Fuller inquiry into the career of this quondam merchant of Dublin finds it curiously interwoven with the history of Europe and his fate influential in its affairs. In 1793 Holland was the scene of disaster to the Duke of York; and his second campaign to that country in 1799 ended in a disadvantageous capitulation. Previously he had sent General Don into the interior of Holland to foment among the natives an insurrection against French rule. Don was seized as a spy and threatened with death for seeking to corrupt an enemy which England had failed to conquer in the field.[738] He was, however, safely restored during the negotiations of 1799, and Plowden makes the statement, as one generally believed, that in the Helder convention there was a secret article for restoring to liberty Tandy and Blackwell, in return for the delivery of Don, who, by the laws of war, had incurred the penalty of death. The Paris journals of October 1799 said that the Duke's capitulation contains some private articles which his Royal Highness did not wish to submit to the consideration of the coffee-houses in London. Prolonged delay attended the liberation of Tandy. Brune bitterly complained of it in the Council of Five Hundred; and then it was that Buonaparte branded, as an attack upon the rights of nations and a crime against humanity, the surrender, by Hamburg to England, of Tandy, Blackwell, Morres, and Corbet. The painful details already given as regards the severity of their imprisonment it is pleasant to relieve by some notice of the conduct of one official who, superior in gentlemanly instinct to others of higher rank, treated Tandy and his companions with a courteous consideration most acceptable to men whose hearts ached from recent persecution. This letter--unknown to Mr. Ross, the editor of the 'Cornwallis Papers'--was addressed, we believe, to a near kinsman of that writer. _To Mr. Ross, the King's Messenger._ 'Dublin: November 18, 1799--_in prison_. 'Sir,--We find ourselves at a loss to know how we best can express our acknowledgments for the very polite, gentlemanly, and philosophic manner in which you have uniformly behaved towards us, ever since the period of our first getting under your care at Sheerness, during our subsequent stay in London, upon the whole of our journey through England, and until our arrival here; a conduct the peculiar inheritance of a man of sense, education, and honour; and which, upon all occasions in life, must leave with the feeling mind a pleasing and everlasting impression.