24 October 1798: The "state prisoners" are informed that they will be expected to leave the Kingdom at 24 hours' notice and leading United Irishmen in Kilmainham and Newgate are permitted to confer with each other for the first time since August. It is reported that Miles Duigenan joins the agreement and that William Sampson may emigrate to Portugal on health grounds. Sampson's good fortune comes within two months of the deportation from Lisbon of "some men supposed to be United Irishmen".
John Foster, Speaker of the House of Commons, writes to Lord Auckland from his Louth home on the 21st, outlining his thoughts on the mooted Act of Union with Britain. The "great difficulty in governing Ireland," he comments, "arises from a want of the knowledge of the comforts of life in the lower orders, and of course a want of education, of veneration for the laws which promote and protect wealth, and a want of industry or exertion to procure it." Foster is convinced that "no time could be more dangerous for trying the experiment of Union than the present, when Great Britain stands forth against the newfangled and hazardous doctrine of innovations on established governments, and therefore these ought rather to prevent so great a change as that of the kingdom surrendering its legislative independence". Such reservations divide ultra-conservatives from their political allies in Britain, whose commitment to the better management of Irish affairs is informed by the intense blood-letting of the summer.
Moves to reduce military spending and promote normality underlie orders to break up the army camp at Kilcullen (Kildare). The soldiers will instead be "quartered in the several deserted mansions of those gentlemen who have been obliged to abandon their houses on the west bank of the Liffey; that country is now, comparatively quiet."
Armed incidents continue to impede pacification. A Gorey writer credits Hawtrey White's Ballaghkeen cavalry on the 21st for pursuing Andrew Hackett's gang "as far as Ballyvaldon, within nine miles of Wexford - and there coming up with him, killed nine and took one prisoner. Hackett himself with difficulty escaped into the bog of Byragh, leaving his horse behind". The rebels are alleged to have "just before burned the chapel of Middletown" but White's yeomen were probably the arsonists. The identity of mounted horsemen who disarm several gentlemen on a fox hunt near Clonard (Meath), however, is positively ascertained. Capt Bathurst traces them to the home of Patrick Gorman at Myvalley where three raiders are shot dead and firearms recovered.
Waterford loyalists are saddened on the 23rd when Nicholas Devereaux Esq. of Ringville is shot dead, although seven suspects are apprehended. Insurgent violence exposes Cornwallis to criticism for refusing to execute rebel prisoners "save where murder is proved" and releasing "from the croppy ships near 400 of the most dangerous and desperate". Some say "it is less dangerous to be a rebel than to be a loyalist". In King's County (Offaly) Capt North of the Philipstown yeomanry earns the praise of Finn's Leinster Journal on the 24th for smashing a "gang of villains, who, by burning, robbery and nightly depredations, have disturbed the peaceable inhabitants of the lower half barony of Philipstown, previous to the last assizes". These men belong to what the Hibernian Telegraph terms the "shoals that crowded the rebel ranks" who, after the defeats of the early summer, "migrated through the country like flights of locusts, devouring everything in their way".