Secret Service Under PittFitz-Patrick, William J. (William John)
History
Secret Service Under Pitt
Fitz-Patrick, William J. (William John)
Ireland -- History -- 1760-1820; Pitt, William, 1759-1806; Secret service -- Ireland
In the summer of the year 1783, the Irish Brigade, with the Dublin
Independent Volunteers, commanded by James Napper Tandy and Matthew
Dowling, formed an encampment between Roebuck and Dublin, under
the pretext of studying tactics and learning camp duty, though it
was well known that they were hatching revolutionary projects. It
is to be observed that the war, the only pretext for their arming,
was now at an end; yet many corps in different parts of the kingdom
resolved not to lay down their arms but with their lives.[540]
Musgrave's construction of the above, as in many other incidents, is
not wholly correct; though in his estimate of Tandy and Dowling, both
Protestants, he was accurate enough.
If O'Leary played the part assigned and attributed to him, never did
face more belie internal baseness, or was more exquisitely fashioned
to command the confidence of its dupes. The 'Gentleman's Magazine' for
February 1802 contains a study of 'Father Arthur' from the pen of Mr.
Pratt.
His manners [he says] were the most winning and artless,
anticipating his goodwill and urbanity before he opened his lips;
and when they were opened, his expressions did but ratify what
those manners had before ensured. And you had a further earnest of
this in the benign and ineffable smile of a countenance so little
practised in guile that it at the same time invited to confidence,
and denoted an impossibility of your being betrayed.
Curran, addressing the Irish House of Commons in 1787, revealed a trait
highly honourable to the friar: 'Mr. O'Leary was, to his knowledge, a
man of the most innocent and amiable simplicity of manners in private
life. The reflection of twenty years in a cloister had severely
regulated his passions and deeply informed his understanding.'[541]
Curran's knowledge was partly derived from the fact that O'Leary
belonged to 'The Monks of the Screw,' often regarded as a convivial
club; but 'whose more important object,' writes Hardy, the biographer
of Charlemont, 'was a co-operation of men holding a general similarity
of political principles resolved to maintain the rights and
constitution of their country.' Previously, O'Leary had dedicated his
Miscellaneous Tracts 'to the Dignitaries and Brethren of the Monks of
St. Patrick,' addressing them, with his wonted humour, as 'Reverend
Fathers and illustrious Brethren.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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