Kitabı oku: «Secret Service Under Pitt», sayfa 16

CHAPTER XVII
THE REGENCY – STRUGGLE BETWEEN WHIG AND TORY CAMPS – O'LEARY AND THE PRINCE OF WALES

The State Papers throw no light on what Plowden styles 'the arbitrary withdrawal of O'Leary's pension.' The following historic incident, now forgotten, and curious in its detail, may have led to that act.

In 1789, a great struggle raged between the Parliaments of England and Ireland on the question of creating the Prince of Wales Regent during the insanity of George the Third. The Prince at this time had been bound up, politically and socially, with the Whigs. Pitt, fearing that the Regency might prove fatal to his ambition and his Cabinet, resisted the heir-apparent's right to the prerogative of his father, and declared that 'the Prince had no better right to administer the government during his father's incapacity than any other subject of the realm.' An address to the Prince from the Irish Parliament requested that he would 'take upon himself the government of Ireland during the continuation of the King's indisposition, and no longer; and under the title of Prince Regent of Ireland, in the name, and on behalf of his Majesty, to exercise, according to the laws and constitution of that kingdom, all regal powers, jurisdiction, and prerogatives to the crown and government thereof belonging.'

Pelham, speaking of 'the tricks and intrigues of Mr. Pitt's faction,' adds, 'I have not time to express how strongly the Prince is affected by the confidence and attachment of the Irish Parliament.' Portland takes the same tone. The Buckingham Papers afford rich material for a history of this struggle. The noble editor admits that 'the Parliament of Ireland preserved the unquestionable right of deciding the Regency in their own way. The position of Lord Buckingham⁶⁰² had become peculiarly embarrassing. What course should be taken in the event of such an address being carried? The predicament was so strange, and involved constitutional considerations of such importance, as to give the most serious disquietude to the Administration.'⁶⁰³

Hopes were felt that the King might recover. The Viceroy receives instructions to use obstructive tactics, 'to use every possible endeavour, by all means in your power, debating every question, dividing upon every question, moving adjournment upon adjournment, and every other mode that can be suggested, to gain time!'⁶⁰⁴ But the Viceroy did more. He openly threatened to make each opponent 'the victim of his vote.' Fitzgibbon was promised the seals and a peerage if he succeeded for Pitt. Lures and threats were alternately held out. The peerages of Kilmaine, Glentworth, and Cloncurry were sold for hard cash, and the proceeds laid out in the purchase of members. Meanwhile the King got well. Thereupon the Master of the Rolls, the Treasurer, the Clerk of Permits, the Postmaster-general, the Secretary of War, the Comptroller of Stamps, and other public servants, were dismissed. The Duke of Leinster, Lord Shannon, the Ponsonbys were cashiered. Employments that had long remained dormant were revived, sinecures created, salaries increased; while such offices as the Board of Stamps and Accounts, hitherto filled by one, became a joint concern. The weigh-mastership of Cork was divided into three parts, the duties of which were discharged by deputies, while the principals, who pocketed the profits, held seats in Parliament. In 1790, one hundred and ten placemen were members of the House. The Viceroy, Buckingham, during his short régime, added 13,040l. a year to the pension list; the names of the recipients are already on record. On the other hand, some men who had taken the Prince's side in the contest lost their pensions. O'Leary may have been in this batch.⁶⁰⁵ Croly, in his 'Life of George IV,' dilates on the intimate relations which subsisted between the Prince and the priest, and adds that O'Leary was no unskilful medium of intercourse between his Church and the Whigs, and contributed in no slight degree to the popularity of the Prince in Ireland. According to Buckley, the Prince patronised O'Leary to such an extent that rumour whispered it was by him the marriage ceremony with Mrs. Fitzherbert had been performed.

Barrington, describing the chastisement applied to those who, in Ireland, favoured the appointment of the Prince as Regent, says: 'Lord Buckingham vented his wrath on the country;' but what proof have we that the alleged agent of the Castle, O'Leary, incurred that Viceroy's displeasure?

