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the French Republic upon which it was soon to declare war.
Events were now moving quickly. A Secret Committee appointed by the "Irish" House of Lords to inquire into the state of the country reported that the Defenders, "poor ignorant labouring men," sworn to secrecy and deeply influenced by United Irish ideas, were causing great trouble to landlordism. Seditious pamphlets issued in Dublin and Belfast were responsible for grave ferment, especially in the North. Through the activity of the clubs and committees these publications were distributed widely. In Dublin and Belfast also the Volunteers were enrolling the poorer classes freely—Grattan described them in parliament as an "armed beggary," and some, styling themselves the National Guard (in imitation of the French) also adopted as an emblem on their buttons a liberty cap surmounting a pike. The report emphasized the need for unsparing repression.
Then began in real earnest the Crown policy of coercion which was to extend and develop as the power of the new movement increased, until at length it became the official design of the government to provoke a premature rebellion while they still had force to defeat it.
The same year—1793—British Imperialism launched its war of intervention on the French people. The Dublin Parliament, with the warm approval of Grattan's party, supported the war and voted 20,000 men to the British Army. The attempt to recruit a militia to help in this predatory venture caused minor peasant risings throughout the country.
Paine's writings were being widely distributed; the Clubs of United Irishmen were organising opinion against this war everywhere, and grew more powerful as they came more and more in contact with the militant agrarian nationalism of the Defenders.
REBELLION DISCUSSED.
In the spring of 1794 the Rev. William Jackson came from Paris to confer with some United Irish leaders in Dublin on the prospects of an armed revolution in Ireland, if the French government sent help. Tone furnished him with a report on the state of Ireland outlining the dispositions of the people generally. The Presbyterians were "the most enlightened body of the nation, and enthusiastically attached to the French revolution," and "the Catholics, the great body of the nation, are in the lowest degree of
