Dr. Madden, in a well-known work of considerable authority, singles out three divines as examples of noble qualities: i.e. 'the Right Rev. Dr. Doyle, the Rev. Arthur O'Leary, and Archbishop Murray.'[522]

Several years ago an influential journalist posted at Melbourne the following letter. He was the mouthpiece of many. It is rather late to answer his question publicly; but, in truth, the subject was not an inviting one to touch, especially as, not having studied it, I felt unable to reply in a way which would be deemed satisfactory by the querist. On the other hand, the application having come from the antipodes, I am encouraged to think that the subject possesses an interest not confined to a hemisphere. 'No one was more generally loved and revered than Father O'Leary,' writes Charles Butler. Yelverton, speaking in the Irish Parliament, said: 'Unattached to this world's affairs, Father O'Leary can have none but the purest motives of rendering service to the cause of morality and his country.' He was the subject of a grand panegyric from the pulpit. Two biographies of him have been written by anointed hands. Idolised while living, his memory was cherished by thousands. His name wore a halo! Now, according to recent commentators, it seems not free from that light which floats over unhealthy places. Let it not be denied that at different times O'Leary did good work for his creed and country. As a religionist he continued true to the end; but if we accept the high testimony of Froude and Lecky, the same cannot be said of him as a patriot and a gentleman.

I may at once say that, although evidence exists of O'Leary's frailty, it is not sufficient to warrant, in all details, the very sensational picture drawn by Mr. McMahon.

People always knew that O'Leary became entitled to a pension, though how he acquired it was not so clear. Perhaps it is only fair to give him the benefit of the version which his intimate friend, Francis Plowden, placed on record eighty years ago.[525] His information was, doubtless, derived from O'Leary himself; but O'Leary seems to have told him no more than it was convenient to reveal:—

It was, in fact, entirely by Plowden's intervention that the arrear was paid. So we learn on the authority of the Rev. Thomas England, who in 1822 brought out a life of O'Leary. Plowden was a friend of Pitt's, and undertook to write a History of Ireland under the auspices of that statesman. He had previously published in defence of the British Constitution, and received in acknowledgment the D.C.L. of Oxford. When writing eighty years ago of so popular and respected a priest as O'Leary, Plowden—himself a Catholic—made his revelation cautiously. It would now seem that some greater service was rendered than the public service to which Plowden refers. It will be shown on high contemporary authority that the object of the Castle in 1784 was to divide the two great parties. This policy later on was boldly avowed as Divide et impera.[526] The service, therefore, for which O'Leary accepted secret pay cannot have been for promoting cordial co-operation between Catholics and Protestants.

Mr. Lecky, in the sixth volume of his 'History of England,' has brought to light a letter, going far to establish the fact that in 1784 O'Leary 'consented, for money, to discharge an ignominious office for a Government which despised and distrusted him.'[527]

On studying O'Leary's public life there seems no doubt that the secret pension of 100l. a year, which in 1784 he agreed to accept, was merely supplemental to a larger subsidy previously enjoyed. How he earned the first pension is now to be shown.

A volume, 'Sketches of Irish Political Characters,' was published in 1799. The writer, Henry McDougall, commanded sources of information which gave his book value. Speaking of O'Leary, he says (p. 264):—

McDougall doubtless refers to a publication of O'Leary's, largely circulated and often reprinted, i.e. 'An Address to the Common People of Ireland on occasion of an apprehended Invasion by the French and Spaniards in July 1779,[528] when the united Fleets of Bourbon appeared in the Channel.' On April 12, 1779, Spain had concluded an alliance with France and America, whereupon Vergennes, the French Premier, divulged to the Spanish minister, Blanca, that an invasion of Ireland was meditated. To promote this design, an American agent was instructed to foster the interests of the allies amongst the Presbyterians of Ulster; while the task of winning over the Irish Catholics was to be entrusted to Spanish agents.

America was all but lost at this time, and England found herself in a position of great difficulty. Ireland was drained of its garrison; the people much discontented; the Catholic middle classes, grown rich by commercial success, had established branches of their houses in France and Spain. A letter of warning, which alarmed the Cabinet, and probably led them to ask O'Leary's help, still exists. At the same time, hurriedly and with a bad grace, they conceded a measure of Catholic Relief. Lord Amherst, writing to Lord North from Geneva on June 19, 1778, says:—

And again:—

O'Leary by his address aroused not only Catholic loyalty, but awakened the apathy of many Protestants on whom the report of invasion had previously made no impression. The Volunteers sprang into vitality, and though they at first numbered merely 8,000, the force swelled ere the year was out to 42,000 armed men, and without the cost of one shilling to the Crown. Years after, the Government dreading, like Frankenstein, the heaving mass it had helped to create, sought to suppress the Irish Volunteers; but in 1778 their feeling was very different, when O'Leary's inspiring address fanned the spirit of volunteering, and conduced to preserve the country. It was then that Lord Buckinghamshire officially declared that Ireland was prepared to offer a determined resistance to invasion.

