[1] In October 1791, reform-minded Presbyterians in Belfast (Protestant "Dissenters" from the established Anglican communion) styled themselves the Society of the United Irishmen, and called for the "equal representation of all the people in parliament"—"a complete and radical reform".

[2]: 49–50  The choice, according to Tone, was stark: either "Reform, the Catholics, justice and liberty" or "an unconditional submission to the present, and every future administration".

Circulated as a handbill in the northern province, it proposed that their shared economic distress was result of taxes exacted in support of the Crown's unjust wars, and of a corrupt Dublin castle administration—an aristocratic junta whose dependents populated all the lucrative offices of Church and state.

[9] The Catholic hierarchy was also alarmed, prompting Keogh to complain of the bishops as "old men used to bend power; mistaking all attempts at liberty as in some way connected with the murders in France".

The Act relieved Catholics of most of their remaining Penal Law disabilities, lifting the bar to legal appointments and to army commissions, and admitting them on the same limited and idiosyncratic terms as Protestants to the parliamentary franchise.

In 1795, Keogh briefly reconvened the Committee in response to the declaration of the new Lord Lieutenant, Earl Fitzwilliam in favour of admitting Catholics to Parliament.

Along with Thomas Addis Emmet,he was on the non-violent wing of the United Irishmen, Days before the outbreak of the 1798 Rebellion, in despair at the likely result, Keogh printed a pamphlet warning his followers in Dublin that it could not succeed.