil,' as at all times in Ireland, went to the wall. He was plundered by those who had nothing

*The calling does not seem to have been attended with any special danger. The only instance recorded by Mr. Fitzpatrick of an informer being killed by his compatriots is that of Phillips, a priest, in January 1796 (p. 173); and he adds that 'punishment of informers by death was not of the frequency that was supposed.'

†The Sham Squire, p. 205.

better to plunder, and he was then, as now, a pawn in the hands of superior players; food for political powder in the sordid strife of party warfare. Such was Irish society in the days when rebellion was at least a possibility. But for over ninety years that mitigated form of civil war that now goes by the name of Irish politics has rather been a contest of wits than a contest of arms, a great international game, in fact, in which, as in the modern game of poker, the boldest and most unscrupulous player commonly wins. Patriotism, according to Dr. Johnson, is the last refuge of a scoundrel, but in Ireland it is his first thought. It is his chosen career; it is the profession in which, if his scoundrelism be at once enriched with ability and adorned with effrontery, he is most certain of success. To say that treachery was the ever present refuge of a patriot would be less pointed, but in Ireland it would at least be somewhat more exact. And just as in the world of unscrupulous finance there are always men who seek to make money by the failure of projects which they themselves appear to support, and in whose success they profess to be deeply interested, so in the no less sordid world of Irish disaffection the informer springs into existence on the same day as the plot. Sprung, we should say, rather than springs, for times have changed, and at the present moment in Ireland there is no such thing as treason. The game is played with different cards. There are no informers, for there is no information worth purchasing; nor is Secret Service money, as of old, at the disposal of Irish Chief Secretaries. If a separated Ireland should ever again bring the Empire within sight of foreign invasion or civil war, the spy and his wages will no doubt both again be at the disposal of the Imperial Government. But at the end of the eighteenth century the country was in a condition of danger and distress, the gravity of which the vigour of Pitt's policy, and the splendid success of his administration, have induced posterity to forget. Girt about with foes, cut off from the friendship of Europe, menaced with invasion; with commerce crippled and credit impaired; with incompetent generals and a mutinous fleet, the position of England was more truly critical than it had been since England became a nation. And in all these troubles Ireland, not as yet united to Great Britain, was ever a source of special difficulty and of special danger.

The most constant peril to which the country was exposed was that of invasion by the French. It was in Ireland that the French were to land, It was indeed in Ireland that

they actually landed, and it was from Ireland that proceeded the invitation, the information, the envoys that made a landing in Ireland a perpetual possibility and a perpetual danger. Against domestic treason the domestic spy was at once the most politic, the most efficacious, and the least costly means of defence. There is a good deal of bribery,' as was ingenuously remarked at the time, in 10,000l.,' but 10,000l. would not have gone far in the equipment and maintenance of an army.

Five-and-twenty or thirty years ago it was said by a witty Irish judge that the safest place in Ireland in which a traitor could find himself was the dock; and the saying was at once more witty and more true than may at first sight appear. But a hundred years ago it was far otherwise; the dock was more than dangerous, it was usually fatal. The secret meeting, the anonymous letter, the betrayed comrade, the bag of honest guineas-rather in that direction was safety to be found; how frequently and how certainly we may learn from Mr. Fitzpatrick's acute and diligent researches. The fact that large sums of money were paid by the Irish Government to spies and informers at the time of the rebellion, and for some years afterwards, as is shown in such full detail by Mr. Fitzpatrick, has an important bearing upon the question of the bribery of members of Parliament, by which the Act of Union is said to have been ultimately carried in the Irish House of Commons. Mr. Dunbar Ingram, in his interesting History of the Legisla'tive Union of Great Britain and Ireland,' points out (pp. 209-10) that the whole amount of Secret Service money that was placed at the disposal of Lord Cornwallis in 1799 was 5,000l., and in 1800, 8,000l. or 10,000l., although a further 8,000l. or 10,000l. a year for five years was promised at the time." "To whom,' says Mr. Ingram, 'was this money to be given ?' It is clear that so slender a fund would not have purchased a majority in a hostile House of Commons at a time when, according to Lord Cornwallis himself (February 8, 1800), the enemy were offering 5,000l. ready money for a vote,' and one of the supporters of the Government actually received 4,000l. from the Opposition to change sides and vote against the Union, which he did in the month of February 1800 (D. Ingram,

*Cooke to Castlereagh, April 5, 1800. Vide Ross: Correspondence,' vol. iii. p. 226.

