Reviews of Patrick Geoghegan’s King Dan:

‘Geoghegan’s well-thought-out, refreshing iconoclasm disturbs some stagnant pieties and enhances his already considerable reputation as a historian … A fine piece of historical detective work … the sparkling narrative … further enhancing his reputation as one of the leaders of the new generation of Irish historians.’

PROFESSOR PAUL BEW AND DR PATRICK MAUME, DUBLIN REVIEW OF BOOKS, 2008

‘A very readable and fresh look at one of the great figures in modern Irish history, and a fascinating insight into aspects of Irish life in the early 19th century. O’Connell’s colourful early life—high spending, constant debt, duelling, womanising and involvement with the United Irishmen—is worthy of a historical novel.’

PROFESSOR MARY E. DALY, THE IRISH TIMES

‘This volume has about it a freshness and readability and carries its scholarship lightly.’

PROFESSOR DONAL MCCARTNEY, PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF MODERN IRISH HISTORY AT UCD, MAIL ON SUNDAY

‘History lecturer and broadcaster, Dr Patrick Geoghegan succeeds in explaining some of the biographical puzzles about O’Connell.’

MARTIN MANSERGH, THE IRISH INDEPENDENT

‘In his biography, Geoghegan ultimately casts O’Connell as a protean figure who helped create the modern Ireland. It was the towering achievement of his life … Geoghegan’s book helps rescue his subject from fading into irrelevance in the mists of history.’

THE SUNDAY TIMES

       LIBERATOR

The Life and Death of Daniel O’Connell, 1830–1847

PATRICK M. GEOGHEGAN

Gill & Macmillan

|   INTRODUCTION

This book follows on immediately from the events detailed in King Dan: the Rise of Daniel O’Connell, 1775–1829, published in 2008. That book began and ended with O’Connell in 1829, at the height of his powers as a lawyer following the Doneraile conspiracy trials, and having won his greatest victory with the passing of Catholic emancipation. The night emancipation was secured, O’Connell was warned that his career was over, because there was nothing left to achieve. But O’Connell’s lifelong ambition was the restoration of the Irish parliament, and he knew that the greatest challenge of his life was yet to come. The ‘rise’ of Daniel O’Connell had taken fifty-four years, and it represented a number of different ascents. As a lawyer he had triumphed despite the obstacles in his path because he was a Catholic. As a public agitator he had succeeded in energising a moribund Catholic Association and turning it into a dynamic national movement. Through the force of his personality, and his extraordinary oratorical powers, he was able to achieve his objectives through exclusively peaceful means—the use of moral force—and, in doing so, providing an inspiration to democratic movements around the world.

The intention from the beginning had been to subtitle this book ‘The Fall of Daniel O’Connell, 1830–1847’. It is a subtitle that reflects the popular perception of O’Connell following emancipation. He entered the British House of Commons, but failed in his attempts to secure Repeal, or even Justice for Ireland, in the 1830s. He attempted to lead a new national movement in the 1840s—which culminated in the massive monster meetings in 1843—but backed down over Clontarf, and shattered the unity of the Repeal movement by his unseemly squabble with the Young Ireland movement. His death in Genoa, during the height of the famine, represented a tragic end for a career that had promised much, but which in the end had seemingly delivered little. The great historian W.E.H. Lecky recognised that there was ‘something almost awful in so dark a close to so brilliant a career’.¹ But the more I engaged with the period 1830–1847 I realised this subtitle was misleading and inappropriate. There was a decline and fall, but it took place in the 1830s, when O’Connell’s popularity began to fade and, broken-hearted, he considered retiring from politics and entering a monastery. In the early 1840s he faced the same problems as in the early 1820s: an apathetic public and a divided camp. But this time he was an aging man, and was unsure whether he still had the energy and ability, or even whether he was still trusted, to lead the nation once more. The resurrection of O’Connell in 1843 was one of the most remarkable comebacks in world history, as he rolled back the years to travel around the country and speak to his people. It was a campaign that was watched with excitement around the world and which confirmed O’Connell as the prophet of a new age and an entirely new way of conducting popular politics. The transformative campaign ultimately ended in failure, and O’Connell ended his career a broken man. This, then, is the story of the rise, fall, resurrection, and decline of O’Connell, in the dramatic final seventeen years of his life.

‘The Life and Death of Daniel O’Connell, 1830–1847’ is an attempt to capture this drama in a subtitle. Those who have never heard of O’Connell may mistake this book for the study of a young man who died at the age of seventeen. But the subtitle is also an attempt to show what kind of book this is. Even more than the first book it is a study focused intensely on the character of O’Connell. Therefore it only looks at the events that O’Connell was closely involved with, and does not attempt to provide a wider study of the period. Rather than using O’Connell to try and understand the major events of the time, for example the passing of the Great Reform Act or other important pieces of legislation in the 1830s, it is an attempt to do something very different and provide a first-person camera view of O’Connell—at work and at play, and as he embarked on a number of different campaigns to overturn the Act of Union.

