Higgins liked to utilise profitably the information he acquired from pliable Catholics like Magan.[633] Magan was a barrister, and held his head high. It will be remembered that Higgins drew from him the secret of Lord Edward Fitzgerald's hiding place, and for this service alone received 1,000_l._ in hand, and a pension of 300_l._ a year. The 'Sham Squire' was not the man to leave money, in 1791, 'to his long and faithful friend,' O'Leary, unless he had made more than the amount by the use of him. Higgins claims O'Leary as a dear friend; the habits of the time warrant the assumption that he was his boon companion too. In the unguarded intimacy of social intercourse, that frank and affable nature is likely to have enriched the Squire's stock of gossip. To what extent that confidence was unfolded can be now but darkly surmised. O'Leary, if called upon to reveal information to the Government, may have acted with reserve. In softer moments[634] much may have leaked out which was not deliberate betrayal. It is casually stated by Mr. Lecky (vol. vii. p. 211) that Higgins, in enumerating his services to the Government, especially mentions the expense he had incurred in entertaining priests, and other persons of the higher class, for the purpose of obtaining intelligence. In one respect O'Leary's intercourse with Higgins worked for good. The newspaper of the latter, though an organ of Orangeism, advocated the Catholic claims. In 1796 Dr. Hussey, afterwards Bishop of Waterford, seems to have accepted the post of secret agent,--probably not widely dissimilar from that which the statesmen of 1784 thought O'Leary would not object to discharge. Higgins, writing to Dublin Castle in October 1796, expresses regret that the Government had not been very judicious in their selection of 'an agent for acting on the Catholics.[635] 'The Roman Catholic body hold a superficial opinion of Dr. Hussey as a courtly priest. If anything was to be effected or wished to be done in the Roman Catholic body, Dr. O'Leary would do more with them in one hour than Hussey in seven years. Of this I am perfectly assured; and O'Leary not ten days since wrote me word he would shortly claim a bed at my house.' O'Leary had a nephew for whom in a recently published letter he hopes to provide a berth when some friends of his would regain their power. The allusion no doubt is to Fox and the Whigs. This is the nephew noticed by Francis Higgins, in a secret letter to Under-Secretary Cooke eight months before the rebellion. 'At a meeting at Bond's, which Lord Edward Fitzgerald and O'Connor attended, O'Connor read a letter from Fox which had been delivered to him (O'C.) by O'Leary, nephew of Dr. O'Leary, who had arrived from London with despatches from Mr. Fox, and set off in the mail for Cork the same night.' These despatches concurred with the United Irishmen as to the necessity of enforcing a parliamentary reform.[636]