The next tract, "The Separatist Idea," was a detailed study of Wolfe Tone's political teaching. Tone was not merely a "heroic soul," he possessed an "austere and piercing intellect," which, "dominating Irish political thought for over a century," had given Ireland "its political definitions and values." Tone had written in his _Autobiography_, "I made speedily [in 1790] what was to me a great discovery, though I might have found it in Swift or Molyneux, that the influence of England was the radical vice of our Government, and that consequently Ireland would never be either free, prosperous or happy until she was independent and that independence was unattainable whilst the connection with England existed." In a pamphlet called "An Argument on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland" Tone (signing himself "A Northern Whig") had tried to convince the Dissenters "that they and the Catholics had but one common interest and one common enemy: that the depression and slavery of Ireland was produced and perpetuated by the divisions existing between them, and that, consequently, to assert the independence of their country, and their own individual liberties, it was necessary to forget all former feuds, to consolidate the entire strength of the whole nation and to form for the future but one people." In his earlier years Tone had not been a Republican, but Republicanism was the creed which he finally professed. He defined the aim of an Irish Constitution as the promotion of "The Rights of Man in Ireland." To secure this end reliance must be had not on a section of the nation but on the nation as a whole. "If the men of property will not support us," he said, "they must fall: we can support ourselves by the aid of that numerous and respectable class of the community--the men of no property." "In this glorious appeal to Cæsar," comments Pearse, "modern Irish democracy has its origin." Tone then was not merely a Republican and a Separatist but a Democrat prepared for a democratic and revolutionary policy.