ur O'Connor, Lord Edward Fitzgerald and his brother, and
many other men of high character and position withdrew from the Dublin
Parliament altogether, and left to the Government the whole
responsibility for the results of its policy. It is always to be
regretted that a man like Grattan should ever recede from his position
as a constitutional patriot in the assembly where alone his counsels
can have any practical weight; but of Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Arthur
O'Connor the same is not to be said, for these men and many of their
friends had made up their minds that the time had come when only in
armed rebellion there remained any hope for Ireland. In the English
Parliament some efforts were made by Charles James Fox and by Whitbread
to obtain an inquiry into the real cause of the troubles in Ireland,
but the attempts were ineffectual, and the authorities at Dublin Castle
were allowed to carry out their own peculiar policy without control or
check of any kind.

Once again the fates were suddenly unpropitious to the Irish national
movement. The force which was intended for Ireland was suddenly
ordered to form a part of the expedition which Bonaparte was leading
against Egypt. Thereupon the chiefs of the United Irishmen began to
see {320} that there was not much hope to be founded on any help to
come from France, and it was decided that Ireland should enter into
open armed rebellion under the command of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. It
was confidently believed that all but a small number of the Irish
counties would rise to arms at once under such leadership, and the
Irish leaders little knew how completely the Government was supplied
with the knowledge of all the Irish national plans and movements.
Indeed, there seems only too much reason to believe that the policy of
Pitt had long been to force the Irish into premature rebellion by the
persistent application of the system of coercion, represented by what
were called "free quarters"--in other words, the billeting of soldiers
indiscriminately among the houses of the peasantry, thereby leaving the
wives and daughters of Irish Catholics at the mercy of a hostile
soldiery--by the burning of houses, the shooting down of almost
defenceless crowds, and the flogging and hanging of men and women.
Certain it is that many of the British officers high in command
protested loudly against such a policy, and that some of them
positively refused to carry it out, and preferred to incur any r