DANIEL O'CONNELL

1775-1847

The great Irish agitator was born in Cahirciveen, County Kerry, Ireland, on August 6, 1775; his death took place when he had reached his seventy-third year, at Genoa, on the coast of Italy. His parents destined him for the priesthood, and sent him to the Jesuits' college at St. Omer for instruction; but after he had finished his course, he announced that he preferred the law of man to the priesthood as a profession. To the Middle Temple therefore he went, and after duly completing his terms there, was admitted to the Irish bar in 1798, at which date it had been just opened to the Catholics. He had great powers as an advocate, and his skill and versatility in conducting defences before the Crown courts caused him sometimes to be charged with inconsistencies. But his extraordinary merits could not be obscured; and in 1831 he received his silk gown.

Long before this, however, he had become famous elsewhere than in forensic matters. He was not satisfied to be the foremost advocate of the Irish bar; it was not long before he had won the reputation of being also the leader of the Irish Catholics in the political field. He was resolved to obtain for his countrymen admission to all the rights of other British subjects; and he was chiefly instrumental in forwarding the results obtained by the Catholic Board and the Catholic Association. All this was not accomplished without animated personal collisions; and he was challenged for having applied the epithet of "beggarly corporation to the corporation of Dublin, which opposed the Catholic claims. He met his antagonist, and killed him. He was subsequently challenged by Mr. Peel, at the time when the latter was Secretary for Ireland; but two attempts to fight a duel were frustrated by the authorities.

The repeal of the union and the removal of Catholic disabilities were the two measures to the securing of which he devoted his main energies. Before the relief bill was passed he had expressed the opinion that it was possible for him to sit in Parliament; and he had accordingly been elected to the seat for County Clare; but he made no attempt to take his seat until after the bill had been passed. He was then required to take the usual oaths of allegiance, supremacy, and abjuration; and when he claimed the benefit of the bill, it was decided that he was not entitled to the advantage of its provisions; and he was not permitted to sit. But upon being re-elected, the prohibition was removed. In 1831 he was elected to sit for Kerry; in the same year he was arrested for sedition, or the suspicion of it, together with several others, but the prosecution came to nothing, and all were released. In 1841 he headed the repeal agitation, and during the two following years he promoted vast mass-meetings; in 1843 he was again arrested; but in 1844 the sentence which had been passed upon him was reversed.

O'Connell's natural manner of speaking, in accordance with his nature and temperament, was bold and aggressive; but he could at will adopt the most suave and cautious methods. In short, he was a master of the oratorical and rhetorical arts; and his indomitable courage and persistence rendered him a most formidable parliamentary debater. The speech "On the Rights of Catholics" is a good example of his oratory in the cause to which he devoted the greatest efforts of his life.

I

ON THE RIGHTS OF CATHOLICS

Delivered at a meeting in Dublin, February 23, 1814

WISH to submit to the meeting a resolution, calling on the different counties and cities in Ireland to petition for unqualified emancipation. It is a resolution which has been already and frequently adopted; when we have persevered in our petitions, even at periods when we despaired of success; and it becomes a pleasing duty to present it, now that the symptoms of the times seem so powerfully to promise an approaching relief.

Indeed, as long as truth or justice can be supposed to influence man; as long as man is admitted to be under the control of reason; so long must it be prudent and wise to procure discussions on the sufferings and the rights of the people of Ireland. Truth proclaims the treacherous iniquity which has deprived us of our chartered liberty; truth destroys the flimsy pretext under which this iniquity is continued; truth exposes our merits and our sufferings; whilst reason and justice combine to demonstrate our right-the right of every human being to freedom of conscience-a right without which every honest man must feel that to him, individually, the protection of government is a mockery, and the restriction of penal law a sacrilege.

Truth, reason, and justice are our advocates; and even in England let me tell you that those powerful advocates have some authority. They are, it is true, more frequently resisted there than in most other countries; but yet they have some sway among the English at all times. Passion may confound and prejudice darken the English understanding; and interested passion and hired prejudice have been successfully employed against us at former periods; but the present season appears singularly well calculated to aid the progress of our cause, and to advance the attainment of our important objects.

I do not make the assertion lightly. I speak after deliberate investigation, and from solemn conviction, my clear opinion that we shall, during the present session of Parliament, obtain a portion, at least, if not the entire, of our emancipation. We cannot fail, unless we are disturbed in our course by those who graciously style themselves our friends, or are betrayed by the treacherous machinations of part of our own body.

Yes, everything, except false friendship and domestic treachery, forebodes success. The cause of man is in its great advance. Humanity has been rescued from much of its thraldom. In the states of Europe, where the iron despotism of the feudal system so long classed men into two speciesthe hereditary masters and the perpetual slaves; when rank supplied the place of merit, and to be humbly born operated as a perpetual exclusion-in many parts of Europe man is reassuming his natural station, and artificial distinctions have vanished before the force of truth and the necessities of governors.

