Britain 737
and gentry were outvoted by a more militant group of Catholic laity. “What pre-
vents you,” asked a certain Dr. Ryan in the Committee, “from coalescing with your
Protestant brethren? Nothing! Not religion. It is the spirit of the present times to
let religion make its own way by its own merits.... Let us lay down the little char-
acter of a sect, and take up the character of a people.”^50 The Catholic Committee of
Dublin developed a network of similar committees throughout the island. It em-
ployed as its agent a young lawyer named Theobald Wolfe Tone, who had been
born an Anglican. Tone helped also to found at Belfast, late in 1791, a group that
called itself the Society of United Irishmen, composed mainly of Presbyterian
merchants and professional men, who, by the word “United,” meant to express
their willingness to work with Anglicans and Catholics. In 1792 a United Irish
club was established at Dublin. It included 130 Protestant and 140 Catholic mem-
bers, among whom there were 67 “cloth merchants,” 32 other “merchants,” 30 at-
torneys, 26 barristers, 16 physicians, 15 grocers, and so on down through a list of
solid occupations.^51 United Irish lodges spread rapidly through the country. They
were at first perfectly open and orderly, resembling the political clubs that were
common on the Continent and in the United States, aiming at a reform of the
Irish Parliament as a first step toward further social changes, but already inclined,
in view of the frustrations of a decade before, to be radical in their ideas. The Bel-
fast group, in 1792, established one of the most significant democratic newspapers
of the English- speaking world at this time—the Northern Star. Published twice a
week, it sold by subscription for less than twopence a copy. In December 1792, si-
multaneously with the first convention in Edinburgh, and with the triumph of the
militants in the Catholic Committee at Dublin, a few Ulstermen formed a society
called “The Irish Jacobins of Belfast.”^52 It was possibly the only such group, in any
country except France itself, that openly adopted and acknowledged the name “Ja-
cobin” for itself; it was soon closed down by the government.
The United Irishmen pressed for parliamentary reform, denounced the war
against France, circulated Paine’s Rights of Man, and demanded the calling of an
Irish “convention,” of the kind that had met in Ireland in 1783, and which the ex-
ample of the French Convention now made far more fearsome. The Catholic
Committee, which even when radicalized was more moderate than most United
Irish clubs, drew up a petition to the king in December 1792. Deliberately avoid-
ing the inflammatory phrase, “rights of citizens,” and modestly requesting only the
restoration of ancient privileges, the petition begged for relief from discrimination,
and was in fact graciously received by King George III.^53
The authorities reacted in 1793 with a mixture of concessions and new controls.
On the one hand all “conventions” claiming any representative character were pro-
hibited. On the other, the Irish Parliament under strong pressure from the British
ministry, enacted certain measures of Catholic relief. Catholics (if they met the
usual requirements, such as the forty- shilling freehold) were now allowed to vote
50 Minutes of the meetings as published in Tone, I, 266.
51 R. B. McDowell, “The Personnel of the Dublin Society of United Irishmen,” in Irish Historical
Studies, II (1941), 12–53.
52 Jacob, 180.
53 Tone, I, 227, 451–61.