O'Connell, DANIEL, 'the Liberator,' greatest of Irish patriots and orators, was born near Cahirciveen in County Kerry, August 6, 1775. He was the eldest son of Morgan O'Connell, brother of the childless Maurice O'Connell, then head of an old Catholic family, whose chief seat was Darrynane Abbey. He was early adopted by his uncle, at whose house most of his boyhood was spent. He was placed, together with his brother, in January 1791 at the college of St Omer, the president of which, Dr Stapylton, foresaw his unusual promise. In August 1792 they went to the college at Douay, which was suppressed at the end of the year, and it was not without danger that the boys made their escape by Calais to England. To the end of his life O'Connell never forgot his glimpse of dominant revolution. He entered at Lincoln's Inn in 1794, worked hard, and was called to the Irish bar in May 1798. He was soon drawn, like most eager young Irishmen, into political agitation, and it appears probable that he had some connection with the conspiracy of 1798, the unhappy issue of which cured him for life of all love for secret societies. At the same time the scandalous scenes at state trials, the degraded condition of his co-religionists, and the shameful circumstances attending the Union already shaped for him the politics of his life. The average professional earnings of his first four years were only £180, but thereafter these rose rapidly. In 1802 he married his cousin, Mary O'Connell, who bore him five sons and three daughters, and with whom he lived till her death in 1836 in uninterrupted happiness. He joined the Munster circuit, and went on it for twenty-two years. He soon became famous as a counsel, as well as an unrivalled cross-examiner of Irish witnesses, and ere long was plunged in an enormous practice, amid which he yet contrived to find time for the convivialities of that day and for a large measure of political agitation. The wide popularity of 'the Counsellor'—to the last a favourite title among his Irish admirers—was due to his fearlessness and professional dexterity, his boisterous wit and good-humour, his constant tact and readiness in reply, and not less to the violent language he often employed in court, which he defended in later days as a necessary means to awaken the slumbering spirit and self-respect of Catholics. Their hopes, which had been raised by the pledges given at the Union, soon sank low, and O'Connell now flung himself into the agitation for their rights, quickly distanced Keogh and other timid leaders of the party, and by the beginning of 1811 stood out as its virtual chief.
Grattan's motion in favour of emancipation was carried in March 1813, but his bill was lost in committee. The 'securities' it proposed were most distasteful to the Catholic bishops, and O'Connell, ever a devoted churchman, supported them in their policy in opposition to Grattan. The timid counsels of the pope, then a pensioned prisoner of Napoleon, were displeasing to the Catholic party, but it was O'Connell's own conscientious convictions that nothing short of repeal would be permanently satisfactory that made him fight resolutely against all compromise. His attacks on the 'beggarly corporation' of Dublin, then an Orange stronghold, brought him a challenge from Mr J. N. D'Ésterre, and in the duel that ensued his pistol unfortunately inflicted a fatal wound on his antagonist, February 1, 1815. O'Connell was filled with lifelong remorse; he settled a pension on the widow, and never till his latest day passed the dead man's house without uncovering his head and breathing a prayer. At the same time he registered a solemn vow never to go out again. His fiery invectives brought him in the course of his lifetime many challenges, but only once did he allow himself to accept another—from Peel in the September of 1815. The duel was only prevented by his being arrested on his wife's information and bound over to keep the peace. Meantime the Catholic cause languished; Grattan died in 1820, and Plunket took up his mantle, but again the Lords threw out the bill. The visit of George IV. to Ireland in August 1821 raised hopes only to be ripped in the bud, while famine and commercial insecurity paralysed the public confidence. In 1823, at the moment of deepest gloom, O'Connell formed on a broad and popular basis the Catholic Association, and before the end of the year had brought the priests into it. At first they showed much disinclination to join in the agitation, preferring the old policy of 'dignified silence;' but, once they entered heartily into it, the movement became for the first time really national and irresistible. The Association was a gigantic system of organisation, perfectly new to Ireland, and aroused the greatest enthusiasm from sea to sea. By the 'Catholic Rent' a large sum of money was raised for its purposes, a penny a month not being too little as a test of membership. By the end of 1824 it had grown to a formidable power, the average weekly rent for its last three months being as much as £500. The government in alarm brought in a bill to suppress the Association, but it dissolved itself, March 18, 1825. The Irish forty-shilling freeholders now began to find courage to oppose their landlords at the elections. Waterford was carried in 1826, and O'Connell himself stood for Clare in 1828, and was carried amid enormous enthusiasm, yet perfect order. The Clare election set the whole country aflame; the lord-lieutenant, Lord Anglesey, foreboded insurrection, and even the Iron Duke was appalled at the prospect; but O'Connell saw that an outbreak would ruin the Catholic cause on the very eve of its triumph, and with magical effect ended the agitation. In 1829 the measure of relief passed at last, admitting Catholics to parliament, repealing the oath of abjuration, and modifying that of supremacy, the 'securities' being the abolition of the forty-shilling franchise and raising the qualification to £10. On the 15th May 1829 O'Connell came to take his seat, and was heard at the bar as to his right to escape the old oaths. He spoke calmly and admirably, but the House refused his claim by 190 to 46. He went down to Clare like a conqueror, was returned unopposed, and took his seat at the beginning of 1830, then fifty-five years old. At the new election on the king's death he was returned for Waterford.
