a nation.

"To

formers, for there is no information | safety to be found; how frequently and worth purchasing; nor is Secret Service how certainly we may learn from Mr. money, as of old, at the disposal of Irish Fitzpatrick's acute and diligent rechief secretaries. If a separated Ire- searches. The fact that large sums of land should ever again bring the empire money were paid by the Irish governwithin sight of foreign invasion or civil ment to spies and informers at the time war, the spy and his wages will no doubt of the rebellion, and for some years both again be at the disposal of the im- afterwards, as is shown in such full deperial government. But at the end of tail by Mr. Fitzpatrick, has an importhe eighteenth century the country was tant bearing upon the question of the in a condition of danger and distress, bribery of members of Parliament, by the gravity of which the vigor of Pitt's which the Act of Union is said to have policy, and the splendid success of his been ultimately carried in the Irish administration, have induced posterity House of Commons. Mr. Dunbar Into forget. Girt about with foes, cut off gram, in his interesting "History of the from the friendship of Europe, menaced Legislative Union of Great Britain and with invasion; with commerce crippled Ireland," points out (pp. 209-10) that the and credit impaired; with incompetent | whole amount of Secret Service money generals and a mutinous fleet, the posi- that was placed at the disposal of Lord tion of England was more truly critical Cornwallis in 1799 was 5,000l., and in than it had been since England became 1800, 8,000l. or 10,000l., although a furAnd in all these troubles Ire-ther 8,000l. or 10,000l. a year for five land, not as yet united to Great Britain, years was promised at the time.1 was ever a source of special difficulty whom," says Mr. Ingram, 66 was this and of special danger. 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 5,0001. ready money for a vote," 2 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, 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 honor that were due to O'Leary, and Magan, and Rey

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

1 Cooke to Castlereagh, April 5, 1800. Vide Ross: "Cornwallis Correspondence," vol. iii., p. 226.

2 This letter does not appear to be included in

the "Cornwallis Correspondence" by Ross.

nolds, the maintenance of the useful and abandoning the ornaments of fancy, he humanly undertook the task of conveying duty and instruction to the lowest class of the people.

1

His manners [says Mr. Pratt] were the most winning and artless, anticipating his

good-will 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.3

This smile of a countenance little

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. 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 practised in guile was perhaps the most most fascinating preacher, the most dis- precious possession of the informer, and tinguished controversialist of his time. as early as 1778 the guileless ecclesiastic A priest "who had caught the language was in the enjoyment of a pension from of toleration, who had mastered all the the British government. His mission, chords of liberal philosophy, and played indeed, was not to betray his associates on them like a master, whose mission to the hangman, but to induce his had been to plead against prejudice, to friends to abstain from rebellion. His represent his country as a bleeding tracts, his pamphlets, his addresses lamb, maligned, traduced, oppressed, were a skilful combination of patriotic but ever praying for her enemies, as bombast with sensible exhortation. And eager only to persuade England to offer the pill must have been very cunningly her hand to the Catholic Church, and receive in return the affectionate homage of undying gratitude. "2 O'Leary, like all his fellows and successors in office, enjoyed not only an unblemished but an unassailable reputation.

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 honor and applause."

With a view to further advertising and emphasizing 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

2 The Gentleman's Magazine, February, 1802.

He became a friend of the Prince of Wales, and used his position at court to promote friendly relations between the Whig party and the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, and his endeavors are said to have contributed in

prince and the prince's adherents in that country. Yet we should scarcely be surprised to hear that some of the secrets of Carlton House had found their way through this most worthy channel to the royal ear at Windsor.

in Dublin and Cork in 1789. This thor- It is scarcely necessary to say that oughness of execution showed the true all Hussey's secrets were promptly congenius of double dealing, and the hero veyed by this zealous assistant to Lord of "The O'Leariad " was justly deemed Sydney at the Home Office. But worthy of a higher sphere. As chap- O'Leary was much more than a mere lain to the Irish Brigade, the functions vulgar spy. of an informer were added to his literary engagements, and his secret pension was increased by 100l. a year. So ably did O'Leary perform the duties of his double office, that in 1789, unsuspected of his friends, panegyrized by Curran no small degree to the popularity of the in Parliament as 66 a man, to his personal knowledge, of the most innocent and amiable simplicity of manners, severely regulated by twenty years in a cloister," the recipient of a gold medal that was struck in honor of his virtue and his patriotism, O'Leary was promoted from O'Leary, like so many other clever the important post of a Dublin informer Irishmen, had an immense success in to the more exalted position of a Lon- London. The pensioner of Pitt, he was don spy. He was appointed by some the ally of Fox, and was, as we are told, secret agency assistant to the celebrated" regarded with marked consideration Dr. Thomas Hussey, Irishman by birth, by Edmund Burke." The companion Spaniard by allegiance, Trappist by profession, in truth the secretary to the Spanish ambassador, in name the chaplain to the Spanish Embassy in Manchester Square. The assistance that was rendered by the Irish priest in the Spanish Chancery may easily be imagined. The relations between Spain and England at this time were far from friendly. War was soon to be declared between the two countries. And Hussey, though nominally only a chaplain, enjoyed much of the consideration, and was entrusted with many of the secrets of an accredited envoy.1

