¹ Dictionary of National Biography [hereafter D.M.B.], William Paulet Carey.

² Youngson, A. J., The prince and the pretender: a study in the writing of history (Beckenham, 1985), P. 23.Google Scholar

³ Trinity College Dublin [hereafter T.C.D.], Madden papers, MS 873, ‘Memoir of William Paulet Carey, brother of the author of Vindiciae Hibernicae’.

⁴ Jacob, Rosamond, The rise ofthe United Irishmen (London, 1937), p. 191Google Scholar. Jacob fails to mention why Carey had been expelled, thus giving the erroneous impression that it was because of his activities as a witness. Nor does she offer evidence that he perjured himself.

⁵ McDowell, R. B., Ireland in the age of imperialism and revolution, 1760–1801, (Oxford, 1979), P. 440.Google Scholar

⁶ McDowell, , ‘Reform and reaction, 1789–94’, in A new history of Ireland, vol. IV Eighteenth-century Ireland, ed. Moody, T. W. and Vaughan, W. E. (Oxford, 1986), p. 297Google Scholar; McDowell, ‘Ireland in 1800’, in Moody, and Vaughan, , New history, IV, 660.Google Scholar

⁷ Foster, R. F., Modern Ireland, 1600–1972 (London, 1988), p. 262Google Scholar. The only dispassionate and sympathetic account of Carey's dilemma in 1794 comes from Brian, Inglis in his The freedom of the press in Ireland (London, 1954), pp. 64–8Google Scholar, in which Carey's role as a newspaper editor and proprietor is examined. Inglis, who himself was to become a famous journalist in Britain, appreciated the skills of Carey as well as the enormous pressure he faced. The most recent thesis on the United Irishmen, Curtin's, Nancy ‘The origins of Irish republicanism: the United Irishmen in Dublin and Ulster, 1791–8’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, 2 vols., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1988)Google Scholar, mentions Carey only briefly, and is inaccurate in detail (Carey ‘seems’ to have been an informer and emigrated to America in 1795, etc [vol. 1, pp. 291–2]).

⁸ The trial of William Drennan on a trial for sedition, in the year 1794…, ed. John, Francis Larkin (Dublin, 1991), pp. 7–34.Google Scholar

⁹ The Drennan letters, ed. Chart, D. A. (Belfast, 1931).Google Scholar

¹⁰ D.N.B., William Paulet Carey; Carter, Edward C. II, ‘The political activities of Mathew Carey, nationalist, 1760–1814’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Bryn Mawr College, 1962)Google Scholar; Durey, Michael, ‘Thomas Paine's apostles: radical emigres and the triumph of Jeffersonian republicanism’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser. XLIV (1987), 682–5.Google Scholar

¹¹ National Evening Star [hereafter NES], 18 Feb. 1792; Carey, William Paulet, An appeal to the people of Ireland (Dublin, 1794), p. 40.Google Scholar

¹² Wall, Maureen, ‘The rise of a catholic middle class in eighteenth-century Ireland’ [1958]Google Scholar, reprinted in Catholic Ireland in the eighteenth century: collected essays of Maureen Wall, ed. Gerard, O'Brien (Dublin, 1989), pp. 73–84.Google Scholar

¹³ Carey, , Appeal, p. 48.Google Scholar

¹⁴ ‘The autobiography of Mathew Carey’, New England Magazine (1833), pp. 404–12Google Scholar; Carter, ‘Mathew Carey’, ch. I; Inglis, , Freedom of the press, pp. 22–31.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Carey, , Appeal, p. 3.Google Scholar

¹⁶ [Carey, William Paulet], The nettle, an Irish bouquet, to tickle the nose of an English Viceroy: being a collection of political songs and parodies, dedicated to the Marquis Grimbaldo, Governor of Barataria (Dublin, 1789)Google Scholar. Much of this collection satirizes the Irish government's panic during the Regency crisis of 1788.

