Editing Wolfe Tone (section)

==Political vision==
[[File:One of the inscribed flagstones on the steps leading to the grave.jpg|thumb|left|One of the inscribed flagstones on the steps leading to the grave of Theobald Wolfe Tone]]

=== Equality and representation ===
Later generations of Irish republicans have broadly been content with Tone's own succinct summary of his purpose:

<blockquote>To subvert the tyranny of our execrable government, to break the connection with England (the never failing source of our political evils) and to assert the independence of my country—these were my objects. To unite the whole people of Ireland: to abolish the memory of all past dissension; and to substitute the common name of Irishmen in place of the denomination of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter—these were my means.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Tone |first=Theobald Wolfe |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZxQvAAAAMAAJ |title=Memoirs of Theobald Wolfe Tone. Volume I |date=1827 |publisher=H. Colburn |location=London |pages= |language=en}}</ref>{{rp|64}}</blockquote>

In the autobiography he began to compose in France, Tone claimed that already in 1790 he had advanced "the question of separation with scarcely any reserve".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Tone |first=Theobald Wolfe |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IjQ9Plqyd8AC |title=The Writings of Theobald Wolfe Tone, 1763-98: America, France, and Bantry Bay, August 1795 to December 1796 |date=1998 |publisher=Clarendon Press |isbn=978-0-19-820879-2 |pages=284 |language=en}}</ref> While not yet rejecting a personal union of crowns, in his tract ''The Spanish War'' (1790) he had disputed Ireland's obligation uphold England in a colonial dispute with Spain and had called for a separate Irish navy.<ref name=":5" />{{rp|372}}

Beginning with [[James Connolly]], who maintained that Tone would have been "a rebel even had he been an Englishman",<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Connolly |first=James |date=1898 |title=the Men We Honour |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1898/08/menhonor.htm |journal=Workers' Republic |issue=13 August}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Connolly |first=James |date=2021 |title=James Connolly on Wolfe Tone |url=https://theirishrevolution.wordpress.com/2021/03/04/james-connolly-on-wolfe-tone/ |access-date=2023-12-26 |website=the irish revolution |language=en}}</ref> left-wing republicans have suggested that for Tone, Irish independence was part of a broader radical vision.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Beresford Ellis |first=Peter |title=History of the Irish Working Class |publisher=Victor Gollancz |year=1972 |isbn=9780575006263 |location=74, 79}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Cronin |first1=Sean |title=Freedom the Wolfe Tone Way |last2=Roche |first2=Richard |publisher=Anvil Book |year=1973 |isbn=978-0900068188 |location=Dublin |pages=55, 73}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Greaves |first=C. Desmond |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xccKAQAAMAAJ |title=Theobald Wolfe Tone and the Irish Nation |date=1991 |publisher=Fulcrum Press |isbn=978-1-872993-02-7 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=CYM Committee |date=2018 |title=Tone Reloaded: Commemoration of a Revolutionary Legacy - Connolly Youth Movement |url=https://cym.ie/2018/08/02/tone-reloaded-commemoration-of-a-revolutionary-legacy/ |access-date=2023-12-27 |website=cym.ie |language=en-GB}}</ref> Typically reference is made to his diary entry for 11 March 1796: "If the men of property will not support us, they must fall; we can support ourselves by the aid of that numerous and respectable class of the community, ''the men of no property".<ref name="writings" />{{rp|107}}'' He is also recorded as telling the French that a revolution in Ireland "was not to be made for the people of property".<ref name="writings" />''{{rp|120}}''

While acknowledging the need for their support, it is not clear that Tone wished those "of no property" to take the initiative. Russell's diary records a despondent conversation in January 1794 in which Tone remarked: there is "nothing to be expected from this country except from the ''[[Sans-culottes|sans culottes]]'', who are too ignorant for any thinking man to wish to see in power".<ref name=":0" />{{rp|221–222}}

