The Sheriff of Dublin, a man of the name of O'Reilly, obeyed the requisition; but Fitzgibbon, who, luckily, was now Attorney-general, instantly prosecuted him for abuse of his office.

He was convicted, fined, and imprisoned, and his punishment deterred others from following his example.

And a rigorous example had become indispensable, since it was known to the government that Tandy and some of his followers were acting in connection with French emissaries, and that their object was the separation of Ireland from England, and, in the minds of some of them, certainly the annexation of the country to France; indeed, on one occasion Fitzgibbon asserted in the House of Commons that he had seen resolutions inviting the French into the country.

The government would gladly have established a militia to supersede the Volunteers, but the temper of the Irish Parliament, in its newly-acquired independence, rendered any such attempt hopeless; and Mr.Grattan, with a perversity of judgment which his warmest admirers must find it difficult to reconcile with statesmanship, if not with patriotism, even opposed with extreme bitterness a bill for the establishment of a police for Dublin, though he could not deny that there existed in the city an organized body of ruffians, who made not only the streets but even the dwelling-houses of the more orderly citizens unsafe, by outrages of the worst kind, committed on the largest scale--assaults, plunderings, ravishments, and murders.

In the rural districts of the South the disturbances were so criminally violent, and so incessant, that the Lord-lieutenant was compelled to request the presence of some additional regiments from England, as the sole means of preserving any kind of respect for the law; and more than once the mobs of rioters showed themselves so bold and formidable, that the soldiers were compelled to fire in self-defence, and order was not restored but at the cost of many lives.
Presently a Conspiracy Bill was passed, and gradually the firmness of the government re-established a certain amount of internal tranquillity.
But shortly afterward a crisis arose which, more than the debates on the commercial propositions, or on the Volunteers, or on the police, showed how over-liberal had been the confidence of the English minister who had repealed Poynings' Act, and had bestowed independent authority on the Irish Parliament before the members had learned how to use it.