In the event Tone and his fellow protesters on the Catholic Committee were right. Keogh himself came to recognise as much, when even the concessions of the 1793 Relief Act continued to be blocked by the Ascendancy. In the year following the passage of the act Ireland drifted towards revolution. The heightened expectations in which 1793 opened were dashed within a matter of months, leaving United Irishmen and Catholic leaders alike in disarray. Tone's journals for these months do not survive, but he appears to have been left as directionless by the turn of events as his friends.

I

The war which broke out between Britain and France in February 1793 had been threatening for many months. The Catholic Convention of December 1792 met to the sound of recruiting drums beating through the city. Trade was interrupted and there was mounting economic distress. The impending war was likewise the occasion for the government to implement plans for a militia, designed to curb the Volunteers once and for all. But the Volunteering ideal was sacrosanct in Ireland, and initially the government was inhibited by fears of offending the old Volunteers. The United Irishmen obligingly supplied the excuse.

The United Irish-inspired Volunteer revival peaked in December 1792 with plans for a national battalion. Its motto was ‘liberty and equality’, its emblem a harp without the crown. Its uniform was modelled on the French National Guard, and so it was nicknamed and attacked by its detractors. The Dublin Society of United Irishmen was conducting 1780s politics in changed times. It was a gesture typical of the bluster of its Tandy phase, and many members thought the move unwise. Uniforms were displayed in the Dublin shops and cannon ordered from Henry Jackson's foundry. On 10 December the government issued a proclamation threatening to disperse the new force if it assembled.

Even then the United Irish Society took little account of the new mood. On the 16th it issued an address to the Volunteers calling on them to take up arms once again in defence of Ireland.