The book begins with O’Connell’s attempts to take his seat in May 1829 and his declaration that he would not be easily silenced. Part I then looks at O’Connell’s career in Britain in the 1830s, beginning with his determined attempts to make an impression in the House of Commons, and ending with his fear at the close of the decade that his reputation had been compromised. Part II looks at his renewed attempts to win Repeal in the 1840s, and traces his decline all the way to his death in 1847. Chapter 12 is a specialised study of O’Connell’s position on slavery, and is similar to the chapter on O’Connell’s career as a lawyer in the first book. This may appear incongruous—why provide a study on slavery and not, for example, a chapter on his views on the poor law, or his relationship with his tenants? But the slavery question is fundamental to our understanding of O’Connell’s character and, quite apart from the international dimension, it reveals much about his strengths (and weaknesses) as a politician and a national leader. Looking back on the issue now it seems obvious to us that O’Connell was right and his opponents were wrong. But none of this was obvious at the time. Even some leading abolitionists, in Europe and the United States, believed that slavery was wrong because of what it did to the white owner, and were not convinced of the innate equality of the black person. O’Connell was different. He felt the pain of the black slaves, he understood what it was like to be the victim of a real oppression, and he refused to abandon the cause no matter what the cost. It was the same determination—stubbornness—principle—that would prevent him from changing his mind on the use of physical force, and here his reputation paid the price.

Although it may not always be evident in this book, which places O’Connell the man at the centre of things, it is not hard to understand why O’Connell horrified and disgusted so many people in Britain. O’Connell was seen as a coward and a crook, a man who insulted with impunity and then refused to back up his words when challenged, and who appeared to live off the money of the poorest Irish people. Part of this was anti-Irish prejudice, but there was more to it than that. O’Connell confounded people’s expectations of what was acceptable public behaviour. By refusing to play by the accepted rules of the game, or even show a passing acquaintance with the accepted political conventions of the day, he was feared and detested. Lecky summarised the views held at the time: ‘O’Connell was nothing more than a foulmouthed, untruthful, vulgar, and venal demagogue.’² The stories of O’Connell betraying a private confidence or a public trust were eagerly recited in his lifetime. Some of these criticisms, as this book will show, were well deserved. But the stories which showed O’Connell in a better light were never reported in his lifetime. The Whig peer Lord Ebrington was at one point very close to O’Connell, but they fell out during the Repeal agitation of the 1840s. However, Ebrington was always grateful that ‘even in his most angry moments O’Connell never suffered anything he had learnt in the period of their confidence to escape him’.³

What made O’Connell such a Promethean figure was his determination to always follow his own path and do whatever he decided was right. At times inconsistent, at times infuriating, he was at all times an inspirational figure who fought an empire on his own terms and almost won.

|   PROLOGUE

On Friday 15 May 1829 the House of Commons was ‘crowded to excess’.² Everyone was curious to see what would happen when Daniel O’Connell finally attempted to take his seat for parliament. Catholic emancipation had been conceded by the government the previous month, following O’Connell’s stunning victory in the Clare by-election in 1828, and after British power in Ireland had been ‘shivered to atoms’, but the terms of the act had been drafted so that O’Connell would not be included within them.³ In other words, he must take the existing oaths of allegiance, supremacy, and abjuration, and make a declaration against transubstantiation (as well as a declaration that the invocation or adoration of the Virgin Mary, the invocation of the saints, and the sacrifice of the Mass as practised in the Church of Rome were all ‘superstitious and idolatrous’) or he would not be allowed take his seat. There was no way O’Connell, as a devout Catholic, could denounce the ‘impious, heretical, and damnable doctrine’ of his faith without humiliating both himself and the Irish nation he represented. The Emancipation Act allowed Catholics to substitute all these things for a new oath when taking their seats, but King George IV had spitefully insisted that O’Connell should not be allowed to fall within this new dispensation.