Tone did not abandon [[Whig constitutionalism]], so long as the talk was of reform. In 1792, in an address to Volunteers, he disclaimed any intention of invading the "just prerogatives of our monarch" or the "constitutional powers of the peers of the realm".''<ref name="writings" />{{rp|218}}'' As a condition of Catholic emancipation he had even offered that the greater part of a non-confessional Irish electorate be disenfranchised. Anticipating the terms under which Catholics were eventually admitted to a [[Parliament of the United Kingdom|United Kingdom parliament]] in 1829,<ref>{{cite book |last1=Foster |first1=R.F. |title=Modern Ireland, 1600-1972 |date=1988 |publisher=Allen Lane |isbn=0713990104 |location=London |pages=301–302}}</ref> his ''Argument'' proposed raising the property (or tenure equivalent) threshold for the vote fivefold to match the English ten-pound freehold. As [[Daniel O'Connell]] was to do in 1829,<ref name="Hoppen">{{cite book |last1=Hoppen |first1=K. Theodore |title=Ireland since 1800: conflict and conformity |date=1999 |publisher=Longman |isbn=9780582322547 |edition=Second |location=London |pages=22, 24}}</ref> Tone suggested that raising the qualification would allow the "sound and respectable part of the Catholic community" to recover its proper place and weight in society.<ref name=":6">{{Cite book |last=Gillen |first=Ultán |url=https://research.tees.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/16053350/Democracy_religion_and_the_Political_Thought_of_Theobald_Wolfe_Tone_submitted.pdf |title=Democracy, Religion, and the Political Thought of Theobald Wolfe Tone |publisher=Teesside University |year=2020}}</ref>{{rp|11}}More than this, it would also purge the Protestant interest of "the gross and feculent mass" of [[forty-shilling freeholders]]. As these could be driven to the polls by their landlords, "as much their property as the sheep or the bullocks which they brand with their names",<ref name=":322" /> Wolfe may have reasoned that was lost in democratic principle was gained in the practical check on the ability of the [[Landed gentry|squirearchy]] to swamp county-seat elections.<ref name=":6" />{{rp|11}}

Even when set on an insurrectionary path, Tone expressed no wish to unsettle property in Ireland. As "petty despots",<ref>{{Cite book |title=Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone: Memoirs, Journals and Political Writings, Compiled and Arranged by William T.W. Tone, 1826 |publisher=Lilliput Press |year=1996 |isbn=9781901866056 |editor-last=Bartlett |editor-first=Thomas |location=Dublin |pages=606–607}}</ref> unable to see beyond "their rent rolls, their places, their patronage and their pensions",''<ref name="writings" />{{rp|248}}'' he suggested to General Clarke that the gentry ran the risk of a "general massacre and a distribution of their entire property".<ref name="Tone2" />''{{rp|166}}'' This he would hope to avoid, for not only would he abhor the bloodshed, but he believed that the prospect of retaining property in Ireland might blunt resistance. He recommended that the French on landing, and a provisional convention that would then be called, offer not only resident landowners but also to the [[Absentee landlord|absentee]] lords in England, security for their estates.<ref name=":0" />''{{rp|281}}'' General Hoche could otherwise reckon "on all the opposition" that men of property could give him.<ref name="Tone2" />''{{rp|167}}''

Tone approved the advance of peasant proprietorship under the French Republic,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bartlett |first=Thomas |url= |title=Theobald Wolfe Tone: No. 10 |date=1997-10-01 |publisher=Dundalgan Press |isbn=978-0-85221-133-5 |pages= |language=English}}</ref>{{rp|120, 494}} and may broadly have shared Jefferson's faith in the republican virtues of independent smallholders.<ref name=":4">{{Cite thesis |title=Developments in the Political Thought of Theobald Wolfe Tone |url=https://oro.open.ac.uk/71421/ |publisher=The Open University |date=2020 |degree=phd |doi=10.21954/ou.ro.000116fd |language=en |first=Katherine |last=Lucas}}</ref>{{rp|125–126}} But he insisted that the United society he had known in Ireland had never "entertained" ideas of "a distribution of property and an agrarian law", and he advanced no such scheme himself.<ref name=":4" />{{rp|127–128}} He ventured no more than relief from that "pest on agriculture", the tithes levied on top of rents by the landlord's established church.''<ref name="writings" />{{rp|386}}''

