To this message the House of Commons voted an immediate answer,--"That the intelligence thus communicated filled them with horror and indignation, while it raised in them a spirit of resolution and energy." And, for the purpose of publicly showing their confidence and their determination, the whole of the Commons, preceded by the speaker and the officers of the House, went on foot, two by two, in procession through the streets, to the castle, to carry up their address to the Viceroy. Lord Castlereagh, during this most anxious period, was in constant activity, keeping up the correspondence of his government with the British Cabinet and the generals commanding in Ireland. But, the correspondence preserved in the Memoirs is limited to directions to the military officers--among whom were the brave and good Abercromby, and Lake, Moore, and others who, like them, were yet to gain their laurels in nobler fields. The rebellion, after raging for six weeks in the south, and exhibiting the rude daring of the peasantry, in several desperate attacks on the principal towns garrisoned by the army, was at length subdued by Lord Cornwallis; who, at once issuing an amnesty, and acting at the head of a powerful force, restored the public tranquillity. This promptitude was fortunate; for in August a debarkation was made by General Humbert in the west, at the head of eleven hundred French troops, as the advanced guard of an army. This force, though absurdly inferior to its task, yet, by the rapidity of its marches, and the daring of its commander, revived the spirit of insurrection, and was joined by many of the peasantry. But the whole were soon compelled to lay down their arms to the troops of the Viceroy. Scarcely had they been sent to an English prison, when a French squadron, consisting of a ship of the line and eight frigates, with 5000 troops on board, appeared off the northern coast. They were not left long to dream of invasion. On the _very next day_, the squadron under Sir John Borlase Warren was seen entering the French anchorage. The enemy were instantly attacked. The line-of-battle ship, the Hoche, with six of the frigates, was captured after a sharp cannonade; and among the prisoners was found the original incendiary of the rebellion, Wolfe Tone, bearing the commission of a French adjutant-general. On his trial and sentence by a court-martial in Dublin, he solicited to be shot as a soldier, not hanged as a felon. But there was too much blood on his head to alter the forms of law for a villain who had returned for the express purpose of adding the blood of thousands to the past. To escape being hanged, he died by his own hand, deplorably, but suitably, closing a life which honesty and industry might have made happy and honourable, by the last and only crime which he could have added to the long list of his treasons.