At five p.m. the Speaker of the House asked if there were any new members who wanted to be sworn, and called on them to come before him. O’Connell rose from his seat under the gallery and made his way to the table of the House of Commons, where he was introduced by Lords Ebrington and Duncannon. ‘The sensation Mr O’Connell’s appearance caused was intense; the House was crowded, and when he entered all rose, through a feeling of curiosity, to catch a glimpse of the renowned member for Clare.’⁴ A journalist from The Times wrote that it would be impossible to convey ‘the silent and almost breathless attention with which he was received’.⁵ O’Connell handed over his return and his qualification papers, as well as a certificate from the commissioners of the lord high steward, confirming that he had taken the preliminary oaths required. The chief clerk of the House, having examined these documents and found that they were correct, immediately opened the large box before him and took out the old oaths (which were affixed to large paste-boards) and a copy of the New Testament on which to swear him. There was ‘profound silence’ in the House. After some moments, O’Connell announced that as a Catholic he could not take the existing oaths, though he was willing to take whatever new oath was required following emancipation. His refusal was reported formally to the Speaker and he was ordered to withdraw. O’Connell bowed, but made no attempt to move, and remained standing at the table, staring silently at the Speaker.⁶ Henry Brougham rose to speak in favour of O’Connell’s claims but the Speaker shouted, ‘Order! Order!’, thereby indicating that he could not proceed until O’Connell had withdrawn. The Speaker turned to O’Connell, and again ordered him to withdraw.

As the Morning Herald reported, ‘Mr O’Connell once more bowed, and then withdrew, but without uttering, or attempting to utter, one word.’⁷ He returned to his seat under the gallery. There, resting against the doorway, was a stack of ten or eleven volumes of the journals of the House, and several volumes of law books, which he had stationed in the doorway ready for use in case he had been called to speak. But the opportunity was denied. A heated debate followed about whether O’Connell could be allowed to present his case before the House, either at the table or before the bar, but it was decided that he could not be heard. Robert Peel, the home secretary and O’Connell’s great adversary, denied that O’Connell had any right to speak, and called for the discussion to be adjourned until the Monday. This was agreed and the decision on O’Connell’s eligibility was postponed.

On Monday 18 May O’Connell returned to the House of Commons and took his position under the gallery. ‘The House was crowded to overflowing’ and it was said that ‘never before were there in the House so many strangers, peers, or members’.⁸ The duke of Orléans, the future king of France, and his son, the duke of Chartres, were among the visitors who came in late and struggled to find a seat. The adjourned debate resumed and it was resolved that O’Connell should be heard at the bar. O’Connell rose to speak. It had been confidently predicted that O’Connell would fail in the House of Commons, with his style of speaking ill-suited for a refined parliamentary setting.⁹ But in a thrilling oration O’Connell convinced his critics that a new parliamentary gladiator had arrived. Since 1801 Ireland had sent various MPs to the British House of Commons. But this was the first time that someone had addressed the House with a claim to be able to speak for the entire Irish nation. O’Connell declared that ‘the voice of the people had sent him there’ and that he spoke as ‘the representative of the people’.¹⁰ In a brilliantly structured speech, which traced the history of the various oaths, O’Connell spoke like a lawyer on ‘points of legal subtlety’ and like a leader on ‘the vicious principle’ which excluded him. For O’Connell this was nothing less than a question of civil rights. And he asked the House, ‘If it be not a civil right, what is it?’¹¹

Challenging the arguments that had been made against his eligibility, O’Connell reminded the House that his case could never be made into a precedent, as ‘it can never happen again’. Therefore he asked if the House was determined to interpret the Emancipation Act to ‘make it an outlawry against a single individual’. This prompted cheers of ‘Hear, hear!’ In a clever twist, O’Connell shifted his position and denounced the government for deliberately trying to exclude him from the terms of the Emancipation Act. He questioned why his specific case had not been included in the act, and then answered his own question: ‘Simply, because it was not intended to be included.’ ‘What is to become of me?’ he asked to loud cheering: ‘Am I to remain the representative of Clare? Will the House not let me in, and is it not able to turn me out? What, I ask again, is to become of me? I call the attention of the House to that—what is to become of me?’

In a moving summation, O’Connell presented himself as the representative of ‘a divided people’, ‘a disinterested people’, and ‘a martyred people’. Finished, he bowed to the House and withdrew ‘amidst loud and general cheering’.¹² Attempting to return to his seat under the gallery, he discovered that it had been taken by the visiting members of the French royal family, and he found a new place beside the sergeant-at-arms.¹³ In his response, the solicitor general paid a generous tribute to O’Connell’s oratory, noting that his temper and ability were exactly what had been expected from ‘so distinguished a member of his profession’. But the numbers were against O’Connell. At the end of a long debate it was ordered that he should be asked to present himself before the House the very next day, and if he refused to take the existing oaths it would mean he had disqualified himself and his seat would fall vacant.