In 1789, the year O'Leary removed permanently to London, he settled down, at the Spanish Ambassador's Chapel in London, as an assistant priest to Dr. Hussey, and, apparently, a most unwelcome one. An extraordinary pamphlet, not known to his biographers, was privately issued by O'Leary referring to a feud between himself and Dr. Hussey. At page 11 O'Leary writes: —

The old clerk told me in the vestry, 'that I might now return to Ireland, as my enemy, the Marquis of Buckingham, had returned to England.' Surprised how or where the clerk of a vestry could get such an insulting information, I recollected that his master [Dr. Hussey] had told me some time before that he had seen a letter from the Marquis of Buckingham, when Viceroy of Ireland, to some nobleman or gentleman of the English Catholic Committee, wherein he depicted the Catholics of that kingdom in very unfavourable if not odious colours, and painted me as one of the ringleaders.⁶⁰⁶

This serves to explain Dr. England's remark in 1822, when accounting for O'Leary's permanent removal to London, that 'his residence in Ireland had become painful;'⁶⁰⁷ but elsewhere in his book he assigns a different reason for the change.

It has been stated [he writes] that a secret condition was annexed to this grant, binding O'Leary to reside in England,⁶⁰⁸ and preventing him from further interference in the political concerns of the empire. The fact, however, is that O'Leary had made previous arrangements for a permanent residence in London – not only as being more favourable to his health, which generally suffered by his visits to Dublin, but from a rational conviction that the great seat of influence and power was the proper sphere of his benevolent exertions.

This biographer did not know O'Leary personally; his conjecture, or explanation, is plausible. But few men would remove for their health to the purlieus of St. Giles and Soho, the mission with which O'Leary had most to do. Its fearful squalor at the period described is curiously shown in Clinch's recently published 'Bloomsbury and St. Giles.' It will be remembered that the preacher of his funeral sermon conveys that the migration in 1789 was caused by O'Leary's refusal to write in a venal Dublin print against the party with whom he had long been associated. Snubbed by the Viceroy, Buckingham, his usefulness at Dublin Castle was now a thing of the past; but yet, as he could not afford to give up all State endowment, I suspect that he settled down in London in some undefined diplomatic rôle, where his tact and influence would find a field for exercise. A most careful memoir of O'Leary, ending with the words 'Requiescat in pace' – written probably by his friend and co-religionist Plowden – appears in the 'Gentleman's Magazine' for February 1802. It contains some facts not noticed by his more diffuse biographers. 'This laudable conduct,' we are told, 'did not escape the attention of the Irish Government, and induced them, when he quitted Ireland, to recommend him to men of power in this country.' I believe that O'Leary's removal to London was made under Government auspices, extended in the hope that, by his diplomatic power, it might lead to useful knowledge and results.

As George, Prince of Wales, held Whig views at this time, Mr. Pitt's great career ran some risk of being cut short. The Prince gathered round him the leading Whig lights, including O'Leary, as we learn from Croly's 'Life of George IV.'⁶⁰⁹ A good picture of life in the Pavilion at Brighton is given, and of the brilliant jokes which capped the hits of Sheridan and Curran. But O'Leary's presence had, I think, a deeper significance. With graver men his intercourse was frequent. 'Edmund Burke was very marked in the regard which he manifested to O'Leary,' writes England. 'Fox was not only Pitt's rival, but the leader of a powerful party constantly on the watch to oust Pitt from office.' It may be presumed that the men of power in London to whom O'Leary, on leaving Ireland, had letters from Dublin Castle, occupied a camp hostile to the Whig garrison of the Pavilion.

One proof that O'Leary wished to regain favour with Pitt is afforded by the casual remark of his biographer. 'When O'Leary learned that his friend (Plowden) was engaged at the desire of Pitt in writing the 'Historical Review,' he sent him his invaluable collections, as affording the best and most authentic materials for the recent history of Ireland.'⁶¹⁰

I do not like that phrase of Plowden in which he says – when speaking of O'Leary's pension – that it was only after giving repeated proofs that the secret condition had been complied with, he received a large arrear.⁶¹¹ Plowden no doubt thinks that the pension was meant as 'hush money;' but it is a question whether O'Leary was quite frank with him as to its character.

