The “good years,” as perhaps Anne Neilson was inclined to call them, from their contrast with the years which followed, came to an end—with so much else—at the outbreak of the French Revolution. Neilson had retained from his old “volunteer” days a strong attachment to Liberty, which he then interpreted in the terms of the English Revolution of 1689. The French Revolution gave the word a new meaning for him, and the other dissenters of Belfast who shared his views. The “Rights of Man” became the Koran of Belfast, as Tone pleasantly observes, and Sam Neilson set himself with that logical sequence, which, with him, made energetic action follow principle, to secure these “Rights” for his own oppressed countrymen. From 1791, politics absorbed Neilson, and his business was much neglected, and finally had to be abandoned. Many anxious moments must have been poor Anne Neilson’s during those stirring days when her husband, with Tone and Russell and Henry Joy MacCracken, was making history. We Irish Catholics ought to cherish a special reverence for her memory, and pay her at least a posthumous gratitude, for it was at her expense that her husband worked for us. He was the first man in Belfast to put Catholic Emancipation in the forefront of the Republican party’s programme, and to make of it, with Parliamentary Reform, the principal plank in the platform of the _United Irishmen_—the honour of whose foundation he shares with Tone. In 1792 there was established in Belfast to preach the doctrines of the new society a memorable paper, _The Northern Star_. Of this paper, to the finances of which he had liberally contributed, Neilson was appointed the editor. Eventually he became the sole proprietor—with disastrous results to his financial position. The paper was repeatedly the object of legal proceedings, and apparently to escape the consequences of these, the other shareholders got rid of their interest in it. Madden tells us that “the various prosecutions carried on against it had obliged Neilson to dispose of all his property, and to relinquish his business in order to meet the enormous expenses attendant on these proceedings, and the unexpected demands arising from them. The other proprietors, shortly after the prosecutions, disposed of their shares to Neilson, and thus encompassed with peril he became the sole proprietor of the paper. In 1792 the printer and proprietors had been prosecuted and acquitted. In January, 1793, six informations were filed in King’s Bench against them for seditious libels, and in November, 1794, they were prosecuted for publishing the address of the United Irishmen to the Volunteers.”