On Tuesday 19 May the House of Commons was packed with people anxious to see the conclusion of the drama. O’Connell was brought before the Speaker and reminded of the resolution of the previous night. He was told that he could not take his seat unless he took the original oaths (including the various declarations) prescribed at the time he was elected. ‘The excitement was intense; breathless silence prevailed in that crowded assembly’ as everyone strained to hear what O’Connell would say.¹⁴ And then O’Connell did something unexpected. He asked to see what he was being asked to swear. ‘The clerk was directed to hand him the oath, which was printed on a large card.’¹⁵ Taking his time, O’Connell put on his spectacles and then proceeded to study the card with the deepest attention. A stranger to the chamber might have imagined that O’Connell had never seen the words before, so intently did he study them, and as the minutes passed there was absolute silence. Finally, O’Connell looked up. In a determined voice he said, ‘I see in this oath one assertion as to a matter of fact which I know to be false. I see in it another assertion as to a matter of opinion which I believe to be untrue.’ With ‘an expression of the most profound contempt’, he declared, ‘I therefore refuse to take this oath,’ and flung the printed card away. It was said that the House was ‘struck of a heap’, such was the ‘feeling of amazement that pervaded parliament for some minutes after the card was thus contemptuously flung on the table’. The blow struck, O’Connell withdrew from the bar, as a new writ was issued for Co. Clare. After winning one of his greatest victories it hardly seemed to matter that he had lost his parliamentary seat without ever being allowed to take it.

|

 PART I

Chapter 1

|  ‘THE MAN WHO DISCOVERED IRELAND’: O’CONNELL REVISITED

‘Who has not heard of the Liberator?’ asked a Scottish clergyman in 1841.² Following the winning of Catholic emancipation in 1829 it seemed an unnecessary question to ask. Such was O’Connell’s international fame that in 1830, when the Belgian parliamentarians voted on their new king, three of them voted for O’Connell.³ In later years O’Connell liked to joke that if the election had been held at a later time, and if he had stood against Leopold, then he was convinced he’d have ‘run the fellow close enough’. A French captain of artillery once told the bishop of Ardagh that some of his compatriots liked to imagine that O’Connell had been born in France rather than merely having gone there for his education. ‘Ah,’ the captain sighed, ‘if he had been a native of our country, we would have made him king of the French!’⁴ Of all the stories of his international reputation told in his lifetime, O’Connell himself particularly enjoyed that of a coachman from Heidelberg in Germany. The coachman was asked by an Irish visitor if he had ever heard of O’Connell. ‘I have,’ the coachman replied. ‘He is the man who discovered Ireland.’⁵

Vanity had always been a key part of O’Connell’s character, and the winning of emancipation and the fame and adulation that came with it only encouraged him in his vice. Whenever he met Catholic children he liked to ask them if they knew who he was, before telling them ‘that it was I who emancipated you’.⁶ O’Connell’s popularity throughout the Irish countryside was enormous. One time during the Repeal agitation in the 1840s, O’Connell was travelling by carriage and stopped to have the horses changed. A crowd gathered to watch him, and one old beggar woman with a crutch approached the carriage and pleaded with O’Connell to shake hands with her. He did so and the effect on the woman was immediate. She threw her crutch into the air and exclaimed in delight, ‘I’ve touched his honour’s hand—I’m young again!’⁷ Similarly, on another occasion, O’Connell spent some days at the house of two English women. Every night they sang a song in his honour, to the tune of ‘God save the king’, and when one woman had a painful swollen face she applied O’Connell’s gold-laced travelling cap to it to see if it would heal her. Visitors to Ireland were often surprised by the extent of O’Connell’s popularity. One time an Englishman was travelling with O’Connell to Glencullen when they encountered a funeral. The mourners recognised O’Connell and, despite the solemnity of the occasion, broke into ‘a vociferous hurrah’.⁸ The Englishman was astonished and made a comment about how odd it was to have a political hurrah at a funeral. But the mourners replied that ‘the corpse would have doubtless cheered lustily too, if he could’.

During his lifetime O’Connell’s autograph was widely sought. In general he was happy to oblige, although he found the constant writing tedious. The king of Bavaria was anxious to secure his autograph and asked his minister in England to obtain it. O’Connell sent him some lines from one of his favourite poems, John Dryden’s defence of the Roman Catholic faith, ‘The hind and the panther’, and the king was delighted to get something written by the hand ‘of that energetical character, inseparable for ever from the history of our age’.⁹ However, O’Connell refused a request from the tsar of Russia, and later made this public, declaring that he would not show this courtesy to such a man as Tsar Nicholas because of his tyrannical policies. In later years there was a popular anecdote that O’Connell had once responded to the request for an autograph with the lines ‘Sir, I never send autographs. Yours, Daniel O’Connell.’¹⁰ Old age made the act of writing difficult. When his friend William O’Neill Daunt visited O’Connell in January 1847 he was asked whether he wanted any autographs. Daunt answered in the affirmative. ‘Well then’, said O’Connell, laughing, ‘I’ll get my secretary to write as many as you want!’¹¹

