O'CONNELL, DANIEL. - Statesman, b. at Carhen on 6 Aug. 1775, d. at Genoa on 15 May 1847. Having obtained a law degree in England, in 1798 he began his forensic career.
Only a few years earlier had it been conceded to Catholic barristers to plead before British tribunals, and he made use of this right to take up the defence of his co-religionists in numerous lawsuits brought against Irish farmers who refused to pay the legal tithes to the Anglican Church, so that his legal activity soon turned into a fervent work of Catholic apostolate and nationalist propaganda. When, following the Irish insurrection of 1798, the minister Pitt procured the proclamation in 1800 of the Act of Union between England and Ireland—with the consequence of suppressing the Parliament of Dublin and admitting one hundred Irish deputies to the House of Commons and twenty-eight Irish Peers to the House of Lords—O'C. was the most energetic opponent of this ill-starred measure, and he devoted all his energies to its repeal, in a struggle that was to last his entire life. At the same time he began another equally strenuous battle: that for the legal equalization of Catholics and Protestants—or, as it was then called, “emancipation”—and here, after twenty-nine years of prodigious oratorical and political activity, he was victorious: the Catholic Relief Bill, which restored to Catholics all civil and political rights that had been denied them, was indeed promulgated in 1829.
Meanwhile O'C. worked on a social level to awaken a sense of identity among the great mass of Irish peasants, oppressed by Anglican landowners. Thus in 1822 was born the Catholic Association, which the English government repeatedly dissolved as seditious and O'C. just as often reconstituted under different names but with an unchanged programme. Elected to the House of Commons in 1828, the election was contested because he was a Catholic; but after the promulgation of the aforementioned Bill, he was triumphantly elected. From that day forward, he sat permanently in the House of Commons and there waged the most courageous battles in defence of his religion and his nation.
In 1835 he made an agreement with the Liberal Party (the Hilchfield House pact) to reduce the amount of tithes payable to the Anglican Church; in 1836 he founded the Ireland General Association, in 1838 the Precursor Society, and in 1840 the Loyal National Republican Association, which proposed the repeal of the Act of Union of 1800. To spread its influence throughout every stratum of the population, O'C. introduced the use of so-called “monster meetings,” imposing gatherings of the people that were held weekly from village to village. Alarmed, the government in London ordered that they be discontinued and communicated this decision to O'C. on 7 Oct. 1843, on the eve of a meeting called at Clontarf. He complied, but was nonetheless arrested as a rebel and sentenced in March 1844 to a year’s imprisonment and a fine of £2,000, despite being a member of Parliament and Lord Mayor of Dublin. Having lodged an appeal with the House of Lords, he himself contested the validity of the sentence before the Peers, in a speech that is perhaps the finest of his career; and the English Peers set him free on 4 Sept. 1844.
O'C.’s return to Ireland after his acquittal aroused national jubilation; but that day of genuine triumph also marked the beginning of his political decline, in that the more radical nationalists accused him of having yielded to the Government’s demands, both for cancelling the Clontarf meeting and for accepting to discuss his sentence instead of giving the signal for revolt. Against the associations founded by O'C. there arose in fact the Young Ireland movement, with a programme openly insurrectionary, which he had to disavow because he intended to maintain the movement for the repeal of the Act of Union within the strictest legality.
Deeply embittered by this schism—officially in June 1846—he decided to undertake a journey to Rome to seek counsel from Pope Pius IX; but on reaching Genoa he was overtaken by death on 15 May 1847. In his will he left written instructions to commend his soul to heaven, his body to Ireland, and his heart to Rome. His remains, to which royal honours were rendered, rest in Glasnevin cemetery, and his heart was deposited in S. Agatha dei Goti, then the seat of the Irish College in Rome.
A rich selection of his speeches was collected by Susack in 1875, while Fitzpatrick published much of his correspondence: The Political and Private Correspondence of D. O'C., London 1888.