A link or two of the heavy penal chain had now been struck from Papist limbs. The relaxation, however, was hampered with a new test oath, drawn up in terms even more subtle than that which, when handed to O'Connell fifty years later in Parliament, he withdrew rather than take. Dr. Carpenter[530] ruled the R. C. see of Dublin at this time. His flock embraced a considerable number who, from timidity of conscience, expressed doubts as to the propriety of taking the oath. Dr. Carpenter, though himself no great friend to the temporal power of the Pope, felt that to deny on oath a power already claimed by some famous theologians would seem rash and arrogant. Bishop de Burgo, author of the 'Hibernia Dominicana,' opposed the oath in terms still stronger; lay orators described as a poisoned cup the proffered measure of Catholic relief. Again O'Leary came to the front. A pamphlet of eighty-six pages was thrown on the country, entitled, 'Loyalty asserted, or a Vindication of the new Test Oath of Allegiance, with an impartial inquiry into the Pope's Temporal Power [a strong attack upon it] and the claims of the Stewarts to the English Throne: proving that both are equally groundless.' O'Leary examined the oath sentence by sentence, and with logical precision showed its conformity to Catholic teaching. 'The work was widely circulated,' writes Father England, the first biographer of O'Leary, and called forth as well the acknowledgments of the friends of the Government as the warm gratitude of his Catholic fellow-countrymen. In November 1778 we read that the Catholic Archbishop Carpenter, at the head of seventy of his clergy, and several hundred Catholic laymen, attended at the Court of King's Bench in Dublin and took the oath prescribed.[531]

The dreaded invasion never took place; but O'Leary's address was scattered broadcast, and during subsequent years it reappeared again and again. It reads more like the argument of a paid advocate than the disinterested appeal of a poor Franciscan.

All this—not to speak of O'Leary's tracts on Toleration, and his exertions, written and oral, to deter the Whiteboys from their conspiracies—furnishes sufficient claim to a pension, without assuming that it must have been earned in the dark field of espionage. However, we now approach the time when overtures to discharge an ignominious task were undoubtedly made to him.

On August 26, 1784, the Viceroy, Rutland, addressed a 'most secret' letter to Pitt's brother-in-law, Lord Sydney:—

This is a glowing picture, one more than realising the beautiful vision of Davis:—

The first mention of O'Leary's name in the State Papers is under date September 4, 1784, when Sydney writes to the Lord-Lieutenant:—'O'Leary has been talked to by Mr. Nepean, and he is willing to undertake what is wished for 100l. a year, which has been granted him.'

Thus, as it would seem, O'Leary had already not been slow in claiming from the Government the merit, if not the wages, of allaying the causes of public alarm. Plowden and England admit that O'Leary had a pension of 200l. a year. He must have been in receipt of at least 100l. for his writings at the time that, for an extra hundred, it was proposed to him to undertake a base task. The promptitude and facility with which Sydney, in September 1784, made the proposition shows the close relations that had previously subsisted.

A curious letter from Weymouth, a previous Home Secretary, addressed to Dublin Castle, is printed in Grattan's 'Life' (vol. i. p. 369). In great panic he expresses fear that the Catholic colleges of France and Flanders would despatch their alumni as secret agents to Ireland. These were among the reasons that made the Government anxious to secure O'Leary's aid.

Dr. England—his earliest biographer—lived comparatively near the time, and heard from O'Leary's publisher, Keating, a few interesting incidents which, to some extent, tally with the revelations of the State Papers. The biographer knows of an interview between O'Leary and Nepean on behalf of Sydney and Pitt, but England and his informant are deceived as to the conditions which accompanied the pension. Their memory is also at fault as regards the year. Instead of 1784, they set it down as 'soon after O'Leary had fixed his residence permanently in London,' which, of course, was in 1789. O'Leary had been a good deal in London previously, for, as Froude states, Orde in 1784 asked Sydney to send him over confidential agents, and in September 1784 he writes, 'your experts have arrived safe.'[535]

It will be seen that the point here made is not consistent with Plowden's account (ante, p. 213). According to him, the pension was 'hush-money:' he was to write no more, and, above all, he was not to write in promotion of good feeling and toleration. England upholds that it was given in the hope that O'Leary would continue to write in the same tone that had already earned Governmental gratitude. Sydney settled terms with O'Leary in London, and, through his secretary, told him what to do.

'Cedars have yielded,' says St. Peter. It was a clever thought to plan the corruption of O'Leary for the performance of a part which his employers describe with gusto. Two years previously, on February 27, 1782, popular confidence in him had reached its height when Yelverton, Grattan, and Sir Lucius O'Brien praised him with enthusiasm.

