There was a joyful re-union in his father’s house at Blackhall on Christmas Day, 1788. Matilda’s wan countenance brightened into its old beauty when she had her husband by her side again, and the pride of the young father in his charming little daughter was a subject of great delight to her. Now the world was a delightful place once more. They left Blackhall after New Year’s Day, 1789, and after a short stay with Mr. Fanning in Grafton Street, took up their residence in Clarendon Street. Theobald was soon after called to the Bar, and went circuit in Leinster. His success was surprising—especially to himself who considered that he knew exactly as much of law as he did of necromancy. “I was, modestly speaking,” he confesses in his pleasant way, “one of the most ignorant barristers in the Four Courts.” But it is plain that if he had cared to succeed he could have succeeded brilliantly. As it was, he soon gave up law for politics—his first venture in which was a pamphlet in the interests of the Whig Club. This procured for him the favour of Grattan, Forbes and Ponsonby, and put a little profitable law business in his way. But the prospects which were held out to him of a seat in Parliament did not materialise; and very soon, Tone, whose opinions matured rapidly under an “intensive” method of political culture, found he had so far outgrown “Whig” principles that he could enter into no alliance with them. Briefly put, the points of difference were these: Tone held that “the influence of England was the radical vice of the Irish Government, and consequently that Ireland would never be either free, prosperous or happy until she was independent, and that independence was unobtainable whilst the connection with England existed.” Grattan and those who thought with him were attached to the connection with England, and considered that if certain grievances (which they could not see were inherent in the system) were removed, all would be for the best, in the best of all possible worlds. In the illumination of his discovery Tone “began to look on the little politics of the Whig Club with great contempt: _their peddling about petty grievances instead of going to the root of the evil_,” and he rejoiced that with his poverty he had kept his independence and could develop his political creed without being bound by the tenets of the Whigs.