ABSTRACT
The analysis of the gendering of radical and republican discourses and practice in the late eighteenth century has been undertaken for the United States by Linda Kerber and Rosemary Zagarri, and for Ireland by Nancy Curtin. In her essay on 'Matilda Tone and virtuous republican femininity', Nancy Curtin traces the radical ideology of the United Irishmen as the product of the two discourses of classical republicanism and liberalism. The letters considered in this chapter here cannot be located simply within a republican civic humanist, or a liberal, framework. Only one side of the correspondence between Benjamin Rush and Robina Millar is available. Throughout the correspondence, she expressed trenchant views on the direction of British politics. The early letters raise the spectre of 'Invasion from without & Bankruptcy within'. The correspondence was also about financial and domestic matters.