At the first royal levée after emancipation, O’Connell went up to kiss the hands of King George IV. As he approached, the king muttered, ‘There is O’Connell! God damn the scoundrel!’¹² The story made the newspapers and was later confirmed to O’Connell by the duke of Norfolk. O’Connell seemed supremely unconcerned and liked to boast that he was ‘the best-abused man in the British dominions’.¹³ Thomas Moore, for example, liked to say that O’Connell was a curious mixture of ‘high and low, formidable and contemptible, mighty and mean’.¹⁴ When discussing him one evening over dinner, Moore was advised by the noted humorist Sydney Smith that the only way to deal with such a man would be ‘to hang him up, and erect a statue to him under his gallows’. Moore approved of this ‘balancing of the account’. Once, a friend asked O’Connell if he had ever been upset by the constant attacks. ‘Not a bit,’ insisted O’Connell. ‘I knew the scoundrels were only advertising me by their abuse.’¹⁵

After his death, O’Connell would be criticised for his apparent dismissal of the Irish language. At a St Patrick’s Day dinner in London in 1833 he discussed the decline of the language among the peasantry. O’Connell revealed that he was ‘sufficiently utilitarian not to regret its gradual abandonment’.¹⁶ Reflecting on the building of the tower of Babel, O’Connell admitted that although the Irish language was a source of real national pride, the English language was ‘the medium of all modern communication’ and therefore he could ‘witness without a sigh the gradual disuse of the Irish’. These lines should be seen in their correct context: as a commentary on how English was the language needed to succeed, and a prediction that it was also the language of the future. O’Connell’s love of the Irish language was clear. He always regretted not changing the spelling of his surname to ‘O’Conal’ after the winning of emancipation, believing that the other spelling was an English imposition.¹⁷ And he always delighted in speaking Irish. During one Repeal rally at Skibbereen in Co. Cork, when government reporters gathered to record his every word, he enjoyed discomfiting them by delivering the entire speech in Irish.¹⁸

Returning to Co. Clare for his re-election campaign in 1829, O’Connell was greeted by vast crowds and ‘all down the line of road from Dublin to Limerick his progress was a continued triumph’.¹⁹ At every point where there was an opportunity to see him, men, women, and children could be seen ‘running at the top of their speed, and waving hats and fragments of garments, or green boughs, shouting all the while at the top of their voices’.²⁰ It was noted that ‘the poor old women’ were particularly obsessed with O’Connell. Some of them would throw aside, ‘for the moment, their load of years’, and ‘skip and jump as merrily as the youngest there’. However, the majority would drop on their knees as the carriage approached and, ‘raising their aged hands and eyes to heaven, were to be heard praying fervently, and invoking blessings and mercies upon the man who was labouring to upraise a fallen nation, and to vindicate an oppressed creed’. As O’Connell approached Ennis, one elderly woman, working in her cabbage garden, ‘threw down her spade and looked around for something green to wave in honour of the Liberator’.²¹ There was nothing suitable, so she grabbed a bunch of nettles and held them over her head as she ran towards the carriage, shouting, ‘Long life to O’Connell, the man of the people.’

Although O’Connell was not expected to be opposed in 1829, he still insisted on taking every precaution so as not to be taken by surprise. All the canvassing and polling arrangements were made in advance, ‘as though a desperate contest was imminent’, and it was believed that this level of preparedness frightened off any would-be challengers.²² Entering the town of Ennis, O’Connell was greeted with white flags at every turn. At first he was confused about what this meant, but was reassured that these were ‘the veritable green flags of the great election of the preceding year, faded and bleached’ by the passing of time. Re-elected unopposed, O’Connell was carried by chair throughout the countryside, before retiring to Derrynane to rest and prepare for the new parliamentary session. There was some criticism in Britain of his aggressive language in this period, but shrewder observers recognised what he was doing. As the diarist Charles Greville noted, ‘Had he never been violent, he would not be the man he is, and Ireland would not have been emancipated.’²³

Back in Dublin in January 1830, O’Connell was presented with an address by the Trades’ Political Union. Each trade in the city marched with its own leaders and banners to his house at Merrion Square and formed in squares in front of his house. Then their president, and staff of vice-presidents, entered the house and presented O’Connell with the address from the balcony of the house. His response was almost drowned by the ‘ringing cheers’ of the enormous crowd which had gathered around the square. A few days later, O’Connell set out by carriage by Kingstown, to travel by boat to England and take his seat in parliament.A crowd cheered him at every point of the journey, ‘blessing and wishing him success in the new career about to open to him’.²⁴

Whenever he wanted to escape from the pressures of work, O’Connell would return home to Derrynane. There he alternated days of relaxation and hunting with days of study and research. If it was raining, or a work day, he usually rose between eight a.m. and nine a.m. Mass was said at nine a.m. in his private chapel, and after attending he would collect the newspapers and post that were delivered by special relays of mounted postboys. O’Connell would begin reading these materials over breakfast, and spend an hour or two afterwards ‘wading through his correspondence and the heap of newspapers that he daily received’.²⁵ Afterwards, he would work in his study for three or four hours, writing letters or dictating them to a secretary. At four p.m., unless the weather prohibited it, he would go outside in his dressing-gown and cap, and walk along the beach between Derrynane Abbey and the sea. At these times he would appear to be in great thought, and suggest ‘by the sudden and involuntary motion of the arm, that some vivid thought of Ireland’s wrongs had flashed across his mind’. His family were reluctant to join him on these occasions, allowing him time to reflect in private.

