His Excellency authorised me to read the correspondence and memorial once over to the committee of the Commons, with a strict injunction that no person should note a single fact; and I can truly state that the individuals on that committee are altogether in the dark as to the manner in which that intelligence was obtained, and, from the mode in which it was gone through, can only have a very general impression of its contents. The same precaution was used in the Lords; and, I trust, although the Duke of Portland's despatch to his Excellency does not altogether sanction what has been done, yet that his Grace and the Ministers, who have so wisely enjoined the greatest precaution to be observed in the use to be made of that most interesting and important correspondence, will be of opinion that the guarded manner in which the Lord-Lieutenant made the communication to the committees, not authorising the smallest extracts to be made, or any of the facts to be relied on in their report, without being fully authorised by his Excellency, will preclude any danger to the State from this valuable channel of intelligence being in any degree brought into suspicion.[179] In June 1798 Lord Edward was dead. The Sheares's had been executed. Macnevin, O'Connor, T. Addis Emmet, and Sampson lay in prison in Dublin. Blood flowed on every side. The city was like a shambles. The State prisoners, on the understanding that executions should cease, and that they might be allowed to leave Ireland, consented to reveal, but without implicating individuals, the scheme of the United Irishmen. A prolonged secret inquisition by the Secret Committee took place. As soon as their evidence appeared, Macnevin and his fellow-prisoners complained, by a public advertisement, that the Crown officials who drew up the report of the Secret Committee had garbled the facts and distorted their evidence. Into all this it is not necessary now to go, but it may be observed that, while everything inconvenient was left out, an innuendo was made that the betrayal of Dr. Macnevin's memoir may have been due to Reinhard, the French Minister. This--apart from M. Mignet's testimony to the incorruptibility of Reinhard--serves to exculpate him, and narrows the spot on which suspicion now rests. Reinhard, in his letter to De la Croix, thinks it strange that Turner had never spoken to him about certain revelations made by 'the Secret Committee of the Parliament of Ireland;'[180] but the reason now seems intelligible enough.