Identity of interests still to be found 200 years after Tone

The small, grey book carries nothing on its frontispiece to give away the name of its author

The small, grey book carries nothing on its frontispiece to give away the name of its author. Somebody has pencilled in, very lightly, the words "T. Wolfe Tone". Alongside them there is a more official stamp: "This book is scarce". It is a rare edition of Tone's An Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland, printed in Belfast in 1791, a few months after its publication in Dublin.

Later, we see a silk banner, white originally but faded now to pale brown. On it is embroidered the Red Cap of Liberty, a wreath of oak leaves and the words Republique Francaise. The flag was carried by the 70th brigade of the French Revolutionary Army at Ballinamuck in September 1798, when General Humbert surrendered to the superior forces of General Lake and Lord Cornwallis.

In another room there is a portrait of a young man - relaxed, confident, a bit of a dandy. He is holding a golf club and there is a small ball at his feet. It is, we are told, the first known Irish golfing picture. The young man is Robert Stewart of Mount Stewart, Co Down, later known to the wider world as Viscount Castlereagh.

Originally of liberal views, he would later preside over the British administration at Dublin Castle which suppressed the 1798 Rebellion - and push through the Act of Union. Another British politician who probably thought he had solved the Irish problem in the most sensible way possible.

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Castlereagh went on become the greatest foreign secretary the United Kingdom has known, hated by those who held radical views.

These are just a few of the hundreds of items on show in the Ulster Museum's magnificent exhibition "Up in Arms - The 1798 Rebellion in Ireland". I took time out from the talks at Stormont last week to visit it - seeking what? comfort perhaps, illumination - but only had time to absorb a fraction of what is on show, so complex and sweeping is its scope.

Before the letter-writers reach for their pens, let me say at once that I am not naive about 1798 and share many of the reservations that have been expressed about the way the bicentenary is being celebrated. But this exhibition manages to be both challengingly intelligent and very moving.

It sets the events of 1798 firmly in the context of world events - the American Revolution, fear of the excesses that accompanied the pursuit of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity in France, the terrible sectarian divisions in Ireland which doomed the bright dreams of those whom A.T.Q. Stewart has described as "the summer soldiers".

What is most compelling about the exhibition is the way the curator has blended the personal and the political, so that we are constantly reminded of the hopes and the fears of those who took part.

The suit which Henry Joy McCracken wore at the Battle of Antrim is there, but so are the first draft of an Act to prevent Papists being solicitors, the splendid accoutrements - public and private - of the Protestant Ascendancy, the death mask of Jemmy Hope, the Co Antrim linen weaver who survived to die at the age of 83 and never deviated from his radical, republican principles.

One would have needed a heart of stone not to be affected by these images last week, given what was happening just up the road at Stormont. For these are connections that we may be able to make with each other in the future - North and South; Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter - if the agreement works.

History will become something to share in mutual understanding, rather than a weapon brandished as a threat. Already there is an extraordinary interest in 1798 right across the North, with seminars and summer schools planned from Portadown (yes, Portadown) to Derry. This must owe a lot to the coming of peace, which has provided space for both communities to look again at their most sacred traditions and at what is now needed to adapt them.

That, in essence, is what has been happening at Stormont and in the broader community in recent months. The argument has not been about breaking the connection with England. Gerry Adams and his colleagues have accepted Tone's argument - if there is to be a united Ireland, it is first necessary to unite the people of this island.

But there has also been a historic shift on the part of those unionists represented at the talks, a desire to reach a lasting and fair accommodation with the members of the nationalist community.

This is very clear in the two remarkable articles which appeared on Monday, by David Trimble in the Daily Telegraph, and John Taylor in the Guardian. Both men admitted, quite explicitly, that the time had come to make the necessary break with the past. Trimble's piece was cogent, reasonable and extremely frank about the compromises he had sought and those which he had had to make.

John Taylor was more emotional. In his article, which was reprinted in this newspaper yesterday, he wrote of how easy it would have been to walk away from the whole deal "to cheers from many unionists". But he also recognised, as someone who had represented "a maligned community" for many years, that this could lead only to greater isolation and the very real danger that "I would not have seen Ulster's unionist community accepted back into the British mainstream in my lifetime".

This is a recognition of hard, unpalatable reality comparable to Gerry Adams's acceptance that progress towards unity must be based on consent. Having made these decisions, both sides now have to go out and sell an agreement which falls far short of the ideal desired by either of them.

It is a situation in which both governments will have to behave with extreme steadiness. Up to now it has been the primary task of this State to reassure Northern nationalists, while Britain has been accustomed to put a unionist spin on what is happening. But now, in the run-up to the referendums, it becomes more important than ever that both London and Dublin should take account of sensitivities on the ground.

We know, because the unionist leaders have told us, that the issues which most worry their community are the release of prisoners and the decommissioning of weapons. But Sinn Fein also needs to be able to reassure its supporters that the unionists will not be allowed to block or delay delivery on the implementation of the deal.

This is a time of great danger and great hope. The arguments and the strategies that drove the United Irishmen are not the same 200 years later, but the challenge of their ideal remains as powerful as ever: "to forward a brotherhood of affection, an identity of interests, a communion of rights and an union of power between Irishmen of all religious persuasions".

And women too. There is a lot of work still to be done.