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Catholic Committee in its new progressive temper, and it is amusing to read Wolfe Tone's description of how Keogh, the Catholic leader, converted bishops to the cause of Catholic emancipation.
"Good news from Munster," he writes in his diary in 1792. "Gog (Keogh) preaching for three days to six bishops, who are at last converted."
And, on a journey from Belfast,
"Gog converts a bishop at Newry, another at Downpatrick.… Leave Gog converting another bishop (the Catholic Primate) and drive off in the stage." Everywhere, the foremost champions of the Catholic cause were the United Irishmen, especially the Belfast leaders—most notable among them, after Neilson and MacCabe, being perhaps the Rev. Kelburne and Rev. William Steel Dickson who the Catholic historian Teeling tells us "had been the early asserter of Ireland's independence, the eloquent advocate of his Catholic countrymen for the full enjoyment of their civil rights, and had on some occasions to encounter a torrent of bigotry which required no ordinary nerve to resist."
In 1792 the people of Belfast celebrated the third anniversary of the opening of the French Revolution, with a great parade of Volunteers. Banners were carried in procession bearing such slogans as "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," "The Union of Irishmen without which we can never be free," "The Rights of Man—may all nations have wisdom to understand and spirit to assert them." In December of the same year the Convention of the Catholics of Ireland, the "Back Lane Parliament," met in Dublin with 244 delegates present. They made their demands for civil liberty and emancipation in very clear terms, and Belfast publicly supported them.
EARLY FRUITS OF UNITY.
The Catholic Relief Bill, giving the vote to Catholics, at last became law in April, 1793. The government had found itself compelled to a partial yielding before the democratic storm; Presbyterians and Catholics were united in apparently indissoluble bonds, the United system was spreading apace and was making serious progress in the ranks of the Defenders. Another important consideration with the government, no doubt, was its need to recruit among the Catholic peasantry of Ireland for armies to invade
