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Daniel O'Connell
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Daniel O'Connell
Daniel O'Connell (Irish: Dónall Ó Conaill; 6 August 1775[citation needed] – 15 May 1847), hailed in his time as The Liberator, was the acknowledged political leader of Ireland's Roman Catholic majority in the first half of the 19th century. His mobilisation of Catholic Ireland, down to the poorest class of tenant farmers, secured the final installment of Catholic emancipation in 1829 and allowed him to take a seat in the United Kingdom Parliament to which he had been twice elected.
At Westminster, O'Connell championed liberal and reform causes (being internationally renowned as an abolitionist) but he failed in his declared objective for Ireland – the repeal of the Act of Union 1800 and the restoration of an Irish Parliament.
In 1843, the threat of British military force induced O'Connell to call a halt to an unprecedented campaign of open-air mass meetings. The loss of prestige, combined with the perceived indifference of the Whigs he had supported in government to the Great Famine, dispirited and divided his following. In his final year, criticism of his political compromises and of his system of patronage split the national movement that he had singularly led.
Irish nationalists continued to dispute O'Connell's legacy — honoured in 1922 in the renaming of Dublin's principal thoroughfare. Biographers have suggested that his combination of confessional politics and liberal principle, which had early imitators in Germany, was a forerunner of European Christian democracy.
O'Connell was born at Carhan House, near Cahersiveen, County Kerry, to the O'Connells of Derrynane, a wealthy Roman Catholic family that, under the Penal Laws, had been able to retain land only through the medium of Protestant trustees and the forbearance of their Protestant neighbours. His parents were Morgan O'Connell and Catherine O'Mullane. The poet Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill was an aunt; and Daniel Charles, Count O'Connell, an Irish Brigade officer in the service of the King of France (and twelve years a prisoner of Napoleon), an uncle. O'Connell grew up in Derrynane House, the household of his childless uncle, Maurice "Hunting Cap" O'Connell (landowner, smuggler and justice of the peace) who made the young O'Connell his heir presumptive.
In 1791, under his uncle's patronage, O'Connell and his younger brother Maurice were sent to continue their schooling in France at the English Jesuit college of Saint-Omer. Revolutionary upheaval and their mob denunciation as "young priests" and "little aristocrats", persuaded them in January 1793 to flee their Benedictine college at Douai. They crossed the English Channel with the brothers John and Henry Sheares who displayed a handkerchief soaked, they claimed, in the blood of Louis XVI, the late executed king. The experience is said to have left O'Connell with a lifelong aversion to mob rule and violence.
After further legal studies in London, including a pupillage at Lincoln's Inn, O'Connell returned to Ireland in 1795. The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793, while maintaining the Oath of Supremacy that excluded Catholics from parliament, the judiciary and the higher offices of state, had granted them the vote on the same limited terms as Protestants and removed most of the remaining barriers to their professional advancement. O'Connell, nonetheless, remained of the opinion that in Ireland the whole policy of the Irish Parliament and the London-appointed Dublin Castle executive, was to repress the people and to maintain the ascendancy of a privileged and corrupt minority.
On 19 May 1798, O'Connell was called to the Irish Bar. Four days later, the United Irishmen staged their ill-fated rebellion. Toward the end of his life, O'Connell claimed, belatedly, to have been a United Irishman. Asked how that could be reconciled with his membership of the government's volunteer Yeomanry (the Lawyers Artillery Corps), he replied that in '98 "the popular party was so completely crushed that the only chance of doing any good for the people was by affecting ultra loyalty." Whatever the case, O'Connell had little faith in the United Irishmen or in their hopes of French intervention. He sat out the rebellion in his native Kerry. When in 1803, Robert Emmet faced execution for attempting to renew the rebellion against what was now a United Kingdom crown and parliament, O'Connell declared that as the cause of so much bloodshed Emmett had forfeited any claim to "compassion".
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Daniel O'Connell
Daniel O'Connell (Irish: Dónall Ó Conaill; 6 August 1775[citation needed] – 15 May 1847), hailed in his time as The Liberator, was the acknowledged political leader of Ireland's Roman Catholic majority in the first half of the 19th century. His mobilisation of Catholic Ireland, down to the poorest class of tenant farmers, secured the final installment of Catholic emancipation in 1829 and allowed him to take a seat in the United Kingdom Parliament to which he had been twice elected.
At Westminster, O'Connell championed liberal and reform causes (being internationally renowned as an abolitionist) but he failed in his declared objective for Ireland – the repeal of the Act of Union 1800 and the restoration of an Irish Parliament.
In 1843, the threat of British military force induced O'Connell to call a halt to an unprecedented campaign of open-air mass meetings. The loss of prestige, combined with the perceived indifference of the Whigs he had supported in government to the Great Famine, dispirited and divided his following. In his final year, criticism of his political compromises and of his system of patronage split the national movement that he had singularly led.
Irish nationalists continued to dispute O'Connell's legacy — honoured in 1922 in the renaming of Dublin's principal thoroughfare. Biographers have suggested that his combination of confessional politics and liberal principle, which had early imitators in Germany, was a forerunner of European Christian democracy.
O'Connell was born at Carhan House, near Cahersiveen, County Kerry, to the O'Connells of Derrynane, a wealthy Roman Catholic family that, under the Penal Laws, had been able to retain land only through the medium of Protestant trustees and the forbearance of their Protestant neighbours. His parents were Morgan O'Connell and Catherine O'Mullane. The poet Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill was an aunt; and Daniel Charles, Count O'Connell, an Irish Brigade officer in the service of the King of France (and twelve years a prisoner of Napoleon), an uncle. O'Connell grew up in Derrynane House, the household of his childless uncle, Maurice "Hunting Cap" O'Connell (landowner, smuggler and justice of the peace) who made the young O'Connell his heir presumptive.
In 1791, under his uncle's patronage, O'Connell and his younger brother Maurice were sent to continue their schooling in France at the English Jesuit college of Saint-Omer. Revolutionary upheaval and their mob denunciation as "young priests" and "little aristocrats", persuaded them in January 1793 to flee their Benedictine college at Douai. They crossed the English Channel with the brothers John and Henry Sheares who displayed a handkerchief soaked, they claimed, in the blood of Louis XVI, the late executed king. The experience is said to have left O'Connell with a lifelong aversion to mob rule and violence.
After further legal studies in London, including a pupillage at Lincoln's Inn, O'Connell returned to Ireland in 1795. The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793, while maintaining the Oath of Supremacy that excluded Catholics from parliament, the judiciary and the higher offices of state, had granted them the vote on the same limited terms as Protestants and removed most of the remaining barriers to their professional advancement. O'Connell, nonetheless, remained of the opinion that in Ireland the whole policy of the Irish Parliament and the London-appointed Dublin Castle executive, was to repress the people and to maintain the ascendancy of a privileged and corrupt minority.
On 19 May 1798, O'Connell was called to the Irish Bar. Four days later, the United Irishmen staged their ill-fated rebellion. Toward the end of his life, O'Connell claimed, belatedly, to have been a United Irishman. Asked how that could be reconciled with his membership of the government's volunteer Yeomanry (the Lawyers Artillery Corps), he replied that in '98 "the popular party was so completely crushed that the only chance of doing any good for the people was by affecting ultra loyalty." Whatever the case, O'Connell had little faith in the United Irishmen or in their hopes of French intervention. He sat out the rebellion in his native Kerry. When in 1803, Robert Emmet faced execution for attempting to renew the rebellion against what was now a United Kingdom crown and parliament, O'Connell declared that as the cause of so much bloodshed Emmett had forfeited any claim to "compassion".
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