Ireland retained in her own parliament a "vestige of self-government", her people could entertain hopes of representation and reform. But now "in consequence of the accursed union": [S]even-eights of the population have no right to send a member of their body to represent them, even in a foreign parliament, and the other eight part of the population are the tools and taskmasters, acting for the cruel English government and their Irish Ascendancy--a monster still worse, if possible than foreign tyranny.At various premises in Dublin the committee supervised the manufacture and storage weapons. In the anticipation of street fighting, there was considerable ingenuity: folding pikes that might be concealed under cloaks; gunpower-packed beams that could be rolled across the cobblestones against cavalry; various types of grenades. Meanwhile, Dowdall established hurling clubs as a cover for United Irish units to assemble and drill. With the assistance of Anne Devlin (ostensibly Emmet's housekeeper), contact was made with Michael Dwyer, her cousin, who since the '98 rebellion had maintained a guerrilla force in the Wicklow Mountains. At two lengthy conferences at Emmet's home in Rathfarnham in April 1803, Dwyer, in return for arms, promised support. James Hope and Thomas Russell were dispatched to secure similar commitments from those they had previously organised and led in Antrim and Down. Conspiracy within a conspiracy? Unlike in 1798, and until the accidental explosion of their arms depot in Patrick Street on July 16, the conspirators appear to have successfully concealed their preparations. Recalling Henry Joy McCracken's caution that "the rich always betray the poor", in his Labour in Irish History (1910) James Connolly credits this to Emmet's reliance upon workers (and consequently on an organisation that was "more distinctly democratic"--even if more military in structure--than original United movement). But Emmet did take "persons of respectability" into his confidence. Indeed, he allowed John Petty, Earl Wycombe, the disaffected son of the former British prime minister, Lord Shelbourne, to view the arms depots. Emmet may have suspected that some of these confidences were misplaced. To the historian R. R. Madden, Hope suggested that Emmet realised that "the men of rank and fortune" had urged him to head a new rising had had ulterior motives, but that he nonetheless placed his confidence in the great mass of the people to rise. Drawing on research in the 1880s by Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet of New York City, a grandson of Emmet's