What miserable slaves are the gentry of Ireland! The only accusation brought against the United Irishmen by their enemies is that they wish to break … - Wolfe Tone

Nothing could exceed the alarm, the terror and confusion which this most unexpected coalition produced in the breasts of the English Government and their partizans, the Protestant aristocracy of Ireland. Every art, every stratagem, was used to break the new alliance and revive the ancient animosities and feuds between the Dissenters and Catholics. Happily such abominable attempts proved fruitless. The leaders on both sides saw that they had but one common interest, as they had but one common country; that while they were mutually contending and ready to sacrifice each other, England profited of their folly to enslave both; and that it was only by a cordial union and affectionate co-operation that they could establish their common liberty and establish the independence of Ireland. They therefore resisted and overcame every effort to disunite them, and in this manner has a spirit of union and regard succeeded to 250 years of civil discord, a revolution in the political morality of the nation of the most extreme importance, and from which, under the powerful auspices of the French Republic, I hope and trust her independence and liberty will arise.

[T]he Irish people are prepared and united, and want but the means to begin; that, not to speak of policy or the pleasure of revenge, in humbling to the dust a haughty and implacable rival, it is in itself a great and splendid act of justice worthy of the Republic to rescue a whole people from a slavery under which they have groaned for more than six hundred years; that it is for the glory of France, after emancipating Holland and receiving Belgium into her bosom, to establish one more free republic in Europe; that it is for her interest to cut off, as she now may do, one half of the resources of England and lay her under extreme difficulties in the employment of those which remain. For all these reasons, in the name of justice, of humanity, of liberty, of my own country, and of France, I supplicate the French Government to take into consideration the state of Ireland; and by granting her the powerful aid and protection of the Republic to enable her at once to demonstrate her gratitude, to vindicate her liberty, to humble her tyrant and to assume that independent station among the nations of the earth for which her soil, her productions and her position, her population and her spirit, have designed her.

The fortune of war has thrown me into the hands of Government, and I am utterly ignorant of what fate may attend me, but in the worst event I hope I shall bear it like a man, and that my death will not disgrace my life.