Now we have Wolfe Tone and his aims being quoted by the unionist paramilitaries. Marianne Elliott in her fine book Wolfe Tone: Prophet of Irish Independence will have surprised many when she gives what Tone really thought of his future.
"However prominent his name was to become in Irish historiography, Tone never thought of himself as a political leader. Nor does he ever make any claim to be `the father of Irish republicanism. After Irish independence he hoped rather to continue in his pre 1795 role as conciliator and bridge between the Catholics and the Presbyterians. Indeed he speaks frequently on his mission as fulfilling a personal debt to his friends on the Catholic Committee."
In his journal for July 27th, 1796, when he was, of course, in Paris, preparing for Bantry, he writes: "I owe unspeakable obligations, and such as I can never repay, to my masters of the General Committee. I have, in consequence, never lost sight of their honour or their interests here, as will appear from my memorial delivered to the Executive Directory, in which I have endeavoured to make them the basis of the National Legislature. If that succeeds, I shall have been instrumental in throwing a great game into their hands, and I hope and believe they will have talents and spirit to support it. At any rate, I have, I think, done my duty by them, and in part at least acquitted the debt of gratitude I owed them.
"I will never forget their behaviour to me in the hour of my persecution, and their heroic refusal to sacrifice me at the requisition of Grattan and the whigs. If I contribute to seat them in the places of the aforementioned whigs, it will be a proof that with parties, I may say with nations as well as with individuals, honour and honesty will ever be found to be ultimately the true policy."
Then the bit of self mockery: "But let me not be preaching so much about myself. I want to be off! . . . A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse.'"