Mr. Porter did not know what Dignan had done. But I find, among McNally's secret letters to Dublin Castle, one enclosing a copy of the 'Union Star,' a revolutionary print, which, he says, 'has been printed at Dignan's house in Grafton Street.' A later letter (endorsed May 23, 1798, the night on which the rebellion burst forth) announces 'Ferris is the informer against Dignan.' Ferris is described by Musgrave in his history (p. 176) as head of a committee of United Irishmen, who was waited upon by a blacksmith named Dunne offering to murder Lord Carhampton, the famous terrorist. Ferris warned Carhampton, and Dunne with his accomplice McCarthy was hanged. Frequent payments to Ferris through Lord Carhampton are recorded in the book of 'Secret Service Money.' Musgrave notices him as a rather meritorious man. Who Ferris was McNally tells Cooke in a letter of secret gossip. 'Ferris, forty years ago, was an attorney and stripped of his gown for perjury; lived in Green Street; at present in Castle.' FOOTNOTES: [671] Napoleon's marshals were rich men. The salary of a marshal was 1,600_l._ a year; but their emoluments were much increased by allowances made by Napoleon. Berthier had in addition 400_l._ a month as a major-general, and further received from his generous master 50,000_l._ every year. [672] It may have been because Lewins, the shrewd attorney, and incorruptible envoy of the United Irishmen, suspected MacMahon, that he refused to yield information on being pumped. Hence the intrigue to oust Lewins of which we have already heard. [673] MacMahon was in the pastoral charge of Kilrea at the very time that Mack, a native of Franconia, held high rank in the army of the Prince of Coburg, and was directing the operations of the campaign of 1793. From 1794 to 1797, while MacMahon was preaching at Holywood, and representing the rebel colonels of the county Down, General Mack was serving in the Netherlands, and in command of the Army of the Rhine. Charles Mack earned notoriety by delivering over to Napoleon, in virtue of the capitulation of Ulm, 33,000 Austrians as prisoners of war. For this act he was tried at Vienna, and received sentence of death as a traitor to his country. But Bourrienne denies that any secret understanding existed between him and Buonaparte. Mack's sentence having been commuted, he was consigned to an Austrian dungeon, where for a long time his fate was lost in mystery. Even more inglorious was the final career of Arthur McMahon. [674] _Life of Wolfe Tone_, ii. 460. [675] _Castlereagh Papers_, i. 306. [676] Compare the passages 'sick of politics,' in p. 6, _ante_, &c. [677] _Castlereagh Correspondence_, i. 408. [678] _Memoirs of Miles Byrne_, ii. 17. (Paris, 1862.) [679] _Memoirs of Miles Byrne_, ii. 59.