considered the further danger of the invasion
of Ireland. That such a peril is not imaginary, is proved by the fact
that Ireland has been invaded in the past.

The attempt of Hoche and Grouchy to land in Bantry Bay in 1796 failed
ignominiously; and the next expedition designed to invade Ireland was
defeated at Camperdown. But in 1798, the year of the Great Rebellion in
Ireland, three French frigates evaded the British cruisers, and on
August 22 dropped anchor in Killala Bay. General of Brigade, Jean Joseph
Amable Humbert, landed with his second in command, General Sarazin,
several rebel Irish leaders, 1700 men and 82 officers.

On August 27 Humbert defeated the British troops at Castlebar "Races."
On September 8, his forces surrendered at Ballinamuck to Lord
Cornwallis. General Humbert was carried to England; and it is worth
noting that while he was on his way, Admiral Bompard set sail from Brest
with a ship of the line and three frigates, carrying 2587 men and 172
officers, commanded by General Hardy and the notorious Wolfe Tone
(called General Smith for the occasion). Bompard was turned back by an
English fleet of forty-two sail. The obvious conclusion of the whole
matter is that the fleet can stop an invasion, always provided that the
ships thereof are the right number in the right place at the right time.

The Irish Rebellion of 1798 is often discussed as though it was wholly
bred of the corruption of Ireland itself. The fact was, of course, that
it was an offshoot of the French Revolution, and that the condition of
Ireland at the time was no more than a contributory cause. My Lords
Cornwallis, Castlereagh, and Clare, in combating the forces of the
Rebellion, were actually in conflict with the vast insurrections of the
French nation. The design of the Irish rebels was to enlist the mighty
destructive force of France to serve their own ends.

Wolfe Tone and his colleague Lewens, in 1796, had succeeded in
persuading Carnot and the French Directory to embrace the cause of
Ireland. When the Rebellion of 1798 broke out, Lewens wrote to the
Directory reminding them that they had promised that France should
postulate the conferring of independence upon Ireland as the condition
of making peace with England, and specifying five thousand troops of all
arms, and thirty thousand muskets with artillery and ammunition, as
sufficient to ensure the success of the Rebellion.

The attitude of the Directory is defined in the despa