The particular occasion here alluded to by the bishop arose out of the first attempts to effect the disembarkation of the military stores and equipments from the French shipping, as also to forward them when landed. The case was one of extreme urgency; and proportionate allowance must be made for the French general. Every moment might bring the British cruisers in sight,--two important expeditions had already been baffled in that way,--and the absolute certainty, known to all parties alike, that delay, under these circumstances, was tantamount to ruin; that upon a difference of ten or fifteen minutes, this way or that, might happen to hinge the whole issue of the expedition: such a consciousness gave unavoidably to every demur at this critical moment the color of treachery. Neither boats, nor carts, nor horses could be obtained; the owners most imprudently and selfishly retiring from that service. Such being the extremity, the French general made the bishop responsible for the execution of his orders; but the bishop had really no means to enforce this commission, and failed. Upon that, General Humbert threatened to send his lordship, together with his whole family, prisoners of war to France, and assumed the air of a man violently provoked. Here came the crisis for determining the bishop's weight amongst his immediate flock, and his hold upon their affections. One great bishop, not far off, would, on such a trial, have been exultingly consigned to his fate: that I well know; for Lord Westport and I, merely as his visitors, were attacked in the dusk so fiercely with stones, that we were obliged to forbear going out unless in broad daylight. Luckily the Bishop of Killala had shown himself a Christian pastor, and now he reaped the fruits of his goodness. The public selfishness gave way when the danger of the bishop was made known. The boats, the carts, the horses were now liberally brought in from their lurking-places; the artillery and stores were landed; and the drivers of the carts, &c., were paid in drafts upon the Irish Directory, which (if it were an aerial coin) served at least to mark an unwillingness in the enemy to adopt violent modes of hostility, and ultimately became available in the very character assigned to them by the French general; not, indeed, as drafts upon the rebel, but as claims upon the equity of the English government.