Some erroneous impressions prevailed to the prejudice of this singular man. Cumberland blows hot and cold: speaks of the honours Hussey received from Spain, and that he had clearly no repugnance to those that his Church could give. 'He had no wish to stir up insurrection; but'—adds Cumberland—'to head a revolution that should overturn the Church established, and enthrone himself primate in Armagh, would have been his glory and felicity—and, in truth, he was a man, by talents, nerve, ambition, and intrepidity, fitted for the boldest enterprise.' This impression seems partly due to a Good Friday sermon, in which Dr. Hussey announced the speedy emancipation of the Catholics, and the downfall of sectarianism in Ireland. He established new schools, hospitals, and convents in Waterford, and endowed them with gold.
The widespread feeling of distrust in public men which certain incidents of the time aroused is curiously shown by the remark of Sylvanus Urban, when announcing Hussey's death. 'The enemies of administration said he was employed by Government to sow the seeds of dissension with a view to bring about the Union. Others considered him an agent of France.'[668] We have seen, on the authority of Froude, that he turned on his former friends in the Cabinet, and stung them; while Edmund Burke, writing to Hussey on his famous pastoral, says:—
From the moment that the Government, who employed you, betrayed you, they determined at the same time to destroy you. They are not a people to stop short in their course. You have come to an open issue with them. On your part, what you have done has been perfectly agreeable to your duty as a Catholic bishop and a man of honour and spirit.
This was almost the last letter written by Burke.
The Pelham MSS. contain the following curious letter addressed by Hussey to Pelham, afterwards Lord Chichester, and a most influential member of the Government. Hussey's informant was, no doubt, Edmund Burke:—
Waterford: April 19, 1797.
Sir,—I received this day a letter from a friend of mine who sits in Parliament, who heard you defend the meaning of some sentiments in a pastoral letter, supposed to be addressed to the Roman Catholic clergy of this diocese by the Right Reverend Dr. Hussey, against the admixture of fulsome flattery and captious malevolence of a placeman, and though the intimacy that once subsisted between us has ceased, I will not be inferior in generosity to any man, and accordingly I embrace this occasion to thank you for the justice you do me. If done some months ago it would silence some malevolent whispers and have obliged your humble servant,
Thos. Hussey.
An account of Maynooth College by one of its professors appears in the 'Irish Magazine' for February 1808; and it is mentioned as a fact not generally known that Burke was 'attended spiritually in his last illness by Dr. Hussey.' In the accounts of Burke's funeral Dr. Hussey's presence is recorded; and it is told by Dr. England that when Hussey approached his old friend Portland in the graveyard, the duke turned abruptly away. 'Crosses' continued to come. Pelham, replying to Dr. Duigenan on February 22, 1799, declared that the Board of Maynooth had displaced their president for non-residence.
Hussey with all his friendship for Burke was no friend to his son. A letter from John Keogh to Hussey, dated October 2, 1792, and seemingly communicated by the latter to Dundas, then Home Secretary, is preserved among the Secret Irish State Papers in London. It repudiates Burke's son who had been sent to Ireland by his father as an agent on behalf of the Catholics, and tells Dundas that he was wholly unauthorised to speak for that body. According to Tone's journal of September 1792, Keogh regarded young Burke as a spy sent by Dundas. He was wrong, for Hobart, writing to Nepean, on October 4, 1792, states that Dundas took credit with Westmoreland for having given Burke a chilling reception on his return to England. This was the youth of whom Buckle says, 'Never can there be forgotten those touching allusions to the death of that only son, who was the joy of his soul and the pride of his heart, and to whom he fondly hoped to bequeath the inheritance of his imperishable fame.'