The paperback edition of the extremely popular The Men of No Property is
a study of the popular dimensions of Irish radicalism in the age of the
French revolution. It focuses on the lower-class secret society, the
Defenders, and the more familiar face of radicalism in this period, the
Society of United Irishmen. Particular attention is paid to the vigorous
traditions of street protest in eighteenth-century Dublin. The picture
which emerges is of a revolutionary movement which was both more radical
in its rhetoric and objectives and more popular in its social base than
has previously been allowed.