Jacques-Louis de Bougrenet de La Tocnaye, a French émigré who walked the length and breadth of Ireland in 1796–7, was appalled to encounter in a cabin upon the banks of the Upper Bann the same "nonsense on which the people of France fed themselves before the Revolution". A young labourer treated him to a disposition on "equality, fraternity, and oppression", "reform of Parliament", "abuses in elections", and "tolerance", and such "philosophical discourse" as he had heard from "foppish talkers" in Paris a decade before. In 1793, a magistrate in that same area, near Coleraine, County Londonderry, had been complaining of "daily incursions of disaffected people... disseminating the most seditious principles". Until his arrest in September 1796, Thomas Russell (later celebrated in a popular ballad as "The man from God-knows-where") was one such outsider. Recruiting for the Society, he ranged from Belfast as far as Donegal and Sligo.