ideals of the American, and now French, revolutions. With his keen mind and his own radical bent, Russell became a confidante of William Drennan, Samuel McTier, Samuel Neilson and later of Henry Joy McCracken, James Hope, and others who were to play a prominent role in the United Irish movement. It is said that Russell admired and respected men and women alike. Both Drennan's sister Martha McTier and McCracken's sister Mary Ann McCracken took him into their confidence. Mary Ann, who regarded Russell as "a model of manly beauty" with a grace "which nothing but superiority of intellect can give", shared with him her enthusiasm for the female-emancipatory ideas of Mary Wollstonecraft. McTier had Russell address meetings of other radically-minded women and declared: "I admire that man much and had I the power I do believe that he would be the first man that I would serve". Russell appeared more than willing to join McTier and McCracken in their enthusiasm for Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of their rights as women (1792): "women in public offices", he noted in his Journal, were "as clever as men. Queens, poetesses etc. etc, In merchants houses they keep accounts as well as men". His advanced thoughts on their rights, however, did not preclude a conflicted relationship with women. His Journal was also to record the torment both of a love for the idealised and unapproachable Eliza Goddard (daughter of a close friend of McTier's) and of guilt-ridden visits to Belfast prostitutes. In October 1791, and in the presence of Tone, invited to Belfast as the proponent of political union with disenfranchised Catholics, Russell attended the inaugural meeting of the Society of United Irishmen. While Tone recapitulated his Argument on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland, Russell presented a history of the Catholic Committee in Dublin and of his own negotiations with leading Catholics. The resolutions, which Tone had asked Russell to write, called for the elimination of all remaining sacramental tests and for an "equal representation of all the people" in the Dublin Parliament. After several months, and to avoid debt, Russell accepted the offer of Viscount Northland of Tyrone, the father of an old army friend, to become seneschal (a kind of stipendiary magistrate) to the Northlands' manor court at Dungannon. But Russell was appalled by the anti-Catholicism of his fellow magistrates and possibly also of the Northland family, and he resigned in October