¹⁷ Carey, , The nettle, p. II.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Carey, , Appeal, pp. 2–3.Google Scholar

¹⁹ [Binns, John], Recollections of the life of John Binns: twenty-nine years in Europe and fifty-three in the United States (Philadelphia, 1854), pp. 14–16Google Scholar; Benjamin Binns to R. R. Madden, 30 January 1843, T.C.D., Madden papers, 873/451; Coughlin, Rupert J., Mapper Tandy (Dublin, 1976)Google Scholar; James Smyth, ‘Dublin's political underground in the 1790s’, in Parliament, politics and people: essays in eighteenth-century Irish history, ed. Gerard, O'Brien (Dublin, 1989), p. 132.Google Scholar

²⁰ For Carey's views on Paine's ‘extraordinary book’ [Rights of man, part 2], see NES, 28 Feb. 1792.

²¹ NES, 12 Jan., 15, 20, 22 Mar. 1792. For another example of an Irish newspaper editor demonstrating this ambiguous Paineite political economy at this time see Durey, Michael, ‘Irish deism and Jefferson's republic: Denis Driscol in Ireland and America, 1793–1810, Eire–Ireland: A Journal of Irish Studies, XXV (1990), 56–76.Google Scholar

²² Carey, , Appeal, p. i.Google Scholar

²³ McDowell, R. B., ‘The personnel of the Dublin Society of United Irishmen’, Irish Historical Studies, II (1940–1941), 12–53.Google Scholar

²⁴ Chart, D. A., in his introduction to The Drennan letters, p. VIIIGoogle Scholar, says that Drennan moved to Dublin in 1791, but his letter to his brother-in-law, Samuel McTier, dated 22 Dec. 1789, makes it clear that he had settled in Dublin by then (Drennan letters, p. 50).

²⁵ McDowell, R. B., Irish public opinion 1750–1800 (London, 1944), p. 117.Google Scholar

²⁶ Drennan to Dr. William Bruce, 7 Feb. 1784, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland [hereafter P.R.O.N.I.], D. 553/20, quoted in A. T. Q. Stewart, ‘“A stable unseen power”: Dr William Drennan and the origins of the United Irishmen’, in Essays presented to Michael Roberts, eds. John, Bossy and Peter, Jupp (Belfast, 1976), p. 84.Google Scholar

²⁷ Drennan to Bruce, undated [1785?], quoted in Stewart, , ‘Drennan’, pp. 84–5.Google Scholar

²⁸ Stewart, , ‘Drennan’, pp. 87–8; Drennan to McTier, 21 May 1791, Drennan letters, pp. 54–5.Google Scholar

²⁹ Drennan to McTier, , c. Nov. 1791, Drennan letters, p. 63.Google Scholar

³⁰ Drennan to MrsMcTier, , 25 Nov. 1792, Drennan letters, pp. 97–8Google Scholar. Confirmation that such a cell within the Dublin U.I. society did exist comes from a report by the spy Thomas Collins of 4 June 1793, in which he writes of ‘the private junto’ making secret plans. ‘Proceedings of the Dublin Society of United Irishmen’, ed. McDowell, R. B., Analecta Hibernica, XVII (1949), 82.Google Scholar

³¹ Drennan to McTier, , 21 Jan. 1794, Drennan letters, p. 182.Google Scholar

³² Thomas Addis Emmet, ‘Part of an essay towards the history of Ireland’, in MacNeven, William James, Pieces of Irish history (New York, 1807), pp. 46–7Google Scholar: [Lawless, Valentine, Cloncurry, Lord], Personal recollections of the life and times, with extracts from the correspondence of Valentine Lord Cloncurry, 2nd edn (Dublin, 1850), pp. 2–28.Google Scholar

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³⁴ ‘Substance of Thomas Addis Emmet's examination, before the secret committee of the House of Lords, August 10th, 1798’, in MacNeven, , Pieces, p. 262.Google Scholar

³⁵ ‘The examination of Thomas Addis Emmet, before the secret committee of the House of Commons, August 14, 1798’, in MacNeven, , Pieces, p. 269.Google Scholar

³⁶ McDowell, , Age of imperialism, p. 45.Google Scholar

³⁷ Quoted in Foster, , Modern Ireland, p. 260.Google Scholar

³⁸ Drennan to McTier, 23 Dec. [1792], 27 Feb. 1792, c. Dec. 1792, Drennan letters, pp. 111, 85, 117.