The next day, ‘the scene was changed’.²⁶ Shortly after dawn, O’Connell’s huntsmen would knock on his door and tell him ‘to be stirring and not lose the fine morning’. For O’Connell the great attraction of Derrynane was the opportunity to go ‘hare-hunting through the neighbouring mountains on foot’.²⁷ Within a few minutes he would be dressed and ready to go, carrying a ‘tall wattle, or long stick, such as is commonly used in mountain-walking there’. There was no question of having breakfast before setting out. Rather, all kinds of breakfast—‘Irish, Scotch, and foreign’—were packed up in baskets, and carried with the huntsmen. Nothing would be eaten until at least two hares had been killed, much to the frustration of any less enthusiastic or more hungry hunters. A spot in some mountain ravine would be chosen for the meal, preferably near a mountain stream, and sheltered from the wind. The breakfast would be eaten with enthusiasm, with much banter and joking, ‘and the merriest of all was Daniel O’Connell’. Work would then intervene, as his servants would track him down and deliver that day’s postbags, and he would quickly read the most important letters. But once the hounds cried out after catching the scent of more hares, all politics would be forgotten, and he would set out once more. He would remain hunting until it became dark, and then return home ‘the freshest of the party’.²⁸ There would be a large late dinner, and O’Connell would be in high spirits from the excitement of the day, ‘and he unlocked all his treasures of anecdote and historical and professional reminiscence’.

This would be the routine for the rest of O’Connell’s time at Derrynane. By the next morning ‘the eager huntsman had relapsed into the studious and absorbed politician’. Twenty-four hours later he would be transformed back into a huntsman, and so it would go on until a Sunday, which would be given over to prayer, exercise, and the settling of quarrels among the tenantry. He had no interest in fishing or shooting and, because he suffered from sea-sickness in his later years, had no wish to go out on a boat.²⁹ Fox-hunting was not possible because of the mountainous terrain, but in any case he thought it poor sport compared to hunting hares on foot. ‘I am the only fellow who understands how to hunt rationally,’ he liked to boast, and his beagles were trained to perfection to track the hares. To collect his thoughts, he loved long walks, accompanied by a favourite dog, and he would walk for miles and ‘gaze on the seemingly illimitable stretch of ocean below’. Thus ‘passed away the few weeks of relaxation enjoyed by the Arch-Agitator’.³⁰

Derrynane was open to anyone who accepted its hospitality, whether Catholic or Protestant, Irish or foreign, Repealer or anti-Repealer. One writer left an account of sitting down to dinner at a table set for thirty-three people, Irish, English, Scottish, French, German, and American. One evening a stranger was announced—a young Englishman—who stated that his pony had lost a shoe and he was unable to proceed on his journey. O’Connell rose from the head of the table to welcome him, exclaiming, ‘You will oblige us by staying here, sir,’ and adding as a joke, ‘we are indeed infinitely obliged to your pony’.³¹ In a profile of O’Connell, published anonymously in London in 1839, the writer was generous in his description of O’Connell’s hospitality: ‘in private life I believe he is a very magnificent fellow’.³² It had been claimed in The Times that O’Connell liked to entice Englishmen into his den and then ‘drown them in whiskey toddy’. But this sounded very tempting to the author, who looked forward to visiting some day and toasting O’Connell with a tumbler. As the man noted, ‘King Dan is the representative of the country, and he does the honours of hospitality for her.’

In the same anonymous profile it was noted that O’Connell possessed the type of greatness that got things done. Nothing was for show; everything was done to advance the cause.³³ The author had no doubt that when future generations asked the question of how the civil incapabilities of the Catholics had been removed there could only be one answer: ‘Daniel O’Connell removed them.’ And although there had been many men around him who had helped, ‘there is not one who can claim to share with him one leaf of that laurel. Alone he did it.’ John Doherty, the solicitor general who had been humiliated by O’Connell in the Doneraile case, had more reason than most to hate O’Connell. But in the 1830s he always spoke of him with a grudging kind of ‘awful respect’.³⁴ One time he told the story of how he had overheard two old women discussing O’Connell in court, following one of his great legal speeches. O’Connell had been defending ‘a manifestly guilty man’, but had secured his acquittal. ‘It is no use talking,’ one of the women said proudly. ‘He is just a God Almighty upon earth.’ As Doherty was forced to concede, this was indeed ‘the public feeling’.