In general, Tone appears to have followed the resolve of the Dublin Society of United Irishmen to "attend those things in which we all agree, [and] to exclude those in which we differ", and consequently to avoid directly engaging questions of economic inequality.<ref name=":124">{{Cite journal |last=Quinn |first=James |date=1998 |title=The United Irishmen and Social Reform |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30008258 |journal=Irish Historical Studies |volume=31 |issue=122 |pages=(188–201) 191–192 |doi=10.1017/S0021121400013900 |issn=0021-1214 |jstor=30008258 |s2cid=164022443}}</ref><ref name=":14">{{Cite journal |last=Curtin |first=Nancy J. |date=1985 |title=The Transformation of the Society of United Irishmen into a Mass-Based Revolutionary Organisation, 1794-6 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30008756 |journal=Irish Historical Studies |volume=24 |issue=96 |pages=463–492 |doi=10.1017/S0021121400034477 |issn=0021-1214 |jstor=30008756 |s2cid=148429477}}</ref> From France, he wrote tracts addressed to the weavers of the [[Liberties, Dublin|Liberties in Dublin]]. These expressed sympathy for their hardships.<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal |last=Quinn |first=James |date=2000 |editor-last= |editor-first= |editor2-last= |editor2-first= |editor3-last= |editor3-first= |editor4-last= |editor4-first= |editor5-last= |editor5-first= |editor6-last= |editor6-first= |editor7-last= |editor7-first= |title=Theobald Wolfe Tone and the Historians |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30007020 |journal=Irish Historical Studies |volume=32 |issue=125 |pages=113–128 |doi=10.1017/S0021121400014681 |jstor=30007020 |s2cid=163810571 |issn=0021-1214}}</ref>{{rp|126}} but  [[James Hope (Ireland)|James Hope]], the self-educated weaver who organised in the Liberties,<ref name="Whelan">{{cite web |last1=Whelan |first1=Fergus |date=24 September 2011 |title=Jemmy Hope: the most Radical United Irishman |url=https://www.lookleft.ie/2011/09/jemmy-hope-the-most-radical-united-irishman/ |access-date=22 November 2020 |publisher=Look Left}}</ref> did not place Tone alongside his friend Russell as one of those “few” United Irish leaders who "perfectly" understood the real causes of social disorder: "the conditions of the labouring class".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Madden |first=Robert |title=Antrim and Down in '98 : The Lives of Henry Joy m'Cracken, James Hope, William Putnam m'Cabe, Rev. James Porter, Henry Munro |publisher=Cameron, Ferguson & Co. |year=1900 |location=Glasgow |pages=108}}</ref>

As was the case with the Dublin society,<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Donnelly |first=James S. |date=1980 |title=Propagating the Cause of the United Irishmen |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30090237 |journal=Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review |volume=69 |issue=273 |pages=(5–23) 9 |issn=0039-3495 |jstor=30090237}}</ref> Tone proposed an independent and representative government as a sufficient promise of redress regardless of the grievance.<ref name=":124" /> For Tone, the promise appears to have been not, scarcely conceptualised, agrarian or labour reform, but the promotion of education (Tone imagined the polymath [[Whitley Stokes (physician)|Whitley Stokes]] as the head of a national system)<ref name=":04">{{Cite web |last=Webb |first=Alfred |date=1878 |title=Dr. Whitley Stokes - Irish Biography |url=https://www.libraryireland.com/biography/DrWhitleyStokes.php |access-date=2021-12-30 |website=www.libraryireland.com}}</ref> and a vigorous mercantile policy in defence of Irish trade and industry.<ref name=":0" />''{{rp|314, 328}}''<ref name=":4" />{{rp|56}}

