O'CONNELL, DANIEL Irish statesman, known as "the Liberator," was born on Aug. 6, 1775, near Cahirciveen, a small town in Kerry. He was sprung from a race the heads of which had been Celtic chiefs, had lost their lands in the wars of Ireland, and had felt the full weight of the harsh penal code which long held the Catholic Irish down. His ancestors in the 18th century had sent recruits to the famous brigade of Irish exiles in the service of France, and those who remained at home either lived as tenants on the possessions of which they had once been lords, or gradually made money by smuggling. While a boy he was adopted by his uncle, Maurice O'Connell of Derrynane, and sent to a school at Queenstown, and then to the colleges of St. Omer and Douai in France.
In 1798 O'Connell was called to the bar of Ireland, where he came rapidly to the front. In examining witnesses, he had no rival at the Irish bar. He was, however, a thorough lawyer be sides, inferior in scientific learning to two or three of his most conspicuous rivals, but well read in every department of law, and especially a master in all that relates to criminal and constitu tional jurisprudence; as an advocate, too, he stood in the very highest rank.
From early manhood O'Connell had turned his mind to the condition of Ireland and the mass of her people. The worst severities of the penal code had been, in a certain measure, relaxed, but the Catholics were still in a state of vassalage, and they were still pariahs compared with the Protestants. The rebellion of 1798 and the union had dashed the hopes of the Catholic leaders, and their prospects of success seemed very remote when, in the first years of the 19th century, the still unknown lawyer took up their cause. Up to this juncture the question had been in the hands of Grattan and other Protestants, and of a small knot of Catholic nobles and prelates; but they aimed only at a kind of compromise, which, while conceding their principal claims, would have placed their church in subjection to the state. O'Connell gave the Catholic movement an energy it had not bef ore possessed. He formed the bold design of com bining the Irish Catholic millions, under the superintendence of the native priesthood, into a vast league against the existing order, and of wresting the concession of the Catholic claims from every opposing party in the state by continuous agitation, embrac ing almost the whole of the people, but maintained within consti tutional limits, though menacing and shaking the frame of society.
The Catholic Association, at first small, but slowly assuming larger proportions, was formed ; attempts of the government and of the local authorities to put its branches down were skilfully baffled by legal devices of many kinds; and at last, after a conflict of years, all Catholic Ireland was arrayed in a powerful organiza tion. O'Connell stood at the head of this great national movement which, controlled from first to last by himself and the priesthood, was essentially conservative in character. His election for Clare in 1828 proved the forerunner of the inevitable change, and the Catholic claims were granted the next year.
O'Connell joined the Whigs on entering parliament, and gave effective aid to the cause of reform. The agitation, however, on the Catholic question had quickened the sense of the wrongs of Ireland, and the Irish Catholics were engaged ere long in a crusade against tithes and the established church, the most of fensive symbols of their inferiority in the state. It may be ques tioned whether O'Connell was not rather led than a leader in this the movement, at least, passed beyond his control, and the country for many months was terrorized. Lord Grey proposed measures of repression which O'Connell opposed with extreme vehemence. This caused a breach between him and the Whigs; but he gradually returned to his allegiance to them when they practically abolished Irish tithes, cut down the revenues of the established church and endeavoured to secularize the surplus. In the British House of Commons O'Connell stood in the front rank as a debater; and his oratory, massive and strong in argu ment, made a powerful impression. O'Connell steadily supported Lord Melbourne's government, gave it valuable aid in its general measures, and repeatedly expressed his cordial approval of its policy in advancing Irish Catholics to places of trust and power in the state, though personally he refused a high judicial office. He sincerely advocated the rights of conscience, the emancipation of the slave and freedom of trade. But his rooted aversion to the democratic theories imported from France grew stronger with ad vancing age. His conservatism was most apparent in his tenacious regard for the claims of property. He actually opposed the Irish Poor Law, as encouraging a communistic spirit ; he declared a movement against rent a crime, though he advocated a reform of the precarious tenure enjoyed by the Irish peasant.