What was that theory which was to give a new impetus to Irish nationality, which was to be upheld at the cost of so much bloodshed and suffering, which was to be a dogma as living and peremptory in 1916 as in 1798—and in defence of which Patrick Pearse and his men were to face the guns of General Maxwell, as proudly as Wolfe Tone took command of the battery of the _Hoche_, in the glorious fight she put up, one little vessel against a whole fleet, on an October morning one hundred and eighteen years earlier. Here it is in Wolfe Tone’s own words: “To subvert the tyranny of our execrable Government, to break the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our political evils, and to assert the independence of my country—these were my objects. To unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of all past dissensions, and to substitute the common name of Irishman in place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter—these were my means.”[58] Footnote 58: “Autobiography,” pp. 50, 51. Pearse held “all Irish Nationalism to be explicit in these words. Davis was to make explicit certain things here implicit, Lalor certain other things; Mitchel was to thunder the whole in words of apocalyptic wrath and splendour. But the Credo is here: ‘I believe in One Irish Nation and that Free.’”—(“Ghosts,” p. 16.) Considering the Protestants hopeless, Tone first directed his efforts to an attempt to unite the Catholics and Dissenters. He accordingly sat down and wrote a pamphlet,[59] over the signature of a “Northern Whig,” in which he sought “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.”[60] Footnote 59: “Argument on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland.” Footnote 60: “Autobiography,” p. 50.