1 Hussey's life is an exceedingly interesting one. We have not space to pursue it at any length in the text. He was born in Ireland in 1741, and left his country at an early age in order to be educated, as vas usual with Irish candidates for the priesthood in those days, at the University of Salamanca. Having completed his theological studies in Spain, and spent some years as a monk of La Trappe, he entered the service of Charles III., and was appointed in 1767 to the post of chaplain and secretary When Spain to the Spanish Embassy in London. joined France in the war between England and the American colonies, the Spanish ambassador, of course, quitted London, but he left the conduct of the Embassy to Hussey, who behaved with so much tact and discretion that he secured the good-will and regard of George III.; and he was even entrusted, most strangely, by that orthodox monarch With two missions to Madrid, with the object of detaching Spain from the French alliance. And

of the Prince of Wales, the intimate friend of Lord Moira, the correspondent and legatee of chief informer Higgins, Father O'Leary played off his fine friends one against another with complete success. He was, according to Mr. Fitzpatrick, the lion of the hour in London, where "his portrait looked out from the windows of Bond Street and Piccadilly, surrounded by soul-stirring sentiments culled from his published books." Sentiments, indeed, seem to have been O'Leary's strong point, and they appear to have captivated no less modern and no less distinguished a personage than the late Lord O'Hagan.

Among O'Leary's admirers there was none more ardent than Lord Chancellor O'Hagan, in whose now deserted study still hangs a fine portrait of the friar, inscribed with soul-stirring sentiments on which O'Hagan had long sought to shape his own course.2

although these negotiations were not successful, Hussey retained the confidence of both the Spanish and English governments. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1792, and enjoyed the friendship of Dr. Johnson. A mission to Ireland led to the establishment of the Roman Catholic seminary of Maynooth in 1795, of which he was made the first president. He was afterwards appointed Roman Catholic Bishop of Waterford, and died in 1803.

2 It is impossible to suspect Mr. Fitzpatrick of

Henry Grattan, in the life of his father, at length in the volume that lies before positively asserts that

And it was arranged at

The Paris letters were transmitted first to | fire-eater. her at Hamburg. By her they were for- headquarters that, on the outbreak of warded to Lady Lucy Fitzgerald in London. the rebellion, the Newry contingent of From London Lady Lucy was able to send the Irish army should march under his them on unsuspected. Being himself im- command. Having thus graduated in plicitly trusted, both by Lady Edward and by Lady Lucy, he believed he could give enabled to devote his attention to the treason at home, Doctor Turner was the government information which would enable them to detect and examine these successful practice of treachery abroad. letters in their transit through the post. His first service was the betrayal of No entry could have been more dra- Quigley, O'Connor, and Leary, who were arrested at Margate on their way matic; no information could have been more acceptable; and, as may be sup-els to the Directory. Quigley was tried, to France as envoys from the Irish rebposed, no assistance could have been more valuable.

convicted, and hanged. But Turner was not suspected by his friends; inAn arrangement was concluded. He condeed, almost immediately afterwards tinued at Hamburg as Lady Edward's guest and most trusted friend, saw every one who Lady Edward Fitzgerald had sent him on to came to her house, kept watch over her Paris with a letter to her brother-in-law, letter-bag, was admitted to close and secret General Valence. By Valence he had been conversations upon the prospect of French introduced to Hoche and De la Croix. He interference in Ireland with Reinhard, the had seen Talleyrand and had talked at Minister of the Directory there, and he reg-length with him on the condition of Ireland. ularly kept Lord Downshire informed of Talleyrand, suspicious as he was of all everything which would enable Pitt to men and things, seems to have been watch the conspiracy. completely deceived by this Irish doctor of laws.

The betrayer tells Talleyrand that "the spirit of the North was completely broken." In point of fact, however, it was in the North that the real martial spirit of the United Irishmen blazed, and there the best battles were afterwards fought under the leadership of Orr and Monroe. Turner was anxious to make the French turn their thoughts of invasion to other points on the Irish coast, and he so far succeeded that in August, 1798, Humbert's expedition, embracing not one thousand men, landed at Killala, among the starved and unarmed peasantry of Connaught. He calculated on meeting enthusiastic support; but as Mr. Lecky says, it soon became apparent how fatally he had been deceived. After winning one battle, and losing another, Humbert surrendered to Cornwallis.

"A cool five hundred," demanded by "the person "with all deference," was promptly provided, and " the person" took up his post of observation at Hamburg. Here he is introduced to us by Mr. Fitzpatrick as Samuel Turner, Esq., barrister and doctor of laws, and a member of the Executive of the United Irishmen. And hence he is tracked and traced through his various voyages and disguises from his early profession of patriotism in rebel Ulster, to the day of his death by a friendly bullet in a duel in the Isle of Man. Previous to the year 1796 Samuel Turner, of Turner's Glen, near Newry, in the County Armagh, is first known to fame as a leading member of the great confederacy of United Irishmen, and he is found posing in the double role of martyr and hero, At his post in Hamburg, Turner was winning alternately the admiration and ever on the alert. The election of Lawthe sympathy of the people. A public less, afterwards Lord Cloncurry, to a quarrel with the notorious Luttrell, seat on the Executive Directory of the Lord Carhampton, commander of the United Irishmen was immediately comking's forces in Ireland, about the color municated to Lord Downshire by his of his neckcloth, when the fiery patriot "friend,' as well as the details of a insisted upon challenging the king's rebel mission of Arthur O'Connor to representative in the public streets of Hoche in Switzerland, and afterwards Newry, did much no doubt to increase in France. Both Lawless and O'Connor his reputation both as a rebel and as a were arrested; but Turner remained