The debate on this occasion continued during the night, and until eight in the morning. All that fury and folly, the bitterness of party and the keenness of personality, could combine with the passionate eloquence of the Irish mind, was exhibited in this memorable debate. The motion of the popish advocates was lost, but the rebellion was carried. The echo of that debate was heard in the clash of arms throughout Ireland; and Opposition, without actually putting the trumpet to their lips, and marshalling conspiracy, had the guilty honour of stimulating the people into frenzy, which the Irishman calls an appeal to the god of battles, but which, in the language of truth and feeling, is a summons to all the sanguinary resolves and satanic passions of the human mind. The secretary, perhaps foreseeing the results of this night, and certainly indignant at the undisciplined state of the legislative council, suddenly returned to England; and Lord Castlereagh was appointed by his relative, the Viceroy, to fill the post of secretary daring his absence. The rebellion broke out on the night of the 23d of May 1798. In the year 1757, a committee was first established for the relief of Roman Catholics from their disabilities by law. From this justifiable course more dangerous designs were suffered to follow. The success of republicanism in America, and the menaces of war with republican France, suggested the idea of overthrowing the authority of government in Ireland. In 1792, his Majesty's message directed the repeal of the _whole body_ of anti-Romanist statutes, excepting those which prohibited admission into parliament, and into thirty great offices of state, directly connected with the confidential departments of administration. The Romish committee had already extended their views still farther. The well-known Theobald Wolfe Tone was their secretary, and he prepared an alliance with the republicanised Presbyterians of the north, who, in 1791, had organised in Belfast a club entitled "The United Irishmen." The combination of the Romanist of the south and the dissenter of the north was rapidly effected. Their mutual hatreds were compromised, for the sake of their common hostility to Church and State. Upwards of 100,000 men in arms were promised by the north; millions, to be hereafter armed, were offered by the south; agents were despatched to urge French expeditions; correspondences were held with America for aid; the whole machinery of rebellion was in full employment, and a civil war was already contemplated by a group of villains, incapable of any one of the impulses of honourable men.