Daniel O'Connell
From Freepedia
- For other people named Daniel O'Connell, see Daniel O'Connell (disambiguation).
Daniel O'Connell (August 6, 1775 – May 15, 1847), known as The Liberator or The Emancipator, was Ireland's predominant politician in the first half of the nineteenth century.
A critic of violent insurrection in Ireland, he once said that the freedom of Ireland was not worth the spilling of one drop of blood, although his killing of John D'Esterre in a duel in 1815 indicates that this belief did not include matters of "gentlemanly honour". This duel is notable in that it only further endeared Daniel O'Connell to the people of Ireland. The Dublin Corporation had always been reactionary and bigoted against Catholics, and served the established Protestant ascendancy. O'Connell in an 1815 speech referred to "The Corpo", as it was commonly referred to, as a "beggarly corporation". Its members and leaders were outraged and because O'Connell would not apologize, one of their number, the noted duellist D'Esterre, challenged him. Their real goal was to eliminate O'Connell as a viable political force and Catholic Reform leader. But surprisingly, O'Connell met D'Esterre and shot him dead. He regretted the deed deeply, and throughout his life took every opportunity to assist and aid D'Esterre's family.
Politically, he focused on parliamentary and populist methods to force change and made regular declarations of his loyalty to the British Crown. He often warned the British Establishment that if they did not reform the governance of Ireland, Irishmen would start to listen to the "counsels of violent men". Successive British governments continued to ignore this advice, long after his death, although he succeeded in extracting by the sheer force of will and the power of the Catholic peasants and clergy much of what he wanted, i.e. eliminating disabilities on Roman Catholics; ensuring that lawfully elected Roman Catholics could serve their constituencies in the British Parliament (until the Irish Parliament was restored); and amending the Oath of Allegiance so as to remove clauses offensive to Roman Catholics, such as himself, who refused to take the Oath until it was sanitized of anti-Roman Catholic language, requirements and clauses.
Born to a once-wealthy Roman Catholic family in County Kerry, O'Connell, under the care of his wealthy bachelor uncle, Maurice O'Connell, studied at Douai in France, and was admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1794, transferring to Dublin's King's Inns two years later. In his early years, he became acquainted with the pro-democracy radicals of the time, and committed himself to bringing equal rights and religious tolerance to his own country.
In 1798, O'Connell became a barrister. That was the same year in which the United Irishmen staged their Irish Rebellion of 1798, which was put down by the British at the Battle of Vinegar Hill. O'Connell did not support the rebellion; he believed that the Irish would have to assert themselves politically rather than by force. So, for the next decade he went into a fairly quiet period of private law practice in the south of Ireland.
He returned to politics in the 1810s, campaigning for Catholic Emancipation, that is, the repeal of all anti-Catholic legislation enforced in Ireland. As part of his campaign, he sought and won election to the United Kingdom House of Commons in 1828, even though as a Roman Catholic, he was ineligible for membership because of his refusal to take an oath to the King as head of the Church of England. His election and subsequent re-election in 1829, forced the government of the Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington in 1829 to repeal the prohibitions and grant emancipation, which also liberated not just Catholics but Presbyterians and all faiths other than the established Church of Ireland.
One of the most odious features of the Penal Laws remained in the form of the obligation by all working people to support the Anglican Church (i.e. the Church of Ireland) by payments known as Tithes, which was something of a pyrrhic victory as the tithes were simply converted into "rents". A campaign of non-payment turned violent in 1831 resulting in the "Tithe War", while still against the use of force, he successfully defended participants in the battle of Carrickshock when the defendants were prosecuted. In 1841, Daniel O'Connell became the first Roman Catholic Lord Mayor of Dublin. As the Lord Mayor, he called out the British Army against striking workers in the capital.
O'Connell also campaigned for Repeal, that is, repeal of the Act of Union, which in 1801 merged the Parliaments of the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (what has today become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland). He argued for the re-creation of an independent Kingdom of Ireland to govern itself, with Queen Victoria as the Queen of Ireland. To push this, he held a series of Monster Meetings (huge massive rallies which the Roman Catholic clergy helped organize) throughout much of Ireland outside the Protestant & Unionist-dominated province of Ulster where he was understandably reviled, and where he never dared to venture. These monster rallies frightened the British Government and the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, banned one such proposed monster meeting at Clontarf, County Dublin, just outside Dublin City. Despite appeals from his supporters, O'Connell refused to defy the authorities (e.g. call their bluff) and he called off the meeting. This did not prevent him being jailed for sedition for 3 months, although he was quickly released by the British House of Lords. Having deprived himself of his most potent weapon, the monster meeting, O'Connell failed to make any more progress in the campaign for Repeal. His followers deserted him in droves to the refrain of "He should have called us out" and the disappointment led to a group of supporters involved in the pro-Repeal paper The Nation forming Young Ireland under Charles Gavan Duffy, John Mitchel, William Smith O'Brien and Thomas Davis (all of whom were Protestants except for Gavan Duffy) espousing more militant means of winning Irish independence though largely sharing his social conservatism.
Though Charles Stewart Parnell (who later dominated Irish politics in the last quarter of the nineteenth century) is more usually associated with the title, O'Connell was popularly described as the Uncrowned King of Ireland.
He died in Genoa, Italy in 1847 at the age of 71 of heart disease, his term in prison having seriously weakened him, while on a pilgrimage to Rome, Italy; where his head was buried. The remainder of his body is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin, beneath a huge tower which can be seen for miles around. His sons all served in Parliament, and are buried in his crypt.
O'Connell admired Latin American liberator Simon Bolivar, and one of his sons, Morgan O'Connell was a volunteer officer in Bolivar's army at the age of 15 in 1820. The principal street in the centre of Dublin, previously called Sackville Street, was renamed O'Connell Street in his honour in the early twentieth century after the Irish Free State came into being. His statue (made by the sculptor John Henry Foley, who also designed the sculptures of the Albert Memorial in London) stands at one end of the street, with a statue of Charles Stewart Parnell at the other end.
There is a museum commemorating him in Derrynane House, in Carhen, near Cahirciveen, County Kerry, which was once owned by his family.