³⁹ Drennan to McTier, , Feb. 1792, Drennan letters, p. 78.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Drennan to McTier, 3 Mar. [1792], c. Dec. 1791, 3 Dec. 1791, 2 Apr. 1793, 28 Jan. 1793, Drennan letters, pp. 86, 69, 67, 149, 122.

⁴¹ These potential divisions in the Dublin United Irishmen have not been emphasized by historians, most of whom are content to see the society as ‘middle class’, i.e. they see the organization from the perspective of the leadership cadre. A partial exception to this is Nancy Curtin, who recognizes divisions and tensions within the Dublin society, but implies that these were unimportant before 1794. See Curtin, Nancy J., ‘The transformation of the Society of United Irishmen into a mass-based revolutionary organisation, 1794–6’, Irish Historical Studies, XXIV (1985), 463–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴² Carey, , Appeal, pp. 3–4Google Scholar; NES, 29 Mar. 1792.

⁴³ Carey, , Appeal, p. VI.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ ‘Junius Hibernicus’, in NES, 6 Mar. 1792.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Carey, , Appeal, pp. 4–5Google Scholar; McDowell, , Age of imperialism, pp. 396–7.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Eamon, O'Flaherty, ‘Irish catholics and the French revolution’, in Ireland and the French revolution, ed. Hugh, Gough and David, Dickson (Dublin, 1990), p. 60.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ NES, 7 Jan. 1792. See also 3 and 5 Jan. 1792.

⁴⁸ Carey, , Appeal, pp. IV–V.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Richard, Hofstadter, The paranoid style in American politics and other essays (New York, 1965)Google Scholar; Lance, Banning, ‘Republican ideology and the triumph of the Constitution, 1789 to 1793’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser. XXXI (1974), 171Google Scholar; David, Sisson, The American revolution of 1800 (New York, 1974), pp. 130–2Google Scholar; Vernon, Stauffer, New England and the Bavarian Illuminati (1918; reprint New York, 1967)Google Scholar; Knox, J. Wendell, Conspiracy in American politics, 1787–1815 (New York, 1972), pp. 69, 91, 114, 124Google Scholar; Hunt, Lynn, Politics, culture, and class in the French revolution (Berkeley, 1984), pp. 42–7Google Scholar; Wood, Gordon S., ‘Conspiracy and the paranoid style’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser. XXXIX (1982), 401–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁰ For another British example see Michael, Durey, ‘With the hammer of truth’: James Thomson Callender and America's early national heroes (Charlottesville, 1990), pp. 67–8.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Quoted in Albert, Goodwin, The friends of liberty. The English democratic movement in the age of the French revolution (London, 1978), p. 197.Google Scholar

⁵² For the sans-culottes' attitudes, see Soboul, Albert, The Parisian sans-culottes and the French revolution 1793–4 (Oxford, 1964)Google Scholar; Soboul, , ‘Problems of the revolutionary state’, in Understanding the revolution (London, 1988), pp. 64–86Google Scholar; Bosher, J. F., ‘The sans-culottes and the Constitution’, The Consortium on Revolutionary Europe Proceedings (1988), pp. 429–50Google Scholar; Williams, Gwyn A., Artisans and sans-culottes (London, 1968), ch. 2Google Scholar; Rose, R. B., The making of the sans-culottes: democratic ideas and institutions in Paris, 1789–92 (Manchester, 1983).Google Scholar