France has a representative government; and as the unjust privileges of the clergy and nobility are abolished; as she is blessed with a most wise, clear, and simple code of laws; as she is almost free from debt, and emancipated from odious prejudices, she is likely to prove an example and a light to the world.

In Germany the sovereigns who formerly ruled at their free will and caprice are actually bribing the people to the support of their thrones, by giving them the blessings of liberty. It is a wise and glorious policy. The prince regent has emancipated his Catholic subjects of Hanover, and traced for them the grand outlines of a free constitution. The other states of Germany are rapidly following the example. The people, no longer destined to bear the burdens only of society, are called up to take their share in the management of their own concerns, and in the sustentation of the public dignity and happiness. In short, representative government, the only rational or just government, is proclaimed by princes as a boon to their people, and Germany is about to afford many an example of the advantages of rational liberty. Anxious as some kings appear to be in the great work of plunder and robbery, others of them are now the first heralds of freedom.

It is a moment of glorious triumph to humanity; and even one instance of liberty, freely conceded, makes compensation for a thousand repetitions of the ordinary crimes of military monarchs. The crime is followed by its own punishment; but the great principle of the rights of man establishes itself now on the broadest basis, and France and Germany now set forth. an example for England to imitate.

Italy, too, is in the paroxysms of the fever of independence. Oh, may she have strength to go through the disease, and may she rise like a giant refreshed with wine! One thing is certain, that the human mind is set afloat in Italy. The flame of freedom burns; it may be smothered for a season; but all the whiskered Croats and the fierce Pandours of Austria will not be able to extinguish the sacred fire. Spain, to be sure, chills the heart and disgusts the understanding. The combined Inquisition and the Court press upon the mind, whilst they bind the body in fetters of adamant. But this despotism is, thank God, as unrelentingly absurd as it is cruel, and there arises a darling hope out of the very excess of the evil. The Spaniards must be walking corpses-they must be living ghosts, and not human beings, unless a sublime reaction be in rapid preparation. But let us turn to our own prospects.

The cause of liberty has made, and is making, great progress in states heretofore despotic. In all the countries in Europe, in which any portion of freedom prevails, the liberty of conscience is complete. England alone, of all the states pretending to be free, leaves shackles upon the human mind; England alone, amongst free states, exhibits the absurd claim of regulating belief by law, and forcing opinion by statute. Is it possible to conceive that this gross, this glaring, this iniquitous absurdity can continue? Is it possible, too, to conceive that it can continue to operate, not against a small and powerless sect, but against the millions, comprising the best strength, the most affluent energy of the empire?-a strength and an energy daily increasing, and hourly appreciating their own importance. The present system, disavowed by liberalized Europe, disclaimed by sound reason, abhorred by genuine religion, must soon and forever be abolished.

Let it not be said that the princes of the Continent were forced by necessity to give privileges to their subjects, and that VOL. II.-7

England has escaped from a similar fate. I admit that the necessity of procuring the support of the people was the mainspring of royal patriotism on the Continent; but I totally deny that the ministers of England can dispense with a similar support. The burdens of the war are permanent; the distresses occasioned by the peace are pressing; the financial system tottering, and to be supported in profound peace only by a war taxation. In the mean time, the resources of corruption are mightily diminished. Ministerial influence is necessarily diminished by one-half of the effective force of indirect bribery; full two-thirds must be disbanded. Peculation and corruption must be put upon half-pay, and no allowances. The ministry lose not only all those active partisans; those outrageous loyalists, who fattened on the public plunder during the seasons of immense expenditure; but those very men will themselves swell the ranks of the malcontents, and probably be the most violent in their opposition. They have no sweet consciousness to reward them in their present privations; and therefore they are likely to exhaust the bitterness of their souls on their late employers. Every cause conspires to render this the period in which the ministry should have least inclination, least interest, least power, to oppose the restoration of our rights and liberties.

I speak not from mere theory. There exist at this moment practical illustrations of the truth of my assertions. Instances have occurred which demonstrate, as well the inability of the ministry to resist the popular voice, as the utility of re-echoing that voice, until it is heard and understood in all its strength and force. The ministers had determined to continue the property tax; they announced that determination to their partisans at Liverpool and in Bristol. Well, the people of England met; they petitioned; they repeated-they reiterated their petitions, until the ministry felt they could no longer resist; and they ungraciously, but totally, abandoned their determination; and the property tax now expires.

Another instance is also now before us. It relates to the Corn Laws. The success of the repetition of petitions in that instance is the more remarkable, because such success has been obtained in defiance of the first principles of political economy, and in violation of the plainest rules of political justice.