[578] The Convention had greatly alarmed the Government. In 1793, Lord Clare introduced the Convention Act, making all such assemblages henceforth illegal; but a popular leader remarked that it was the wisdom of Xerxes attempting with iron fetters to chain the sea. In 1811, Lord Fingall, Mr. Kirwan, and other Catholic delegates were arrested under the Act. It never became law in England, and about the year 1878 Mr. P. J. Smyth, M.P., succeeded in freeing Ireland from its pressure. [579] _The Letters of Orellana_, an Irish Helot, to the Seven Northern Counties not represented in the National Assembly of Delegates held at Dublin in October 1784, for obtaining a more equal representation of the people. Halliday Pamphlets, Royal Irish Academy, vol. 482, p. 29. [580] Besides the journals of the day, I have searched the litter of pamphlets to which that pregnant year gave birth; but, the names 'O'Leary' and 'Parker' never appear. Their mission, clearly, was a secret one. Sheahan's _Articles of Irish Manufacture_ (Cork, 1833) certainly speaks of Mr. Parker, 'who fell in with a Doctor O'Leary' (p. 112); but, on hunting up the pamphlet from which he quotes, _Plea for the Poor_ (p. 15), it appears that the date is 1819, and the Dr. O'Leary was a physician in Kanturk. [581] Diplomatic letters, but fulsomely servile, are addressed by Orde to Grattan (vide _Life_, by his Son, iii. 209-11). Orde must have known that Grattan was jealous--first, of Flood, with whom he constantly quarrelled, and, secondly, of a new, bold, and thoroughly honest Protestant leader, who had just made his _début_, and worked hard to make the Congress a success. This was James Napper Tandy, commander of the Dublin Volunteer Artillery, and afterwards a general of division in the service of France. [582] _Dublin Evening Post_, September 18, 1784. [583] The _Freeman's Journal_, September 28, 1784. This journal, once the organ of Grattan, Flood, and Lucas, fell into the hands of an unprincipled adventurer, named Francis Higgins, who prostituted the once virtuous print to a venal executive. [584] See Appendix, p. 374. [585] _Dublin Evening Post_, October 23, 1784. [586] The policy of creating a schism has often since been acted upon. We have already seen Lord Northington's approval of such a scheme. The Viceroy, Cornwallis, addressing Portland, June 22, 1799, writes in reference to a public question: 'Dublin is not without material for a counter party, which I should have sanguine hope of collecting if my endeavours to produce a schism in the corporation should prove successful.'--_Cornwallis Correspondence_, i. 339. [587] _The Freeman's Journal_, December 24, 1784. [588] _Life of O'Leary_, by Rev. M. B. Buckley, p. 385. See also England's _O'Leary_, p. 289. (London, 1822.) [589] The 'White Boys' were perpetually denounced by O'Leary. [590] _Historical Review of the State of Ireland_, by Francis Plowden, ii. 104. [591] Lecky, vi. 369.