Whether from this tone, or from other causes, the Government became quite disappointed with their man; for, as Plowden states, they withheld his pension, and 'an arbitrary refusal for many years threw the reverend pensioner on his friends for subsistence.' 'The unexplained cause,' noticed by Dr. England,[651] may, perhaps, here be guessed. O'Leary, as Sydney states, consented, in 1784, to make the secret inquiries which Orde wished, and probably to offer such advice as his experience should suggest; but the idea thrown out at an early stage of this study seems likely enough,—that, after he had made due efforts to find out the truth, he pleasantly assured the Government that no French emissaries had been to Dublin at all; that the Catholics were loyal subjects; and, instead of a slumbering volcano, that Rutland had found a mare's nest! This Viceroy's letter will be remembered in which he drew a highly sensational picture of alleged secret doings in Dublin. It was he who first urged on Sydney the wisdom of securing O'Leary as a spy, and Sydney soon after reports the negotiation as successful. But we have no testimony from Nepean with whom the interview took place. When Rutland spoke, Orde spoke; the act of one was the act of the other. Both were equally fluent as correspondents; but during the three subsequent years that they held office at Dublin Castle, we find no letters from either announcing any discoveries made by O'Leary, and which, no doubt, they would have been only too glad to do as confirming their own forecast, and building up a reputation for subtle statesmanship.
More troublesome times came within the next ten years: the Society of United Irishmen spread with alarming rapidity; and if O'Leary had any wish to play the spy, he had now a grand opportunity by simulating ardent patriotism like McNally and others. His great sermon in 1797 was a declaration of war against French principles, and against all who adopted the policy of revolution. Again, when it became necessary for him to preach the panegyric of Pius VI., who died at this time, he went out of his way to run full tilt against democracy. The 'Courier,' a popular organ, thus describes it:—
Abounding with glowing imagery, classical allusion, and displaying in every sentence the energy of an enlightened and vigorous mind, the Doctor took occasion to felicitate his flock, in the most emphatic terms, on the happiness enjoyed in this country, on the constitution and state of which he pronounced a fine panegyric, happily applying to the extent of our dominion and national glory the line of the poet—
Imperium Oceano, famamque terminat astris.
O'Leary's friends will hope that it was by this tone, rather than by playing the ignominious rôle of a spy, that he sought to regain governmental favour.
The sole remaining letter in the carefully preserved records of the informers of '98 which names O'Leary must not be excluded here. Things had quite changed since 1784. Higgins, in a secret letter to Dublin Castle, dated January 2, 1798, says:—
I took leave to inform you, some time since, that many Roman Catholics seem apparently sorry for the lengths they've been led, and suggested, if O'Leary, or any popular preacher, was to exert himself among them, thousands would come to swear allegiance. I know O'Leary would be a tower of strength among them. He was their first champion, and is most highly respected by the multitude. His writings and preaching prevented the White Boys and insurgents of the South from joining the rabble of Cork and rising en masse at the period when the combined fleets of Spain, France, etc., were in the English Channel.[652]
Higgins does not say that O'Leary authorised him to make this proposition; and even had he done so, it cannot be deemed base.
Orde's letters to the Home Office in 1784, though urging extreme caution lest he and his colleagues should be themselves betrayed, show him to be impulsive in statement, and prone to jump to conclusions. These letters, blemished by an occasional expletive, are printed by Mr. Lecky. Orde is quite sanguine as regards wonderful Catholic secrets that O'Leary would unearth, but this is not the only case in which he exhibits rashness of assumption.