Burke and Grattan were anxious that provision should be made for the education of Irish Roman Catholic priests at home, to preserve them from the contagion of Jacobinism in France; Wolfe Tone, "with an incomparably juster forecast," as Lecky observes, "advocated the same measure for exactly opposite reasons."
But his radicalism had now become of a disruptive quality, and he quarrelled with and even thwarted Kosciuszko because the dictator would not admit that the Polish republic could only be saved by the methods of Jacobinism.
The election of Merlin of Douay and Francois of Neufchatel as Directors, in place of Carnot and Barthelemy, gave to that body a compactness which enabled it to carry matters with a high hand, until the hatred felt by Frenchmen for this soulless revival of a moribund Jacobinism gradually endowed the Chambers with life and strength sufficient to provoke a renewal of strife with the Directory.
As was natural, when he sought to steer a middle course between the Scylla of royalism and the Charybdis of Jacobinism, disturbances were to be expected on both sides of the consular ship of state.
In February 1795 he was again arrested, and the Tribun du peuple was solemnly burnt in the Theatre des Bergeres by the jeunesse doree, the young men whose mission it was to bludgeon Jacobinism out of the streets and cafes.