elder brother, biographer Helen Landreth believes that Chief Secretary for Ireland, William Wickham, and Under-Secretary Alexander Marsden, conspired with William Pitt, then out of office but anticipating his return as Prime Minister, to encourage the most dangerously disaffected in Ireland to fatally compromise the prospects for an effective revolt by acting in advance of a French invasion. Landreth believes that Emmet was their unwitting instrument, drawn home from Paris for the purpose of organising a premature rising by the misrepresentations of William Putnam McCabe and Arthur O'Connor whom she suspected of being double agents. Her evidence, however, is entirely circumstantial, and appears to rely chiefly on Pitt's reputed cynicism with regard 1798 rebellion, which he anticipated as an occasion to further secure England's western flank through a legislative union. Proclamation of the Provisional Government Emmet prepared a proclamation in the name of the "Provisional Government". Calling upon the Irish people "to show the world that you are competent to take your place among the nations . . . as an independent country", Emmet made clear in the proclamation that they would have to do so "without foreign assistance": "That confidence which was once lost by trusting to external support . . . has been again restored. We have been mutually pledged to each other to look only to our own strength". The Proclamation also contained "allusions to the widening of the political agenda of Emmet and the United Irishmen following the failure of 1798". In addition to democratic parliamentary reform, the Proclamation announced that tithes were to be abolished and the land of the established Church of Ireland nationalised. At the same time, seeking to confirm an appeal across both class and sectarian divisions, it declared: "We are not against property – we war against no religious sect – we war not against past opinions or prejudices – we war against English dominion." Assurances were also given that there should be no repeat of the outrages against loyalists that had occurred during the southern risings in 1798, and whose embellishment had done much to damage the United cause in the north. "Every appearance of plunder, intoxication or revenge" was to be avoided. The "nation alone" possessed the right to execute the death sentence. Russell offered the same in the proclamation he issued in the north: "any outrage contrary to the acknowledged laws of war, and of morality, shall be retaliated