But the letter of O'Leary's kinsman must not be dismissed without quoting its context. 'Pitt,' he writes, 'promised the emancipation of Catholics and repeal of the Penal Laws, if he (O'Leary) would acquiesce, &c. He did; and so silence was deemed consent. Pitt obtained the Union; then resigned his office; and tricky enough,' adds O'Leary's kinsman, 'said he could not keep his promise.'
This is slightly misleading. Pitt had given a pledge, through Cornwallis, to Archbishop Troy that he would not accept office except on condition that the Catholic claims were to be met. In 1801, owing to the fixed resolve of the King against Emancipation, Pitt went out. His conduct, therefore, was so far straight. When he returned to power in 1804, in complete violation of that compact, O'Leary had been two years dead.
Among O'Leary's admirers there was none more ardent than the late Lord Chancellor O'Hagan, in whose now deserted study still hangs a fine portrait of the friar, inscribed with soul-stirring sentiments on which O'Hagan had long sought to shape his own course. This gentleman could not bring himself to believe Mr. Froude's charge branding O'Leary as a spy, and was unable to rest until he read with his own eyes at the State Paper Office the original correspondence. He returned to Dublin declaring that the imputation was but too well founded. This view, coming from a man of judicial mind, might be taken as conclusive; but yet, one is unwilling to see a great reputation wrecked, without wishing to throw out a hope or a plank by which there is a chance of saving it. This plank is, indeed, a poor one; but, just as a sinking man will grasp even at a straw, humanity suggests that no effort should be left untried to keep the struggler afloat.
The two letters which led Lord O'Hagan to his reluctant conclusion are now before the reader. In neither is the Christian name of O'Leary given; but no other priest of the name obtained contemporary notice. The most damaging bit of evidence is Sydney's letter to Rutland announcing that O'Leary, having been talked to by Nepean, was willing to do what was wished for 100l. a year.[645] These letters bear date 1784, eighteen years before O'Leary's death. No letters of his in any way compromising him have been found. The voluminous papers of Pelham, the Irish Secretary, from 1795 to 1798 do not once mention his name. 'I have certainly never seen any reports from O'Leary to the Government,' writes Mr. Lecky in reply to an inquiry; 'and I have quoted in my History every passage I have come across in which he is ever mentioned.'[646] These passages are few.
O'Leary was a decided humourist: no one conversing with him felt quite sure when he meant to be serious. In the 'talk' that passed he may have played the diplomat. We have seen how Orde distrusted him. To a request blandly urged in personal converse by a statesman who had already pensioned him, this friar, existing merely by connivance, could not afford to assume attitudes of offended dignity. A glimpse of his precarious position is caught from a speech of Grattan's:—
At the time that this very man lay under the censure of a law which, in his own country, made him subject to transportation or death, from religious distinctions, and at the time that a prince of his own religion threatened this country with an invasion, this respectable character took up his pen and, unsolicited and without a motive but that of real patriotism, urged his own communion to peace, and to support the law which had sentenced himself to transportation.[647]
Nepean and Orde suggested certain inquiries which O'Leary was to make; but who can tell at what point of these inquiries the practised casuist may have meant to draw the line? A hundred pounds a year, which Nepean says he named, seems marvellously small for the magnitude and risk of the service expected. Orde writes on September 8, 1784, expressing satisfaction that Nepean, in London, had 'settled matters with O'Leary, who can get to the bottom of all secrets in which the Catholics are concerned, and they are certainly the chief promoters of our present disquietude.' A fortnight later, after an interview with the priest at Dublin Castle, he adds, (September 24, 1784): 'O'Leary has it in his power, if we can depend upon him, to discover to us the real designs of the Catholics, from which quarter, after all, the real mischief is to spring.' O'Leary must have known that, in 1784, no treasonable designs were harboured by the Catholics, and probably felt that he would be safe in making the inquiries prescribed. Mr. Lecky, a most patient historic investigator, a man who has searched more secret sources of sound information than any other writer of Irish history, while he considers that the letters just quoted prove O'Leary a spy (p. [369]), yet, in describing this very time, doubts
whether the Catholics themselves took any considerable part in these agitations. For a long period an almost death-like torpor hung over the body, and, though they formed the great majority of the Irish people, they hardly counted even in movements of opinion. Even when they were enrolled in volunteer corps there were no traces of Catholic leaders. There was, it is true, still a Catholic Committee which watched over Catholic interests; Lord Kenmare and a few other leading Catholics were in frequent communication with the Government; two or three Catholic bishops at this time did good service in repressing Whiteboyism; and Dr. Troy, who was then Bishop of Ossory, received the warm thanks of the Lord-Lieutenant;[648] but for the most part the Catholics stood wholly apart from political agitation.
I do not like repetitions; but they are sometimes a necessity, as in judicial summing-up. Twelve days after O'Leary had been set to work, the Chief Secretary at Dublin Castle seems quite dissatisfied with him. The tone in which our humourist's reports were pitched may be guessed from the following passage in a later pamphlet from his pen[649]:—
Lord Chesterfield, on his return from his Viceroyship, informed George II. that he had met in Ireland but two dangerous Papists, of whom His Majesty should be aware—two [comely] ladies named Devereux, who had danced at the Castle on the King's birth-night. All the viceroys of Ireland, from Lord Chesterfield to Earl Camden, could have made a much similar answer, if interrogated, concerning what is called the danger of Popery.[650]