'An oak of the forest is too old to be transplanted at fifty,' said Grattan, regarding Flood's removal to London in 1784. 'Disgusted with the condition of his country,' writes O'Leary's later biographer, Buckley, 'and hopeless of doing anything by which it could be improved, he resolved on quitting it altogether and living in the free atmosphere of England, so congenial to a bounding and manly temperament like his… In the year 1789 Arthur O'Leary left Ireland for ever, and took up his residence in London as one of the chaplains to the Spanish Embassy.'⁶¹² It appears, however, from the testimony of Plowden, the attached friend of O'Leary, that it was a condition expressly made by the Crown that O'Leary was 'to reside no more in Ireland.'⁶¹³ I suspect that the appointment just described was brought about by Court intrigue. From the time of the Armada the movements of the Spanish minister were viewed with jealousy, often with alarm. In 1779, when the combined fleets of Spain and France rode menacingly in the Channel, O'Leary, as we have seen, denounced them to the Irish people, and his appointment to the Spanish embassy must have been the work of England rather than of Spain. In 1789 strained relations had again arisen between Spain and England; and a few years later war was actually declared by Spain.⁶¹⁴ Sydney states that O'Leary had already consented to furnish secret information.⁶¹⁵ His present position would enable him to acquire knowledge of, not only the designs of Spain, but of Dr. Hussey too; and without saying that O'Leary could be capable of downright treachery, it is probable that Pitt believed he would. It will be remembered that, in 1780, Dr. Hussey, chief chaplain to the Spanish embassy in London, had been sent with Richard Cumberland to effect a treaty with the Court of Spain, a negotiation not entirely successful. What was the precise nature of the hold which Hussey, originally a Carthusian monk, acquired over the Court of England is destined to remain shrouded. Buckley says it was at the special request of George III. that Dr. Hussey accompanied Mr. Cumberland on a secret mission to Madrid.⁶¹⁶

What Cumberland himself thought of his colleague is curious to see. We are told that 'the high-sounding titles and dignities showered upon Dr. Hussey by the Court of Spain outweighed in his balance English guineas;' that 'in his heart he was as high a priest as à Becket, and as stiff a Catholic as ever kissed the cross;' but yet 'had left behind him in his coffin at La Trappe no one passion native or ingrafted that belonged to him when he entered it.' So clear-sighted a man as Hussey could not fail to see the secret thoughts of Cumberland, or to have diagnosed, in his turn, the jaundiced retina through which he was viewed; for Cumberland complains of 'his singular, sudden, and capricious conduct to the author and his family, of which he was an inmate.'⁶¹⁷ Hussey had demanded his passports to return to England; but on Cumberland's remonstrance paused, and cancelled a letter he had addressed to the English Secretary of State asking leave to return. Mystery covers much of this mission to Spain, for Cumberland says, 'I will reveal no more than I am in honour and strict conscience warranted to make public. For twenty years I have been silent, making no appeals at any time but to my official employers, who were pledged to do me justice.'⁶¹⁸

Mr. Froude tells us that Dr. Hussey⁶¹⁹ was in the confidence of Dundas and Portland, and had received favours from them. Both were prominent statesmen in the Cabinet of Pitt, and both eventually turned against Hussey. Dr. Hussey is described as Chaplain to his Catholic Majesty of Spain, and Rector of the Church of the Spanish Embassy in London. He evidently knew something of O'Leary not revealed to the world.

At this point it may be well to open once more the pamphlet privately printed – 'A Narrative of the Misunderstanding between the Rev. Arthur O'Leary and the Rev. Mr. Hussey.' Its purport, O'Leary says, is to remove the bad impressions which a late report, one which impugned his morality, might have made on some Catholic families, and the reader is requested either to burn the brochure, or erase altogether the name of Mr. Hussey. The latter is just the man to have muttered 'qui s'excuse s'accuse' as he read the following; and O'Leary's remark serves to show that Hussey suspected he had deeper motives.

The desire of co-operating in the work of the ministry [writes O'Leary] was my only inducement for associating with Mr. [Hussey] in the Spanish Ambassador's Chapel. He soon began to throw some obstacles in my way – but in the most insulting and contemptuous manner. The old clerk of his vestry, who retails among the common people all the stories he hears from his employer, was commissioned by him to direct me in the choice of my theme [in the pulpit].⁶²⁰

In 1780, the Spanish ambassador to London was, we learn, 'Count Fernan Nunez, who had committed himself to a conversation from which Mr. Hussey drew very promising expectations.'⁶²¹ But in 1789 we find him succeeded by no less a person than the Marquis del Campo, whose previous attitude, as sub-Premier of Spain, had filled the British Cabinet with alarm.⁶²² Orde, writing to Nepean, of the Home Office, five years before, tells him to be very watchful over this minister; and O'Leary's friend, Plowden, whatever he means by it, says that it was only after giving repeated proofs that the secret conditions had been complied with, that O'Leary received a large arrear of his pension.

'A Narrative of the Misunderstanding' between O'Leary and Hussey shows that the appointment of the former as Hussey's colleague was forced upon the latter, and that Hussey distrusted and despised him, confirming the old adage, two of a trade never agree. O'Leary complains that on Good Friday, in presence of a crowded congregation numbering many Protestants, Hussey sent

one of the boys who attend the altar, twice into the pulpit to interrupt me in the most pathetic part of my discourse by chucking the sleeves of my surplice and ordering me to come down under pretence that the ceremonies of the day were too long. Thus a scene was exhibited of which neither the congregation nor myself had ever been spectators before.