Chapter 2

|   ‘KING OF THE BEGGARS’, 1830

The House of Commons, inside the royal chapel of St Stephen’s at Westminster Palace, so impressive on the outside, was a disappointing sight inside. ‘It was dark, gloomy, and badly ventilated, and so small that not more than four hundred of the six hundred and fifty-eight members could be accommodated in it with any measure of comfort.’² For an important debate, especially if it was preceded by a call of the house, the MPs were crammed together, and some were forced to take a place in the gallery or the refreshment apartments next door. The members’ benches were cushioned and covered with leather, and ‘from the floor backwards to the walls, each seat was from twelve to fourteen inches higher than the one fronting it’. The row to the right of the Speaker was for members of the government and its supporters, and the first one on the left was for leading figures of the opposition. The strangers’ gallery was immediately above the entrance for MPs and could accommodate one hundred and twenty persons. The back row was used by the reporters and sometimes as many as sixty or seventy would cover an important debate.

Women were forbidden to enter the strangers’ gallery, and the only way they could see or hear what was going on was ‘by mounting above the ceiling of the house, and looking down through a large hole which was made immediately above the principal chandelier, for the purpose of ventilation’.³ Not more than fourteen women could follow debates in this way, and the smoke of the candles and the uncomfortable position ensured that few remained there long. Only those ‘who were anxious to hear their husbands, or brothers, or lovers, make some expected oration, had the fortitude to endure the semi-martyrdom of remaining many minutes in such a place’. There was a smoking room next door to the chamber, and it was here that members went to write letters. The library was beside it, and some MPs would stop there to research their speeches.

The most important business of the day would commence at five o’clock. But the best orators would usually wait until nine or ten o’clock before rising to speak. This was because the House was comparatively empty before then, with most members preferring ‘the more solid qualities of a good dinner to “the feast of reason and the flow of soul”’.⁴ If a member wanted to speak, it was necessary to catch the Speaker’s eye, and wait to be called. But since the best orators left it until later to speak it was very difficult for a new speaker, or one without a reputation, to catch the Speaker’s eye if he waited too long. For the first two years of his parliamentary career, O’Connell complained that the Speaker deliberately neglected him, refusing to make eye contact, but in later years believed that the Speaker went out of his way to compensate for this.⁵

O’Connell was finally able to take his seat on Thursday 4 February 1830 when parliament met for the new session. No controversy was expected this time, and the House was almost empty as he took the required oaths and then shook hands with the Speaker. It was usual to take the oaths on the right side of the table, and there was some consternation that O’Connell chose to take them on the left side, but although this was noted in the records there was no formal complaint.⁶ O’Connell took a seat beside Sir Francis Burdett, a longtime supporter of Catholic emancipation, and entered into a long conversation. The speech from the throne had been heard earlier in the House of Lords and in the debate on it that followed O’Connell was determined to announce his arrival as a major parliamentary figure. Most people delivered a set, prepared speech on their debut. But O’Connell had waited long enough for this moment, and had decided in advance to give an unplanned response to the speech from the throne.

Many people entered the House of Commons with great reputations for oratory that were soon destroyed. It was a very different challenge to speaking outdoors, and sometimes speakers who were used to being applauded in other settings were incapable of making the adjustment. A favourite saying among seasoned politicians was that ‘a great demagogue out of doors becomes a very minute pygmy in St. Stephen’s’.⁷ A maiden speech begun badly was said to have ‘a paralysing effect’, and few recovered from having their efforts greeted with ‘marked indifference and inattention’.⁸ ‘Mortified, disappointed and disheartened’, these speakers usually performed no better on their second outing.

Such was the expected fate of O’Connell. John Doherty, the solicitor general, was overheard boasting, ‘Mark my words: he will turn out nothing; he will sink down gradually to his proper dimensions.’⁹ The pressure was therefore on O’Connell to make an immediate impression. While O’Connell never gave any indication of being nervous before a big speech, either in the courtrooms or at political gatherings, in reality this was just part of his act, the carefully constructed image he wanted to project. In public he was always the showman, laughing and joking, and never appearing anything less than fully confident. But in private he struggled with the usual doubts and insecurities, and often when anticipating a major speech he had trouble sleeping the night before.¹⁰

Catching the Speaker’s eye early on in the debate, O’Connell rose to speak. He began by announcing that ‘the people had sent him there to do their business’ and that therefore he felt obliged to comment on the state of the country.¹¹ His review of the speech from the throne was scathing and full of sarcasm. Contrasting it with similar messages from the heads of state in France and the United States, he dismissed it as ‘containing such jejune and empty statements’ that it would never have been tolerated in either of the other countries. There were cheers of ‘Hear!’ at this, and O’Connell went on to mock the address for revealing information that was already well known, such as the news that the Russian war was at an end. ‘This was an important discovery, indeed,’he joked, adding for emphasis, that ‘of course, none of them knew that before’. This earned the first laugh of the speech, and O’Connell grew in confidence as he went on.