It is matter of speculation as to what Tone, who prided himself on being a political pragmatist, would have found expedient in an Irish republic.<ref name=":4" /><ref name=":6" />''{{rp|4, 7}}'' In France, he criticised the Directory, not for [[Constitution of the Year III|a constitution]] that reintroduced the property franchise abolished with the monarchy, but for suffering themselves "to be insulted in the most outrageous manner" by the unsanctioned press. "It is less dangerous", he wrote, "for a government to be feared, or even hated, than despised".''<ref name="writings2">{{cite book |title=The Writings of Theobald Wolfe Tone 1763-98: Volume III |publisher=[[Clarendon Press]] |year=1998 |isbn=0198208804 |editor1-last=Moody |editor1-first=T. W. |edition= |page= |editor2-last=McDowell |editor2-first=R.B. |editor3-last=Woods |editor3-first=C.J.}}</ref>{{rp|70–71}}'' His recent biographer, [[Marianne Elliott (historian)|Marianne Elliott]], notes that Tone applauded the Directory's suppression in April 1796 of [[François-Noël Babeuf|Babeuf's]] [[Conspiracy of the Equals|proto-socialist conspiracy.]]<ref name=":0" />''{{rp|276}}'' This is consistent with what she concludes was a commitment to equality in Tone that did not truly extend beyond the abolition of aristocratic and confessional privilege.<ref name=":0" />''{{rp|82–83}}''

=== Monarchy or republic ===
Questioning whether Tone had "any sustained interest in republicanism as a form of government", the popular historian Andrew Boyd notes that, at the time the United Irishmen were formed, Tone confessed that his objective was not "the establishment of a republic" but to "secure the independence of Ireland under any form of government".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Boyd |first=Andrew |date=1998 |title=Wolfe Tone: Republican Hero or Whig Opportunist? |url=https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Wolfe+Tone%3A+Republican+hero+or+Whig+opportunist%3F-a020770486 |journal=History Today |volume=48 |issue=6 |pages=14–21}}</ref> Four years later when, believing that "the people of Ireland were in general very ignorant", [[Henri Jacques Guillaume Clarke|General Clarke]] asked whether "we might choose a king", Tone's response was notably pragmatic.<ref name="Tone2" />''{{rp|164}}''

The only person with the least chance of fulfilling such a role, in Tone's view, was [[Francis Rawdon-Hastings, 1st Marquess of Hastings|Lord Moira]] (after whom Tone had named his fourth child Francis Rawdon Tone).<ref name=":22"/> But the Patriot aristocrat had "blown his reputation to pieces by accepting a command against France".<ref name="Tone2" />''{{rp|165}}'' Tone's larger objection to an Irish crown was that the Dissenters, who he was in no doubt would "direct the public sentiment in framing a government", were "thoroughly enlightened and sincere republicans".<ref name="Tone2" />''{{rp|164–166}}'' He thought it "absurd" to suggest, as Clarke had done in his instructions to Hoche, that a member of the [[House of Stuart]] could be found who would be agreeable to all parties.<ref name="Tone2" />''{{rp|140}}''

To Tone's dismay from Humbert's account of his misadventure in September 1798, the Directory concluded that the Irish were indeed more [[Jacobitism|Jacobite]] than Jacobin: that they might be compared with the devoutly Catholic and royalist peasantry they had battled at home in the [[Vendee peasant rising|Vendée]]. Tone had again to rebuff the suggestion of a [[Jacobitism|Jacobite]] restoration—that the Catholic Pretender, [[Henry Benedict Stuart]], be recognised as Henry IX, [[Monarchy of Ireland|King of the Irish]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Pittock |first=Murray GH |title=Poetry and Jacobite Politics in Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland |date=2006 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=9780521030274}}</ref>{{rp|210}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Aston |first=Nigel |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=r7yVDUMVITkC |title=Christianity and Revolutionary Europe, 1750-1830 |date=2002 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-46592-2 |pages=222 |language=en}}</ref>[[File:WolfeToneStatue.JPG|thumb|upright|''Wolfe Tone'' (1967) statue on [[St. Stephen's Green]], Dublin by [[Edward Delaney]]]]