And again: —

By the manner in which he concerted his plans, in waiting until the eve of the days on which I was to appear in public, and then sending me, on a sudden, verbal messages by his clerk, and afterwards such insulting notes as no Prelate would send to the meanest clergyman in his diocese, one would be apt to imagine that he played the part of a skilful general, who amuses an enemy the better to decoy him unprepared into an ambuscade.

I was surprised at such peremptory mandates from a man who, at most, could pretend but to an equality… But his view was, either to disgust me with the chapel, or to commit me with the public, in thus thwarting me in the exercise of my functions.

O'Leary was the lion of the hour; his portrait looked out from the windows of Bond Street and Piccadilly, surrounded by soul-stirring sentiments culled from his published books.⁶²³ There it was that Dr. Hussey sought to reduce his prestige, which he considered overcharged, and to destroy the confidence and respect usually manifested in his regard. It is certain that he felt as uncomfortable in his society as he had ever done in the hair shirt and enforced reserve of La Trappe. He did not brand O'Leary as a spy; he could not do so without offending the Government; but he raised what lawyers call 'a false issue.' Indeed O'Leary charges the doctor, on strong circumstantial evidence, with having supplied to the newspapers paragraphs in which an unworthy innuendo is advanced, and one by no means calculated to exalt the friar's reputation for asceticism: 'In proportion as the breach widened between us, the paragraphs rose in a climax to a greater degree of asperity.'⁶²⁴

Many curious things transpire in this brochure, and amongst them the following: 'I got the very singular information,' writes O'Leary, 'that some years before, in a boarding school at Hampstead, then under his (Hussey's) direction, he took my picture out of a frame, tore it in several pieces, and cast it away with disdain, saying, "One would imagine he is founder of this establishment."'⁶²⁵ Here again I submit that Dr. Hussey raised a false issue, and his dislike to O'Leary, as evidenced by this strong proceeding, must have had deeper grounds than the paltry plea assigned.

When this affair relative to the picture happened [writes O'Leary] I was in Ireland, in the full bloom of my reputation,⁶²⁶ which I would have preserved unfaded to the last moment of my existence, had it not spread on the lips of a man to whom I cannot apply the Italian proverb, Whatever your mouth touches, it heals: 'La vostra bocca sana quel die tocca' (p. 14).

Dr. Hussey, as already stated, was in the secrets of the Crown. In 1784 Sydney tells Orde, rightly or wrongly, that O'Leary had consented to furnish private information. In 1789 O'Leary, as we have seen, removed to London and settled down in alarming proximity not only to Hussey, but to the minister of Spain. Hussey's attachment to Spanish interests, Cumberland states, outweighed his devotion to his English patrons, and of course it was highly inconvenient that a man who played fast and loose with both should be domesticated with O'Leary. 'They are all of them designing knaves,' writes Orde, and doubtless he and his colleagues, acting on the coarse prejudice thus expressed, urged the arrangement on the principle of 'set a thief to catch a thief.' The more refined Sydney probably calculated that it would be 'diamond cut diamond' between them.

The effort it must have cost so polished a person as Dr. Hussey to pursue the course ascribed to him may be inferred from the words of Charles Butler: 'He was a man of great genius, of enlightened piety, with manners at once imposing and elegant, and of enchanting conversation: he did not come in contact with many whom he did not subdue: the highest rank often sunk before him.' Cumberland, his companion in the secret mission, describes him as wearing 'a smile seductive; his address was smooth, obsequious, studiously obliging and, at times, glowingly heightened into an impassioned show of friendship and affection. He was quick enough,' he adds, 'in finding out the characters of men.'