Much of the good effect of 1829 was lost by the unnecessary insult to a sensitive people of not allowing its champion to take his seat without re-election, still more by the fact that no Catholics were appointed to the bench, and by the placing in the hands of the lord-lieutenant the power to suppress arbitrarily by proclamation any assembly that seemed to him dangerous. O'Connell now formed a new society for Repeal, 'The Friends of Ireland of all Religious Persuasions,' which was quickly suppressed, only to be revived as often as suppressed by a succession of others under new names and forms so as to elude the letter of the law. He denounced the ministry of Wellington and Peel, and tried in 1830 to embarrass them by an unjustifiable letter recommending a run upon gold. In the face of the threatened prosecution against him in 1831 he temporised and so saved himself. In the same year he became King's Counsel, the honour having been kept back as long as possible. It was at this period that he declined the challenge of Hardinge, the chief-secretary. Liberal in every part of his imperial policy, during the Reform struggle he supported the Whigs, as later he advocated free trade in corn, negro emancipation, the removal of the disabilities of the Jews, the cause of Poland, not to speak of universal suffrage, and the drastic reformation of the House of Lords. In the autumn of 1830 the potato crop had been very poor, and much misery was the result in Ireland. Under O'Connell's advice the people declined to pay tithes, and that winter disorder was rampant everywhere.
He had sat last for Kerry, when at the general election of 1832 he was returned for Dublin. At this time he nominated about half of the candidates returned, while three of his sons and two of his sons-in-law composed his 'household brigade.' Of the 105 Irish members but 23 were Tories; while of the 82 Liberals as many as 45—his famous 'tail'—were declared Repealers. The severest of all coercion acts hitherto in force was that of 1833, against which O'Connell fought in the House of Commons with masterly courage and ability. The disgraceful interruptions and outrageous insults of his opponents somewhat excuse the violence of his tone and the vulgarity of such phrases as 'beastly bellowings,' till then, if not since, unfamiliar to the ears of the House of Commons. Soon after this he was forced against his better judgment by Feargus O'Connor, the Freeman's Journal, and his more ardent followers to bring the Repeal movement prematurely into parliament. On April 22, 1834, he spoke nearly seven hours for a committee to inquire into the Act of Union. The debate lasted nine nights, and the motion was defeated by 523 to 38. The Whigs under Lord Melbourne came into power in 1835, and, Repeal being for the time set aside as hopeless, O'Connell would have accepted office had not the king intervened to forbid it, and certainly for the next five years he gave the Whigs a steady support. His phrase 'a bloated buffoon,' applied to Lord Alvanley, brought a challenge which was refused, but his son Morgan went out in his stead, and two shots were fired. D'Israeli, who had solicited O'Connell's help in his canvass for High Wycombe in 1832, now attacked him fiercely at the Taunton election in 1835. In a speech at Dublin O'Connell retorted by calling him 'a miscreant,' 'a liar,' 'a disgrace to his species,' and 'heir-at-law of the blasphemous thief who died upon the cross.' D'Israeli now sought to earn a cheap reputation as a fire-eater by challenging Morgan O'Connell in his father's stead, but the challenge was declined. That year O'Connell visited the north of England and Scotland, received everywhere by enormous crowds full of curiosity and interest. An incident in the Carlow election of 1835 brought upon him from unscrupulous and watchful enemies the charge of having pocketed money to procure a man a seat, but the inquiry only brought out that he was grossly careless in managing affairs, and left no real stigma on his character. One of the most common Tory slanders upon him was that Repeal was not so much the object of 'the big Beggarman' as the Repeal rent; but it must be remembered that to serve his country he surrendered a very lucrative practice at the bar (worth £7000 a year, as he told the House of Commons) and all hope of professional promotion, that though as much as £10,000 of tribute flowed yearly into his hands he expended it faithfully in the cause, and, in spite of the large fortune bequeathed by his uncle in 1825 and a subscription of £50,000 in 1829, died worth scarcely a thousand pounds. The vast hospitality he exercised was a necessity of his position, and, if it is true that he brought his own sons into parliament, it cannot be said that he ever set aside a really good candidate in their favour. Ireland trusted him, and to the end he justified her trust.
