caught Jackson's hands, and motioning to his
assistants to secure the papers, read aloud a
warrant addressed to Tresham Gregg, keeper of
Newgate, directing him to hold in safe custody
the Reverend William Jackson, clerk, late of
London, charged with high treason, and,
specially, with inducing the king's enemies in
France to invade his realm of Ireland.

Jackson had proceeded to France three years
before to collect evidence in the famous case of
the Duchess of Kingston. That business brought
him into connexion with some of the leading
spirits of the revolution. He remained in Paris
in habits of intimacy with some members of the
French convention, and either at his own
suggestion, or through their influence, was
commissioned to ascertain the sentiments of the
lower classes in England and Ireland towards
the French republic, and should he find them
favourable, to prepare certain agents of the
French convention in both countries for the
landing of an invading force. A relative of
Jackson, named Stone, had been long settled
in Paris, and engaged in business there. He
had a brother, resident in London, and an
assistant, bearing the name of Beresford,
married to the sister of Archibald Hamilton
Rowan, who, when Jackson arrived in Ireland,
was lying in Newgate under a charge of
sedition. Stone furnished Jackson, on his
departure from Paris, with letters of introduction
to Horne Tooke and Doctor Crawford. Armed
with these credentials, Jackson reached London,
and immediately proceeded to execute his
commission. He renewed his intimacy with
Cokayne, and employed him as his agent and
confidential secretary. Jackson's communications
with the convention were addressed at
first through Stone, and then through Cokayne,
to Monsieur Chapeaurouge, marchand,
Hambourg, under cover to Messrs. Texier, Angeli,
and Massav, Amsterdam, in a third envelope
directed to Monsieur Daubeduscaille, Hambourg.
The letters were written in commercial style.
"Business" meant Jackson's enterprise;
"goods" denoted provisions for the expected
army of invasion; "Magnett" stood for the
French department of marine; "the baby" was
the young republic; and so on. These letters
were copied out by Cokayne, Jackson alleging
that he owed money in England, where his own
handwriting was well known. Throughout the
correspondence, Stone's name was transposed
into Enots, and Jackson named himself Thomas
Popkins.

Two elaborate despatches from Jackson to
the convention are extant, and possess a
singular interest in reference to the recent
Fenian conspiracy. They are written with
great ability, and, as far as England is
concerned, bear the impress of candour and truth.
As the result of long-continued and minute
inquiry, Jackson states that although the English
people were weary with a war against France,
which brought the nation hollow fame but
substantial loss, they entertained a deeply rooted
hatred towards the French republicans. He
declares that ninety-nine men out of every
hundred would start to their feet in arms to
drive an invader of the sacred English land into
the sea. Any invasion of England would unite
all classes and parties in determined opposition,
and no sacrifice would be considered too great
to protect the inviolability of the soil. He
artfully recommends the convention to disarm
the hostility of the English people by liberating
at once, and without conditions, all English
prisoners, to restore to them their property, and
to transmit them with all honour and respect
to England. He suggests that the convention
should proclaim their anxious desire for peace,
and their desire to live on terms of amity with
the British nation. But under no circumstances
did he think it possible to set the populace in
array against their government and constitution.

But in Ireland, Jackson believed the
convention had the fairest prospects of success.
The organisation known as that of the "United
Irishmen" prevailed in every part of the
kingdom, and possessed agents in the army,
the navy, and all public departments. The
servants in private families of power and
influence were members of the fraternity.
Theobald Wolfe Tone had just accomplished, as it
seemed, the difficult task of effecting an alliance
between the Dissenters of the north and the
Roman Catholics of the south. Jackson
estimates the Protestant Episcopalians at four
hundred and fifty thousand, the Dissenters at nine
hundred thousand, and the Roman Catholics at
three million one hundred and fifty thousand
—an enumeration which proves his sagacity and
knowledge of the country at the time. The
Dissenters, under which name he includes the
Presbyterians of the north, were, he asserts, to
a man, republicans. The Roman Catholics of
the south were thoroughly discontented and
disloyal, ready to welcome any invader. The
great mass of the people would receive the
French into fraternity the moment they
appeared, because while the government of
England was thoroughly national, that of Ireland
was provincial. In addition to the natural love
of change, the great bulk of the nation was
actuated by hatred of the English name. The
gentry and clergy were more tyrannical and
aristocratic than the nobles whom the
republicans had annihilated in France. The
English government was solely a government of
force in Ireland, and would crumble to pieces
before any power of adequate strength at the
first collision. The people had received arms
from France, and were efficiently drilled. Their
organisation was complete, and they awaited
with ill-concealed impatience the arrival of a
force sufficiently great to give them confidence.
The moment such a force appeared, Ireland
would be in a blaze, and the English dominion
at an end.

On the 1st of April, the day of Jackson's
arrival in Dublin, Danton and his colleagues were
murdered in Paris, and the sanguinary
Robespierre ruled the French republic. Jackson was