The Sheriff of Dublin, a man of
the name of O'Reilly, obeyed the requisition; but Fitzgibbon, who,
luckily, was now Attorney-general, instantly prosecuted him for abuse of
his office. He was convicted, fined, and imprisoned, and his punishment
deterred others from following his example. And a rigorous example had
become indispensable, since it was known to the government that Tandy
and some of his followers were acting in connection with French
emissaries, and that their object was the separation of Ireland from
England, and, in the minds of some of them, certainly the annexation of
the country to France; indeed, on one occasion Fitzgibbon asserted in
the House of Commons that he had seen resolutions inviting the French
into the country. The government would gladly have established a militia
to supersede the Volunteers, but the temper of the Irish Parliament, in
its newly-acquired independence, rendered any such attempt hopeless; and
Mr. Grattan, with a perversity of judgment which his warmest admirers
must find it difficult to reconcile with statesmanship, if not with
patriotism, even opposed with extreme bitterness a bill for the
establishment of a police for Dublin, though he could not deny that
there existed in the city an organized body of ruffians, who made not
only the streets but even the dwelling-houses of the more orderly
citizens unsafe, by outrages of the worst kind, committed on the largest
scale--assaults, plunderings, ravishments, and murders.
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