O'Brien, WILLIAM SMITH

O'Brien, WILLIAM SMITH, Irish patriot, was born 17th October 1803. Descended from the royal line of Thomond, to which belonged the great king, Brian Boru, he was the second son of Sir Edward O'Brien, Bart., of Dromoland, in County Clare, in favour of whose eldest son the ancient barony of Inchiquin was revived in 1862. He was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, and entered parliament for the pocket borough of Ennis in 1826. Though a Protestant, he supported the Catholic claims; and for some years he gave an independent support to the Tory party. He lost his seat in 1831, but was returned for the county of Limerick in 1835, and from that time till 1843 generally supported the Whigs. But he gradually gave up hope of getting justice for Ireland from the imperial parliament, and on the 20th October 1843 he announced his adhesion to O'Connell's Repeal Association. But O'Connell's rooted aversion to an appeal to physical force soon made a wide gulf in sympathy between his party and those fiery spirits who became known as 'Young Ireland,' and whose fervid and warlike poetry and prose filled the columns of the Nation newspaper. To this party O'Brien soon joined himself, and the moral force policy, by means of which O'Connell had gained so many triumphs, was now abandoned by the group of young and eager enthusiasts. The death of Thomas Davis in September 1845 removed a man of unusual wisdom and powers of conciliation, and after many angry disputes O'Brien in 1846 withdrew from the Association, and next the Young Irelanders set up a Repeal League of their own, under the leadership of O'Brien. His honour and patriotism are undoubted, not so his practical wisdom; and his ardent temperament and the sight of the sufferings of his country soon hurried him on to dangerous courses, and brought him into collision with the law. Still his views were much more moderate and sensible than those of some of the zealots of his party. The sentence of John Mitchel for 'treason-felony' in the spring of 1848 hastened the projected rising, which, however, proved a miserable fiasco, ending ludicrously in an almost bloodless battle in a cabbage-garden at Ballygarry, in County Tipperary. Smith O'Brien was arrested, tried by a special commission at Thurles, and sentenced to death; but the sentence was commuted to transportation for life. In May 1854 he was released on condition of not returning to Ireland, and in 1856 he received a free pardon. He spent his remaining years in private life, partly at Bangor in North Wales, and died there, 16th June 1864. See A. M. Sullivan's New Ireland (1877), and Sir C. G. Duffy's Young Ireland (1880).