The elan of genius and the call of freedom drew him out of the home of his fathers to consort with Papists, rebels, and transported convicts.

But his failure was the seed of later success.

In a few years the League of North and South was able to unite Protestant and Catholic on the plain economic issue that landlordism must go.

That too failed, but the stream of democratic thought had been merely driven underground to reappear further on in the century.

In the elections that shook the fortress of Toryism in Ulster in the seventies Catholic priests marched at the head of processions side by side with Grand Masters of Orange Lodges.