Cornwallis

†This letter does not appear to be included in the 'Cornwallis

Correspondence' by Ross,

p. 216). Yet, although Mr. Ingram suggests that 'spies had to be paid, informers maintained, past services to 'be remunerated, and rewards for apprehension to be "offered,' he is somewhat at a loss to account for the expenditure of the full 10,000l. a year outside the walls of Parliament, more especially after the Union. Had Mr. Fitzpatrick's statement been before him when he wrote in 1887, he would scarcely have been troubled in his search. The satisfaction of such hidden horse-leeches as Turner and McNally, the debts of honour that were due to O'Leary, and Magan, and Reynolds, the maintenance of the useful and unblushing Higgins, can have been barely provided for out of that modest fund for Secret Service which the ignorant imaginativeness of half-informed politicians has assigned to the wholesale corruption of a patriotic Parliament.

* 6

The first of the Irish informers whose doings are brought to light by Mr. Fitzpatrick is no less a person than the celebrated Arthur O'Leary, the subject of two eulogistic biographies, a man whose memory is worshipped by Irish Catholic politicians with a devotion which approaches 'idolatry.' O'Leary, as he was known to the world, was the most fascinating preacher, the most distinguished controversialist of his time. A priest who had caught the 'language of toleration, who had mastered all the chords ' of liberal philosophy, and played on them like a master, 'whose mission had been to plead against prejudice, to represent his country as a bleeding lamb, maligned, traduced, oppressed, but ever praying for her enemies, as eager only to persuade England to offer her hand to the 'Catholic Church, and receive in return the affectionate homage of undying gratitude.' † O'Leary, like all his fellows and successors in office, enjoyed not only an unblemished but an unassailable reputation.

6

"No one was more generally loved and revered than Father O'Leary" [writes Charles Butler]. Yelverton, speaking in the Irish Parliament, said: "Unattached to this world's affairs, Father O'Leary can have none but the purest motives of rendering service to the cause of morality and his country." He was the subject of a grand panegyric from the pulpit. Two biographies of him have been written by anointed hands. Idolised while living, his memory was cherished by thousands. His name wore a halo!'

One by England in 1822, and another by Buckley published as late as 1867.

'A man of learning, a philosopher, a Franciscan [said Grattan] did the most eminent service to his country in the hour of its greatest danger. . . . Poor in everything but genius and philosophy, he had no property at stake, no family to fear for; but descending from the contemplation of wisdom, and abandoning the ornaments of fancy, he humanely undertook the task of conveying duty and instruction to the lowest class of the people.'

'His manners [says Mr. Pratt] were the most winning and artless, anticipating his goodwill and urbanity before he opened his lips; and when they were opened, his expressions did but ratify what those manners had before ensured. And you had a further earnest of this in the benign and ineffable smile of a countenance so little practised in guile that it at the same time invited to confidence, and denoted an impossibility of your being betrayed.'*

6

This smile of a countenance little practised in guile was perhaps the most precious possession of the informer, and as early as 1778 the guileless ecclesiastic was in the enjoyment of a pension from the British Government. His mission indeed was not to betray his associates to the hangman, but to induce his friends to abstain from rebellion. His tracts, his pamphlets, his addresses were a skilful combination of patriotic bombast with sensible exhortation. And the pill must have been very cunningly gilded, for we read (p. 232) that in 1783 a distinguished corps of volunteers had conferred upon him the honorary title of chaplain. On that memorable day,' says Mr. Buckley, when the delegates of a hundred thousand men met in the [Dublin] Rotunda, with all the pomp and power that an armed nation could 'concentrate for a great national purpose, it was gratifying to the assembled masses of spectators to behold Father 'O'Leary, as he entered the building, received at the door by the entire guard of the volunteers with a full salute of rested arms. He marched up the hall amid the deafening cheers of surrounding delegates, and in the debate 'which followed, his name was frequently mentioned with 'honour and applause.'

6

With a view to further advertising and emphasising the lessons of his pamphlets and speeches, O'Leary published, or caused to be published, a satire, or mock heroic poem upon his own serious writings, entitled The O'Leariad,' which ran through two editions in Dublin and Cork in 1789. This thoroughness of execution showed the true genius of double dealing, and the hero of The O'Leariad' was justly deemed worthy of a higher sphere. As chaplain to the Irish

* The 'Gentleman's Magazine,' February 1802.