⁵³ McDowell, , Age of imperialism, p. 385.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ NES, 7 Jan. 1792; Carey, , Appeal, pp. X–XI, 6.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ For the amazement of one of MacNeven's friends at seeing him constantly attending church after emigrating to the United States, see George Cuming to Robert Simms, 10 May 1806, P.R.O.N.I., D1759/3B/6/32. By late 1792 the catholic bishops were becoming increasingly worried by the rise of anticlericalism amongst catholics in Ireland. Flaherty, , ‘Ireland and French revolution’, p. 62.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ McDowell, , ‘Proceedings of the Dublin Society of United Irishmen’, p. 13.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Byrne, like other United Irishmen of his middling rank, such as the Dublin printer John Chambers, lost most of his possessions – and in Byrne's case his wife – when imprisoned in 1798. The professional men, at least those who under the Banishment Act went to the United States after 1798, seem to have fared somewhat better. At least forty-five members of the Dublin society went bankrupt between 1788 and 1803 (excluding Carey). McDowell, , ‘Personnel of the Dublin U.I.’, p. 18Google Scholar. Samuel Neilson, Belfast's most committed United Irishman, lost a fortune in the cause. Many of those who turned informer, for example Thomas Collins and John Hughes, did so only after bankruptcy.

⁶⁸ The dispute between Carey and McKenna is confusing. It apparently resulted from the publication of a pamphlet satirizing the society and the Catholic Committee, the author having used Carey's pseudonym of ‘Junius Hibernicus’. Carey was naturally thought to be the author; he seems to have thought, probably erroneously, that it came from the pen either of McKenna or of MacNeven. Carey, , Appeal, pp. 8–10Google Scholar; Collins' Report of 6 July 1792, Irish State Paper Office [hereafter I.S.P.O.], Official Papers,. 2nd ser., OP 13/35. For McKenna's political views see McDowell, , Public opinion, pp. 167–8Google Scholar. McKenna agreed with Burke on the French revolution; he was also an exponent of Adam Smith's political economy. He eventually left the Dublin U.I., of his own volition, in April 1793.

⁵⁹ The surviving minutes of the society fail to say when his election took place. Carey, , Appeal, p. 8Google Scholar, only says the election was ‘later’, when the vote was 43 to 10.

⁶⁰ Carey joined the National Battalion and was, he claimed, part of a committee which succeeded in abolishing the ‘mischievous’ button with the cap of liberty motif. Carey, , Appeal, P. 51.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Clive, Emsley, ‘The London “Insurrection” of December 1792: fact, fiction, or fantasy?’, Journal of British Studies, XVII (1978), 66–86Google Scholar; Jim Smyth, ‘Popular politicization, defenderism and the catholic question’, in Gough, and Dickson, , Ireland and the French revolution, pp. 109–16.Google Scholar

⁶² Drennan to MrsMcTier, , 30 Nov., 1792, Drennan letters, p. 99.Google Scholar

⁶³ Carey, , Appeal, pp. 11–12.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Carey, , Appeal, pp. 14–15Google Scholar; McDowell, , ‘Proceedings’, p. 40Google Scholar. Assuming the society's lawyers would defend him, Carey did not employ counsel, a mistake he later regretted when he was abandoned.

⁶⁵ As a further, if minor, example of the way historians (unwittingly?) give only half a story, the case of what happened after the proclamation was issued is instructive. Most of the new battalion decided not to wear their uniforms that day, but a handful did so. Historians always mention one by name: Archibald Hamilton Rowan. No one has ever mentioned that Carey, too, deliberately paraded Dublin in his green uniform on that day (he wanted to show that his buttons did not proclaim ‘Liberty and Equality, and No King’, as rumour suggested). Carey himself would not have been surprised by these historians. Carey, Appeal, pp. 85–6.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Trial of Drennan, p. 58 (evidence of Carey).

⁶⁷ Trial of Drennan, p. 10. Collins the informer did not think Drennan could be manipulated. McDowell, ‘Proceedings’, p. 67 (20 Feb. 1793).

