Higgins passed his early years in menial employments, became an attorney's clerk, was converted to Protestantism, and, by practising gross deception, married a respectable lady, whose relatives in 1766 prosecuted him for fraud.

Thenceforth Higgins continuously assailed in his paper the opponents of the government, and Henry Grattan denounced in parliament the mendacities and unscrupulous conduct of the journal.

John Magee, in his paper, the ‘Dublin Evening Post,’ published numerous satires in prose and verse on Higgins and his associate, Richard Daly.

Magee exposed Higgins's antecedents, and denounced him as a venal journalist, a corrupt magistrate, and a proprietor of houses of ill-repute.

Through Higgins's alleged influence with John Scott, earl of Clonmel, lord chief justice, he obtained, by authority of that court, writs styled ‘fiats,’ under which the defendants were liable to imprisonment till they found surety for the entire amount claimed as damages.

Through the under-secretary, Edward Cooke, with whom he had had previous relations, Higgins secretly communicated to the Irish government in 1798 particulars as to persons connected with the revolutionary movements in Ireland.