O'Leary appealed to Bishop Douglas, and a meeting between the parties took place at his house. The result was a written statement, dated June 21, 1791, that Dr. Hussey never had any crime or immoral conduct to allege against O'Leary, and that he had left the Spanish Ambassador's chapel of his own free will. 'Mr. O'Leary and I have come to a full explanation upon all past misunderstandings, and are both satisfied with the explanation,' writes Dr. Hussey. This paper was certified by Bishops Douglas and Berington⁶²⁷ and by Francis Plowden to be conformable to Dr. Hussey's verbal declaration. The finale was worthy of an ecclesiastic who wished to avoid disedifying the laity by unseemly wrangles. But, privately, Dr. Hussey took means to prevent a recurrence of an incident which greatly annoyed him. The Castlereagh Papers contain a letter to Lord Hobart from Sir J. Cox Hippisley, in which he mentions as having been reported to Rome, 'a very offensive measure of Hussey's in a way so as to have produced a sort of censure on Bishop Douglas of London.' Dr. Hussey, it is stated, had claimed the right, as chaplain to the Spanish mission, of nominating priests to officiate at the Spanish chapel in London independently of Bishop Douglas.⁶²⁸

Frequent reference has been already made to Del Campo. The concluding words of O'Leary's 'Narrative' go on to say: —

I intended to complain in person or to write a severe letter against him to the Marquis del Campo,⁶²⁹ than whom there are few ambassadors⁶³⁰ of a more amiable disposition, or in whose train a chaplain would be more happy. But, expecting never to be disturbed by Mr. [Hussey], after leaving him in the unrivalled possession of his pulpit and controversy, I retired without the slightest murmur. Had I even been treated with that civility to which I was entitled, I would yet have quitted York Street. We were on the eve of a war with Spain, and from my peculiar obligations to my own sovereign, in case of a threatened invasion, I would have returned to Ireland, where, upon a similar occasion, the exertions in the line of my profession had been attended with the happiest results in promoting that loyalty which recommends my Religion and countrymen.

Here O'Leary, though so recently attached to the Spanish embassy, declares himself a partisan, if not a sentinel, in the English interest. It appears that, while officiating at Spanish Place, he lodged in Warwick Street, probably acting as assistant chaplain to the Bavarian embassy as well, and where, as Mrs. Bellamy records, he arrived opportunely, in 1783, to adjust angry difficulties that had arisen in that quarter. Seven years later, although ostensibly pastor of St. Patrick's, Soho, from 1790 to his death, he seems still attached in some way to the Bavarian chapel and embassy, for the preface to his sermon in denunciation of French principles is dated from Warwick Street, though the sermon itself had been preached at St. Patrick's.

In March 1797, O'Leary's desire to retain the favour of Pitt is traceable in the sermon to which reference has just been made. It was preached before a congregation mainly Irish, but embracing also the famous Duchess of Devonshire, and many other great personages.⁶³¹ Its aim is apparent in the account given of it by the 'Monthly Review' as 'a discourse well adapted to keep alive a high degree of good, warm, Christian hatred of the French, on whom the preacher is very severe, with now and then a stroke of pleasantry, sarcasm and rough wit.' Ireland had been nearly lost to England the previous year by Hoche's expedition to Bantry Bay, but England's unsubsidised allies, the winds, had come to her aid. O'Leary's discourse, occupying fifty pages, was at once issued in pamphlet shape, and reprinted in Dublin.

As has been already observed, O'Leary maintained cordial relations with some men who bore a bad name. Francis Higgins, originally a Newgate felon, became at last a most influential negotiator. Plowden exhibits fully his unpleasant character in the 'Historical Review,' vol. ii. pp. 256-9. 'This man' he says, 'had the address, by coarse flattery and assumed arrogance, to worm himself into the intimacy of several persons of rank and consequence, who demeaned themselves by their obsequiousness to his art, or sold themselves to him. The fact that he died worth 40,000l. is highly illustrative of the system which generated, fostered, and pampered this species of reptile.' Higgins is shown by the 'Cornwallis Papers' to have been a spy on a great scale. There is reason to know that he wormed himself into the confidence of O'Leary; and reason to fear that he turned it to account. The man who began his career by duping a Jesuit and obtaining his co-operation in making an heiress his wife, is not likely to have failed with the genial Franciscan. Higgins early won the friendship of O'Leary; and his bequest 'to my long and faithful friend, the Rev. Arthur O'Leary,' has been already noticed. Fidelity to Shamado seems like fidelity to Mephistopheles!

Higgins liked to utilise profitably the information he acquired from pliable Catholics like Magan.⁶³² Magan was a barrister, and held his head high. It will be remembered that Higgins drew from him the secret of Lord Edward Fitzgerald's hiding place, and for this service alone received 1,000l. in hand, and a pension of 300l. a year. The 'Sham Squire' was not the man to leave money, in 1791, 'to his long and faithful friend,' O'Leary, unless he had made more than the amount by the use of him. Higgins claims O'Leary as a dear friend; the habits of the time warrant the assumption that he was his boon companion too. In the unguarded intimacy of social intercourse, that frank and affable nature is likely to have enriched the Squire's stock of gossip. To what extent that confidence was unfolded can be now but darkly surmised.