Mulgrave and Drummond governed Ireland so mildly and impartially that O'Connell was prepared to abandon the Repeal agitation in the prospect of at last obtaining justice for his country. In 1836 he was unseated on petition for Dublin—his expenses in defending were £20,000; those of the petitioners, £40,000. He was now returned for Kilkenny, nearly £8500 being at once raised for his expenses. He had loyally supported the Whigs at the risk of waning popularity in Ireland, but he began to feel misgivings as he saw his dreams of justice to Ireland vanishing into a more and more distant future. In the November of 1837 he denounced the men in a Dublin strike and was hooted at in the streets, and on 28th February 1838 he was severely reprimanded by the Speaker for attributing perjury to the Tory committees in the House of Commons. That same year the Mastership of the Rolls was offered him but declined. In August he founded his 'Precursor Society,' and on April 15, 1840, his famous Repeal Association, the members of which were grouped in three classes—volunteers who subscribed or collected £10 a year, members who subscribed £1, and associates who subscribed one shilling. That summer and autumn he addressed meetings incessantly, but yet the agitation languished till the appearance of the Nation in October 1842 brought him the aid of Dillon, Duffy, Davis, Mangan, and Daunt. In 1841 O'Connell lost his seat at Dublin, but found another at Cork, and in November he was elected Lord Mayor of Dublin. On February 25, 1843 he brought up the question of Repeal in the Dublin corporation in a splendid oration of four hours' length, and carried it against Isaac Butt by 41 to 15. The agitation now leaped into prominence, and the priests came pouring in to swell its strength. That year's rent was £48,400; Conciliation Hall was built in Dublin, and a magnificent and perfect organisation arranged with great enthusiasm and perfect harmony. Even a Repeal police was instituted under a Head Pacifier. Arbitration courts were formed, and a great mass of national literature disseminated. O'Connell travelled that same year 5000 miles. Monster meetings, attended by hundreds of thousands, were held in every corner of Ireland, yet these were never mobs—nowhere was there crime or even drunkenness, thanks to Father Mathew. The greatest was that held on the Hill of Tara, 15th August 1843, the attendance at which was estimated by the Nation at three-quarters of a million. O'Connell had an innate horror of rebellion and bloodshed—'he who commits a crime adds strength to the enemy' was a favourite motto; another, 'no political change whatsoever is worth the shedding of a single drop of human blood.' Throughout a whole generation with wonderful skill he had kept the public mind at a pitch of the highest political excitement, yet restrained it from unconstitutional action, although he often skated dangerously near the edge of inflammatory language. But now the Young Ireland party, with all the infallibility of youth and enthusiasm, began to grow impatient of the old chief's tactics, and, impelled by their enthusiasm and certain of the speedy surrender of the government, O'Connell allowed himself in his speeches to outrun his better judgment. But this time Wellington was resolute in his measures, and poured 35,000 men into Ireland. A great meeting was fixed at Clontarf for Sunday, October 5, 1843, but it was proclaimed the day before. O'Connell, apprehensive of a bloody scene, issued a counter-proclamation abandoning the meeting. Early in 1844 he was tried with his son and five of his chief supporters for a conspiracy to raise sedition, and after a trial extending over twenty-three days was found guilty, and ultimately on May 30 sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment, a fine of £2000, and £5000 security for good behaviour for seven years. The House of Lords set aside the verdict as erroneous on September 4, and at once bonfires blazed across Ireland from sea to sea. But during the fourteen weeks the Tribune lay in prison the disease seized him of which three years later he was to die. And he found that in his absence the Young Ireland party had taken a forward step, and that his moral force policy was now discredited by the more fiery young spirits of his party, who began to talk in articles and songs of the lawfulness of physical resistance to the government. His proposed scheme of federation and local parliaments found no favour, and he withdrew it, alleging that it was merely a ruse to gauge the Whig feeling of Ulster. He opposed Peel's provincial 'godless colleges,' and soon came an open split between him and Young Ireland, the members of which seceded from the Association after angry disputes in 1846. Next followed the potato famine. Distraction at the sufferings of his country, dismay at the stalking shadow of famine, vexation at the breach in his party, consciousness of failure in the dearest project of his life, religious austerities in expiation of the errors of his youth, the progress of insidious disease, and last of all a crazy passion for a young English girl, now combined to break down his herculean frame. He left Ireland for the last time on 26th January 1847, made a touching but scarce audible speech in the House of Commons on February 8, next went to Hastings and to Folkestone, and as he felt the hand of death upon him was filled with a great longing to reach Rome. Boulogne, Paris, Moulins, Lyons, Marseilles, and Genoa were the slow stages of the journey. At the last, after some days of delirium, he died, May 15, 1847. His heart by his own desire was carried to Rome, and buried in the church of St Agatha; his body rests in the Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, in a crypt at the base of an Irish round tower, 165 feet high.
