the Catholics had at our doors". Fitzwilliam publicly endorsed a bill brought forward by Henry Grattan to repeal the last of the Penal Laws, that which prevented Catholics from being sworn as members of parliament. But this was at the cost of his position. After just six months in post, Fitzwilliam was recalled to London. Drennan wanted it to be "the business of every Irishman to cultivate the democratic spirit, which the Presbyterians first infused into them". But it was clear that in Drennan this was not a spirit that a liberal Viceroy might satisfy. Drennan believed that the right to representation should no more depend on property than upon a sacramental test. In making "the poor and the rich reciprocally dependent", only a universal franchise recognises the "action and reaction of self-interest" as a "constant and universal" principle of public welfare. 1798 Rebellion and Emmet's rising 1803 When United Irish leadership still at liberty sought to muster their members in arms in May and June 1798, Drennan continued in Dublin, the heavily garrisoned capital in which no rebel demonstration proved possible. But while "the authorities did not molest him in any way in the run-up or aftermath of the 1798 Rebellion", this was not at the price of Drennan retiring his pen. The "Marcus letters", published in Dublin in 1797–8, including the appeal to women,. accused Fitzwilliam's successor, John Pratt, 1st Marquess Camden, of bringing to the people of Ireland only massacre, rape, desolation and terror. In January 1799 Drennan published an open letter to the British Prime Minister William Pitt assailing his proposals to abolish the Kingdom of Ireland and to incorporate the country with England under the Crown at Westminster. If Ireland was to face "the cruel alternative of uniting forever with England, or separate forever", then "in the name of God and nature" it should "separate". Drennan was taken by surprise in Dublin by Robert Emmet's aborted attempt to renew the insurrection in July 1803. What, before the extensive nature of the planning and preparation was known, appeared to have been little more than a bloody street brawl, struck Drennan as a "mad business". But he remained loyal to Emmet's family, attending old Mrs Emmet who was to die then days before a sentence of death was passed on her son, and helping his sister Mary Anne Holmes whose husband was detained. With his own sister,