How he qualified for these praises Mr. Froude may now be allowed to show. After O'Leary arrived in Dublin he saw Orde, and was told what the Government expected him to do. The following letter is dated September 23, 1784:—

Sir Richard Musgrave was one of the alarmists who loved to purvey sensational news for Dublin Castle. His 'History of the Rebellion,' published in 1801, embodies his impressions of events for twenty years before. No wonder that Dublin Castle was fluttered by his reports. Here is clearly one of them, and it serves to show why it was that the Government were so anxious in 1784 to secure O'Leary by a subsidy:—

And again:—

Musgrave's construction of the above, as in many other incidents, is not wholly correct; though in his estimate of Tandy and Dowling, both Protestants, he was accurate enough.

If O'Leary played the part assigned and attributed to him, never did face more belie internal baseness, or was more exquisitely fashioned to command the confidence of its dupes. The 'Gentleman's Magazine' for February 1802 contains a study of 'Father Arthur' from the pen of Mr. Pratt.

Curran, addressing the Irish House of Commons in 1787, revealed a trait highly honourable to the friar: 'Mr. O'Leary was, to his knowledge, a man of the most innocent and amiable simplicity of manners in private life. The reflection of twenty years in a cloister had severely regulated his passions and deeply informed his understanding.'[541] Curran's knowledge was partly derived from the fact that O'Leary belonged to 'The Monks of the Screw,' often regarded as a convivial club; but 'whose more important object,' writes Hardy, the biographer of Charlemont, 'was a co-operation of men holding a general similarity of political principles resolved to maintain the rights and constitution of their country.' Previously, O'Leary had dedicated his Miscellaneous Tracts 'to the Dignitaries and Brethren of the Monks of St. Patrick,' addressing them, with his wonted humour, as 'Reverend Fathers and illustrious Brethren.'

He had already written in denunciation of French designs on Ireland; and what more natural than that he should now be asked to track the movements of certain French emissaries which the Government heard had arrived in Dublin, and were conspiring with the Catholic leaders to throw off the British yoke.[542] This task O'Leary, as a staunch loyalist, may have satisfied his conscience in attempting, especially as he must have known that in 1784 the Catholics, as a body, had no treasonable designs, though, doubtless, some few exceptions might be found. In fact, his friend Edmund Burke, a member of the Ministry in 1783, declared, but later on, that 'the Irish Roman Catholics were everywhere loyal, save at certain points where their loyalty had been impaired by contact with Protestants.' Orde,[543] while using O'Leary, thought him a knave; yet feigned a readiness to believe his reports. The exhaustive correspondence of Count d'AdhÉmar, the French ambassador in London, with his Government, is now open to inquirers at the French Foreign Office; but, as it makes no allusion to any French agent in Ireland at this period, the story may be little better than one of the sensational myths so often found in the letters of informers to the Irish executive.[544] But, although no documental evidence exists of a French agent having been in Dublin in 1784, it is certain that five years later, i.e. in 1789, one Bancroft, an American by birth, was sent on a secret mission from France to Ireland.[545]

We hear of no important arrests during the troubled period that O'Leary is said to have been set in motion; but the Habeas Corpus Act had not been suspended since 1779, and was not until 1794 that Pitt renewed the suspension.

In analysing O'Leary's life and judging his conduct, it is not fair to ignore any remark of his tending to exculpate; but, if panegyrics are desired, the reader should consult the memoirs by England, Buckley and some others. Almost O'Leary's last public performance appeared in 1800: 'An Address to the Lords of Parliament, with an account of Sir H. Mildmay's Bill relative to Nuns.'

This is further useful in showing that O'Leary was no admirer of the French king, and now that he was a pensioner of England would hardly object to discover the reported French agents in Dublin, who, with Napper Tandy, are said to have 'drank on their knees' the toast of 'Louis of France.'

The latter story—told by the Viceroy, Rutland, in his letter to Sydney—bears improbability on its face. It seems strange that Tandy and his party, who not long after were Red Republicans and the allies of Carnot and Hoche, would drink the health of Louis XVI. on their knees.[547] They were principally Protestants; and John O'Connell, in the Life of his father, says that Sheares shocked the future Liberator by exultantly displaying a handkerchief soaked in the French king's blood.

I suspect that when O'Leary returned from making, in September 1784, the inquiries which he is assumed to have done, his report was something in the spirit of Canning's knife-grinder: 'Story! God bless you, I have none to tell, sir;' and that Orde concluded O'Leary himself was in the plot. On October 17, Orde writes to Nepean, alluding to some rumour about our friar which is not stated. 'Del Campo's connection with O'Leary—or rather O'Leary's with him—may have given rise to all the report; but, after all, I think it right to be very watchful over the priest, and wish you to be so over the Minister. They are all of them designing knaves.'

Thus it appears that in little more than a fortnight after O'Leary is supposed to have begun to spy, Orde was far from satisfied with him.