⁶⁸ McDowell, , ‘Proceedings’, p. 47.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Drennan himself did not know the reason why he had not been arrested. Drennan to Samuel, McTier, 24 Dec. 1792, Drennan letters, p. 111.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Carey, , Appeal, pp. 37–8Google Scholar; Inglis, , Freedom of the press, p. 65Google Scholar. Carey claimed he could have sold his newspaper for cash to a Castle supporter, but instead sacrificed his own interests to those of the radicals. A motion to support McAllister's National Evening Star was rejected by the U.I. society on 5 April. Thus Carey was by no means the only U.I. printer abandoned by the society. McDowell, , ‘Proceedings’, pp. 72–3.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Carey, , Appeal, pp. 49–52Google Scholar. Drennan refused to contribute.

⁷² Carey, , Appeal, p. 28.Google Scholar

⁷³ Mrs McTier to Samuel McTier (c. Apr. 1793); Drennan to Samuel McTier, (c. Apr.–May 1793), Drennan letters, pp. 155, 160. Collins later claimed that the final wine bill was £ 2,000. McDowell, ‘Proceedings’, p. 85 (16 Aug. 1793).

⁷⁴ Carey, , Appeal, p. 21.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Carey, , Appeal, p. 56Google Scholar; McDowell, , ‘Proceedings’, p. 71.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Carey, , Appeal, p. 56Google Scholar; [Carey, W. P.], ‘To the members of the Society of United Irishmen of Dublin’, Dublin Evening Post [hereafter DEP], 15 Apr. 1794.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ McDowell, , ‘Proceedings’, p. 73.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Carey, , Appeal, pp. 58–9Google Scholar. Carey later claimed that the leaf of the journal confirming the society's support had been torn out. This cannot be verified.

⁷⁹ Carey, , Appeal, pp. 61–86Google Scholar, quotation at p. 84.

⁸⁰ Carey, , Appeal, pp. 100–14.Google Scholar

⁸¹ The committee reported that they were unable to discover why Carey had been arrested. DEP, 15 Apr. 1794.

⁸² McDowell, , ‘Proceedings’, pp. 92–3 (8 Nov. 1793).Google Scholar

⁸³ Inglis, , Freedom of the press, p. 68.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ ‘I am a man, and self-preservation is the first law of nature.’ DEP, 14 Apr. 1794.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ Carey, , Appeal, pp. 19–20.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ Ironically, Drennan escaped punishment mainly because Carey's testimony at the trial was no more and no less what he believed to be true. He neither embellished nor lied.

⁸⁷ W. P. Carey to Mathew Carey, 1 Apr. 1795, Lea and Febiger Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

⁸⁸ Higgins to Cooke, 13 Feb. 1797, I.S.P.O. 620/18/14. For an unsympathetic but colourful account of Higgins's life see Fitzpatrick, W. J., ‘The Sham Squire’, and the informers of 1798 (Dublin, 1895).Google Scholar

⁸⁹ Carey to Cornwallis, 11 Mar. 1799, I.S.P.O. 620/56/60; Carey to Hardwicke, 30 Mar. 1801, ISPO 620/49/94.

⁹⁰ Carey, , Appeal, pp. i, 15.Google Scholar

⁹¹ Higgins to Cooke, 13 Feb. 1797, I.S.P.O. 620/18/14.

⁹² Carey to Hardwicke, 30 Mar. 1801, I.S.P.O. 620/49/94.

⁹³ McDowell, , Age of imperialism, p. 388.Google Scholar

⁹⁴ Curtin, , ‘Origins of Irish republicanism’, p. 540.Google Scholar

⁹⁵ The disillusionment of some members may have been combined with dismay at the failure of the parliamentary reform bill in 1793 and growing Castle intimidation to persuade them to leave the society.

⁹⁶ Drennan to MrsMcTier, , 27 Oct. 1802, Drennan letters, pp. 321–2.Google Scholar