The new Viceroy, Camden, was an anæmic personality, and with the establishment of Maynooth the tale of reforms came to an end. The uncrowned king of Ireland and the brain of Dublin Castle was Fitzgibbon, who as Attorney-General stood by Pitt in the Regency crisis and had been rewarded by the Chancellorship and the earldom of Clare. In his discriminating study of Clare, the late Litton Falkiner has advanced all that can be said for the ablest and most ruthless of the opponents of the Grattan Parliament, pointing out that he remained on friendly terms with the Opposition till 1789. Wholly destitute of national feeling, Clare openly scoffed at the Catholic Relief Act of 1793, which the Government was compelled to support. It was from him that emanated in 1795 the fatal suggestion that the King could not assent to the repeal of laws affecting Irish Catholics without violating his Coronation oath. “In forcefulness and narrowness, in bravery and bigotry,” writes Dr. Holland Rose with entire truth, “he was a fit spokesman of the British garrison, which was resolved to hold every outwork of the citadel.” With Pitt’s glance fixed on Union and Clare in virtual command of the machine, there was no place for Grattan in his own Parliament. He disapproved the revolutionary republicanism of the United Irishmen and the ascendency principles of Dublin Castle, and refused to encourage the one by attacking the other. After a final attempt in 1797 to procure the admission of Catholics to Parliament and to introduce household franchise, he retired into private life, his Letter to the Citizens of Dublin firing a parting shot at the Government.