O'Leary, if called upon to reveal information to the Government, may have acted with reserve. In softer moments⁶³³ much may have leaked out which was not deliberate betrayal.

It is casually stated by Mr. Lecky (vol. vii. p. 211) that Higgins, in enumerating his services to the Government, especially mentions the expense he had incurred in entertaining priests, and other persons of the higher class, for the purpose of obtaining intelligence. In one respect O'Leary's intercourse with Higgins worked for good. The newspaper of the latter, though an organ of Orangeism, advocated the Catholic claims.

In 1796 Dr. Hussey, afterwards Bishop of Waterford, seems to have accepted the post of secret agent, – probably not widely dissimilar from that which the statesmen of 1784 thought O'Leary would not object to discharge. Higgins, writing to Dublin Castle in October 1796, expresses regret that the Government had not been very judicious in their selection of 'an agent for acting on the Catholics.⁶³⁴ 'The Roman Catholic body hold a superficial opinion of Dr. Hussey as a courtly priest. If anything was to be effected or wished to be done in the Roman Catholic body, Dr. O'Leary would do more with them in one hour than Hussey in seven years. Of this I am perfectly assured; and O'Leary not ten days since wrote me word he would shortly claim a bed at my house.'

O'Leary had a nephew for whom in a recently published letter he hopes to provide a berth when some friends of his would regain their power. The allusion no doubt is to Fox and the Whigs. This is the nephew noticed by Francis Higgins, in a secret letter to Under-Secretary Cooke eight months before the rebellion. 'At a meeting at Bond's, which Lord Edward Fitzgerald and O'Connor attended, O'Connor read a letter from Fox which had been delivered to him (O'C.) by O'Leary, nephew of Dr. O'Leary, who had arrived from London with despatches from Mr. Fox, and set off in the mail for Cork the same night.' These despatches concurred with the United Irishmen as to the necessity of enforcing a parliamentary reform.⁶³⁵

The bequest of Higgins to O'Leary is noticed as strange by the priest's biographer. Was it meant by way of restitution, seeing that the compact to pay O'Leary had been broken? As in the case of the betrayal of Lord Edward Fitzgerald by Magan, 'Shamado' no doubt pocketed the lion's share.

The will of Francis Higgins goes on to say: 'To Andrew D. O'Kelly, of Piccadilly, London, I leave 300l.: declaring that if I did not know that he, my friend, was in great affluence, I would have freely bequeathed him any property I might be possessed of.' This was the man sometimes known as Count O'Kelly, but more generally as Colonel O'Kelly. An Irish judge who once acted as advising counsel for the legatees of O'Kelly, informs me that the latter was originally a jockey, afterwards a successful blackleg, and was made colonel of a regiment that never existed, simply by the Prince Regent addressing him under that title. This explains a remark made by the 'St. James's Gazette,' that 'his military rank, whatever right he may have had to it, as well as to his Countship, could never obtain for him an entrance to the clubs of his fellow sportsmen.'⁶³⁶ He owned the racehorse 'Eclipse,' and by its aid netted 124,000l.

There has been much discussion by O'Leary's biographers upon Plowden's statement as to the stoppage of the pension, and they vainly try to account for so harsh a step. 'What the reason for this withholding was, it is not easy to ascertain,' writes Father Buckley; but, from an observation in the 'Life of Grattan,' by his son, we surmise that it must have been because O'Leary refused to comply with a request made by the minister, that he would write in the support of the Union.⁶³⁷ Plowden takes care to say that the pension was 'hush money.' Buckley's argument demands, however, a fuller reply.

The agitation against the Union took place chiefly in 1799. O'Leary died in January 1802, soon after the Union became law. Plowden, through whom he got the arrears paid, says that it was 'after a lapse of many years, by importunity and solicitation, and repeated proofs of his having complied with the secret conditions, he received a large arrear.' Therefore there could not have been time for all this in the interval between the Union and O'Leary's death.

But, in point of fact, O'Leary did express himself publicly in favour of the Union. His 'Address to the Lords Spiritual and Temporal,' dated from O'Kelly's house, and published in June 1800, mentions that he is 'a great friend to the Union, and reconciled many to it;' and then follows much clever argument in support of the measure. This rather spoils the statement in Grattan's 'Life,' quoted by the biographer of O'Leary as proof that he spurned Pitt's proposal to support the Union.