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.
One afternoon Theobald brought home to dinner a new acquaintance whom he had met the previous day in the gallery of the House of Commons. Mrs. Tone was as much taken as her husband by the fascinating address of this tall soldierly man with the dark eyes, coal black silky hair, and olive complexion, whom Theobald introduced to her as Thomas Russell. Long afterwards these three who dined together then for the first time, remembering the date of their first re-union, felt inclined to keep its anniversary as a festival. As Tone, on the eve of the most momentous crisis of his life, the departure of the Bantry Bay expedition, sat in a quiet corner of Paris reviewing his past, he counted the day he made Russell’s acquaintance as one of the most fortunate in his life. He joins the name of the passionately loved wife with that of the beloved friend. “I frame no system of happiness for my future life on which the enjoyment of his society does not constitute a most distinguishing feature, and if I am ever inclined to murmur at the difficulties wherewith I have so long struggled, I think on the inestimable treasure I possess in the affection of my wife, and the friendship of Russell, and I acknowledge that all my labours and sufferings are overpaid. I may truly say, that, even at this hour when I am separated from both of them, and uncertain whether I may ever be so happy as to see them again, there is no action of my life, which has not a remote reference to their opinion which I equally prize. When I think I have acted well, and that I am likely to succeed in the important business wherein I am engaged, I say often to myself: ‘My dearest love and my friend Russell will be glad of this.’”[[56]]
[56]. “Autobiography,” p. 29.
A short time after they had made the acquaintance of Russell, the Tones went to spend the summer by the seaside at Irishtown, the doctor having prescribed sea-bathing as a cure for Mrs. Tone’s continued delicacy. Thither came Russell every day to visit them, and thither came also very frequently in his company Russell’s venerable father and his delightful brother, Captain John. Room was found, too, in “the little box of a house” for Mary Tone, and for William whenever he could spare a week from Matthew’s cotton factory at Prosperous. As Tone writes of these happy days he grows lyrical in his praise of them. “I recall with transport the happy days we spent during that period; the delicious dinners, in the preparation of which my wife, Russell and myself were all engaged; the afternoon walks, the discussions we had, as we lay stretched on the grass.... If I may judge we were none of us destitute of the humour indigenous in the soil of Ireland; ... add to this I was the only one who was not a poet, or at least a maker of verses, so that every day produced a ballad, or some poetical squib, which amused us after dinner; and as our conversation turned upon no ribaldry, or indecency, my wife and sister never left the table. These were delicious days. The rich and great, who sit down every day to the monotony of a splendid entertainment, can form no idea of the happiness of our frugal meal, nor of the infinite pleasure we found in taking each his part in the preparation and attendance. My wife was the centre and the soul of all. I scarcely knew which of us loved her best; her courteous manners, her never-failing cheerfulness, her affection for me and for our children, rendered her the object of our common admiration and delight. She loved Russell as well as I did. In short, a more interesting society of individuals, connected by purer motives, and animated by a more ardent attachment and friendship for each other, cannot be imagined.”[[57]]
[57]. “Autobiography,” pp. 29, 30.
During these long days of summer leisure and talk, Tone’s old project of a military colony in the South Sea was revived, and a memorial on the subject was drawn up by him and Russell and sent to the Duke of Richmond. Both the Duke and Lord Grenville, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, showed an interest in the scheme, and it is possible that it might have led to something had not the threatened wars between England and Spain been averted by “a kind of peace called a convention.”
Shortly after this disappointment Russell was appointed to an Ensigncy on full pay in the 64th Regiment of foot and sent to Belfast where his regiment was then quartered. The last day he dined at Irishtown he arrived in a “very fine suit of laced regimentals,” and was set by his irreverent friends to cook the dinner in this attire.
The Tones did not remain long in their seaside cottage after Russell’s departure for Belfast. They returned to town for the winter, and here their eldest son William was born.
The winter found Theobald pursuing his political studies and founding a political club, consisting of literary friends of his who had already attained eminence; they included Dr. Drennan, the poet; Whitley Stokes and John Stack, Fellows of Trinity College; Joseph Pollock, Peter Burrowes and Thomas Addis Emmet. In spite of the distinguished talents each member brought to the re-union, the Club was anything but a success and it was soon dissolved.
At this time all Ireland was in a ferment owing to the influence of the French Revolution. The partisans of a settled order of things, including Grattan and his Whig friends, had followed Edmund Burke in their opposition to the new principles on which the French had set out to remodel the world. But those in Ireland who felt themselves “an oppressed, insulted and plundered nation” were heart and soul with the French people in their struggle for freedom. “In a little time the French Revolution became the test of every man’s political creed, and the nation was fairly divided into two great parties, the Aristocrats and the Democrats.”