Wolfe Tone's fancy was a scheme for founding a sort of military colony
in some island in the South Seas, to act as a check upon the designs
and enterprises of Spain against the British Empire. Tone took his
idea so seriously that he wrote to William Pitt, the Prime Minister,
describing and explaining his project and asking for Government help in
order to make it a reality. As will be easily understood, Pitt took no
notice of the proposal, having probably a good many more suggestions
made to him every day as to the best defences of England than he could
possibly consider in a week. It is somewhat curious, however, to find
that Wolfe Tone should at one period of his life have formed the idea
of helping England to defend herself against her enemies. Some
historians have gone so far as to opine that if Pitt could have seen
his way to take Tone's proposition seriously, and to patronize the
young man, the world might never have heard of the insurrection of
"Ninety-Eight." But no one who gives any fair consideration to the
whole career and character of Tone can have any doubt that Tone's
passionate patriotism would have made him the champion of his own
country, no matter what prospects the patronage of an {311} English
minister might have offered to his ambition. At the time when Tone was
scheming out his project for the island in the South Seas the leaders
in the national movement in Ireland still believed that the just claims
of their people were destined to receive satisfaction from the wisdom
and justice of the English Sovereign. When it became apparent that
Catholic Emancipation was not to be obtained through George the Third
and through Pitt, then Wolfe Tone made up his mind that there was no
hope for Ireland but in absolute independence, and that that
independence was only to be won by the help of Napoleon Bonaparte and
of France. In the mean time Tone had taken a step which brilliant,
gifted, generous, and impecunious young men usually take at the opening
of their career--he had made a sudden marriage. Matilda Witherington
was only sixteen when Tone persuaded her to accept him as her husband
and to share his perilous career. Romance itself hardly contains any
story of a marriage more imprudent and yet more richly rewarded by
love. Tone adored his young wife and she adored him. Love came in at
their door and, though poverty entered there too, love never flew out
at the window. The whole story of Wolfe Tone's