Daniel O'Connell was framed by nature for the part he had to play in life. Almost six feet high, of burly figure, giant strength, inexhaustible energy, and enormous powers of work, he had a splendid command of nervous language, and a mighty voice that rose high above the uproar of the crowd. A magnificent orator, trenchant, versatile, self-possessed, sincere with all his exaggeration, ready in unstudied and effective retort, richly endowed with a coarse but genuine humour, and ever thoroughly Irish, he controlled at will the wildest emotions of an Irish mob, and passed with the ease of a master from bursts of passion and outrageous buffoonery to the tenderest pathos. He was master of all the artillery of vituperation, but it should be remembered in his defence that he was assailed all his life, the constant victim of a malignity and hatred now difficult to realise. Even the Times newspaper stigmatised him as 'an unredeemed and unredeemable scoundrel,' and asked, like Cicero of another Catiline, 'How long shall such a wretch be tolerated among civilised men?' Yet O'Connell was no demagogue in the unworthy sense of that word, no socialist or advocate of strikes—he opposed the poor-laws of 1838 on the most unpopular grounds, and rejected the proffered alliance of the Chartists, constantly denounced rebellion, and was unswerving in personal loyalty to the sovereign. He was no mere tool of Rome, and never abused Protestants as such, but advocated a large tolerance in religion far beyond the ideas of either his antagonists or his supporters, making for his aim a really Liberal Catholicism that earned the unstinted approbation of Montalembert and Lacordaire. His church policy was carried out far beyond his dreams in 1869, his fixity of tenure granted by the Land Bill of 1870; and indeed the magnitude of the measures the imperial parliament has since his time adopted to heal the distresses of Ireland but shows how sound was his statesmanship and how real were the evils that he denounced. Yet together with all this good there was mixed much evil also. He was coarse, scurrilous, cunning, violent, bombastic, unscrupulous, more than Celtic in his looseness of phrase and exaggeration, he often played upon unworthy passions, and left behind him an inheritance of antagonism between classes in Ireland that has done much to degrade and embitter the tone of public life. But it should never be forgotten that he taught his country to manage within constitutional limits the whole machinery of political agitation, and again aroused within her the spirit of nationality and the instinct of freedom. He said himself with justifiable pride, 'Grattan sat by the cradle of his country, and followed her hearse: it was left for me to sound the resurrection trumpet, and to show that she was not dead, but sleeping.' With all his faults he was a great and sincere patriot, whose devotion to the best interests of Ireland will never fade from her remembrance.
Of O'Connell's published writings the most characteristic is the Letter to the Earl of Shrewsbury (1842). His Memoir of Ireland, Native and Saxon (1843), never saw its second volume, and is poor and inaccurate. There is no adequate biography, though there are Lives by his son John O'Connell (1846), William Fagan (1847-48), M. F. Cusack (1872), and a short Centenary Life by the Rev. John O'Rourke (1875). See W. J. O'Neill Daunt's Personal Recollections (2 vols. 1848); his son's Recollections and Experiences during a Parliamentary Career from 1833 to 1843 (2 vols. 1849); W. E. H. Lecky's Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, unquestionably the ablest estimate of his character (new ed. 1871); M. F. Cusack's Speeches and Public Letters of the Liberator (2 vols. 1875); Shaw Lefevre's Peel and O'Connell (1887); the excellent study by J. A. Hamilton in the 'Statesmen' series (1888); and W. J. Fitzpatrick's authoritative and invaluable Correspondence of Daniel O'Connell, the Liberator (2 vols. 1888). The delightful letters to his wife and Archbishop M'Hale, contained in the last, gave a new revelation into his character. Good articles on O'Connell are those by J. Ball in Macmillan's Magazine for July 1873, and Mr Gladstone in the Nineteenth Century for January 1889.