Though the Volunteers ceased to be a cause of uneasiness, it was plain to Mr. Pitt that a repetition of their military fandango must be made impossible. How was this to be accomplished? As it was, they had left behind them, when they vanished, the nucleus of a disease--a small but sturdy band of patriots, who were not to be bought or cajoled. Unless treated in time, this spot might inflame and grow contagious. How was it to be treated? That was the grave question whereon hung the peace of Erin. The honest handful saw the rock on which the Convention had split, and were humble enough to try and remedy the error. Theobald--romantic young _protégé_ of Arthur Wolfe--was the first to show them the true case, to demonstrate that Ireland's harmony was England's disappointment; that the only hope for motherland lay, not in a commingling of a few red uniforms, or a picturesque mixing of social grades, but in a compact welding together for the common weal of the different religious creeds which had distracted the land with its dissensions since the Reformation. 'Till this is done,' he said, 'the Sassanagh will toss us as a battledore a shuttlecock. Establish the grand principle of liberty of conscience, bridge the abyss of mutual intolerance, stay the carnage of the first emotions of the heart! If the rights of men be duties to God, then are we of the same religion. Our creed of civil faith is the same. Let us agree then to exclude from our thoughts all things in which we differ, and be brethren in heart and mind for our mother's sake.' The words of the romantic young apostle touched his hearers on their tenderest chord, and they swore to learn wisdom by the past, and live in amity for ever. The quick revulsion from bigotry to tolerance was not so amazing as it seems, for Theobald Wolfe Tone was but the visible expression of the spirit of his age--the abuse-abhorring spirit which distinguished the eighteenth century, and culminated in the French upheaving of '89.