[598] The Freeman, the subsidised organ of the Irish Government, after extolling O'Leary, added, on May 12, 1785: 'It were sincerely to be wished that this excellent writer and Christian philosopher would once more sit down and employ his talents in the service of his country and literature in general.' In the following year, i.e. 1786, he reviewed a 'forgotten controversy,' including a defence of Pope Clement XIV. in suppressing the Jesuits.
[599] The Rev. Mr. O'Leary's Address to the Common People of Ireland, pp. [12]-14. (Dublin: Cooney, 1786.)
[600] Lecky's England in the Eighteenth Century, vi. 540.
[601] Edward Hay, in his History of the Rebellion, says that the Bishop of Cloyne's pamphlet 'was dedicated to the Spirit of Discord.' Dr. Woodward was hardly the bigot that he pretended to be; his epitaph in Cloyne Cathedral records that 'he was a warm friend to Catholic Emancipation.'
[602] A very clever, poetic version of this and other addresses of O'Leary, entitled The O'Leariad, appeared, and seems to have been written to direct attention to O'Leary's loyal pamphlets, and to enforce and imprint their arguments on the popular mind. (Printed in Dublin, and reprinted at Cork by Robert Dobbyn, 1787.) Vide Halliday Pamphlets, Royal Irish Academy, vol. 514.
CHAPTER XVII
THE REGENCY—STRUGGLE BETWEEN WHIG AND TORY CAMPS—O'LEARY AND THE PRINCE OF WALES
The State Papers throw no light on what Plowden styles 'the arbitrary withdrawal of O'Leary's pension.' The following historic incident, now forgotten, and curious in its detail, may have led to that act.