Colonel O'Kelly [writes Grattan] related that, at the period of the Union, Mr. Pitt offered a considerable pension to O'Leary, provided he would exert himself among his Roman Catholic countrymen, and write in support of the Union; but every application was in vain; O'Leary steadfastly resisted Mr. Pitt's solicitations, and, though poor, he rejected the offers of the minister, and could not be seduced from his allegiance to his country. The newspapers recording O'Leary's death, in January 1802, say that he died at his lodgings in Great Portland Street, London. When the Union was carried, he probably got his _congé_ from O'Kelly. This man, of bad odour, became a Crœsus in wealth, and eventually a sort of Brummagem Brummell, deep in the confidence of George, Prince of Wales.[639] O'Leary is found living with O'Kelly in Mayfair, London, and some of his pamphlets are dated from 46 Half-Moon Street, Piccadilly, the 'Colonel's' house.[640] Father Buckley is puzzled 'how our worthy friar contracted so close an intimacy with a man of tastes and habits apparently so little congenial to his own.'[641] Perhaps O'Kelly[642] was the trustee in whose name O'Leary got a pension on secret conditions. Plowden is the only writer who alludes to the intervention of a trustee. He was very intimate with O'Kelly, and witnessed his will in 1820. The Prince of Wales had already made O'Kelly the medium for paying a secret pension of 300_l._ a year to Chifney the jockey, in consideration of having designedly lost a race at Epsom.[643] I now come to a startling piece of evidence, calculated, almost, to make one exclaim with Luke (xix. 22), 'Out of thy own mouth I judge thee.' The testimony of no less a witness than O'Leary himself claims to be heard. More than sixty years after the death of O'Leary, Father Buckley was informed in writing, by a relative of the deceased, that O'Leary, when dying, often exclaimed, 'Alas! I have _betrayed_ my poor country.'[644] The informant's impression is that O'Leary's remorse was due to having, at the request of Pitt, acquiesced in the Union, notwithstanding that we have 'Colonel' O'Kelly's testimony that 'O'Leary withstood Pitt's solicitations to support that measure.' The Catholic bishops of Ireland cordially encouraged the Union, as the Castlereagh Papers show--and we do not hear that Dr. Troy and his _confrères_ felt much remorse--although, in addition to their support of the Union, they signed resolutions in favour of giving to a Protestant king a veto in the appointment of Catholic prelates. But the letter of O'Leary's kinsman must not be dismissed without quoting its context. 'Pitt,' he writes, 'promised the emancipation of Catholics and repeal of the Penal Laws, if he (O'Leary) would acquiesce, &c. He did; and so silence was deemed consent. Pitt obtained the Union; then resigned his office; and tricky enough,' adds O'Leary's kinsman, 'said he could not keep his promise.'