Staying with foreign policy, he mocked the ministry for saying that nothing was determined as to Portugal. ‘And why?’ he asked. ‘Ah! We were not told that.’ For O’Connell the question was clear-cut. He attacked the regime of Don Miguel for having come to power by treachery and force, and through ‘the spilling of innocent blood’.¹² All of this was cheered loudly. O’Connell then moved on to domestic policy, and the state of the United Kingdom. The speech from the throne had mentioned that there was ‘distress’ in the country, but claimed it was only ‘partial’. O’Connell contrasted this with the comments of the three leading supporters of the king’s address, who had spoken before him, who had admitted that the distress was ‘general’, ‘extraordinary’, and ‘overwhelming’. There was more laughter and cheers of ‘Hear! Hear!’ O’Connell then mocked the chancellor of the exchequer for claiming that there was one ‘Oasis in the desert’, a country ‘where no distress at all existed’. He joked, ‘and who would have thought it? That country was Ireland!’

O’Connell claimed that he had never heard anything as astonishing in all his life. He spoke of the seven thousand registered people in Dublin alone who were in poverty, and forced to live off the ‘three-halfpence a day’ which was distributed by the lord lieutenant. O’Connell then spoke of the three provinces he knew well—Leinster, Connaught, and Munster (and not, revealingly, Ulster)—and declared that ‘the agriculturalists in those three provinces were suffering the greatest distress’. O’Connell ended the speech calling for reform of the courts and parliamentary reform, insisting that only ‘a radical and complete reform’ would satisfy the people. And he demanded that the House of Commons should continue to meet every day until it had discovered the causes of the public distress and how to address them. He sat down to many cheers and much acclaim.

Over the next few months O’Connell spoke regularly, although he did not speak as much as he would have liked and he complained that the Speaker deliberately avoided his eye. But when he did speak, the causes that he championed are revealing. For example, he presented a petition from Co. Cork against slavery in the colonies; he suggested abolishing the practice of arresting people for debt except after judicial procedure; and he spoke in favour of a petition supporting the rights of Jews.¹³ In another debate he opposed one member’s suggestion that the lord lieutenancy of Ireland should be abolished, arguing that this would increase the suffering of the ‘seven thousand persons in Dublin living on the charity of three-halfpence a day’. Instead he suggested that if savings were wanted they should first abolish ‘the lords of the bed-chamber, the lords of the admiralty, or the lords of the treasury’.¹⁴

Jews were prevented from sitting in parliament and O’Connell was one of the strongest supporters of their emancipation. In a letter to Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, the leader of the British Jews, following the passing of Catholic emancipation, he promised to do everything he could to support the Jews’ claims. He boasted that Ireland ‘had claims on your ancient race as it is the only Christian community that I know of unsullied by any one act of persecution of the Jews’, while in contrast, ‘The English were always persecutors.’¹⁵ Despite the perception of O’Connell as a Catholic ideologue, he believed firmly in the separation of church and state. He told Goldsmid that it was ‘an eternal and universal truth that we are responsible to God alone for our religious belief and that human laws are impious when they attempt to control the exercise of those acts’. This was also his position in parliament. W.E. Gladstone never forgot hearing O’Connell demand a complete separation of church and state during a particularly heated debate. At a banquet in honour of Polish independence in 1831 O’Connell again called for the separation of the two, declaring that it was always ‘an adulterous connection’.¹⁶

Parliamentary reform was another key interest of O’Connell. On 18 February 1830 he rose late in a debate on the subject to respond to comments that had been made. Revealing that he was against paying MPs a salary, he attacked the seventy-eight members who profited from offices of the crown, accusing them of lacking any independence when it came to voting.¹⁷ From this, O’Connell moved to the problem of popular representation. He revealed that 424 MPs were not popularly elected, but were returned for seats controlled by peers or borough proprietors. And he claimed that only twenty-one of the one hundred MPs for Irish constituencies were popularly elected. The national debt of the United Kingdom at that time was eight hundred million pounds, and O’Connell blamed it on the oligarchy which was in control of the political system. Parliamentary reform, he insisted, would solve the problem, as the people themselves were always the best judges of what was best for a country. The speech ended on a dramatic note, with O’Connell calling on the House, ‘which had shorn the talons of the monarchy, to use its powers to cut short the fell fangs of the oligarchical faction which lorded it over the land’.¹⁸ In another debate, on 5 March, O’Connell spoke in favour of the secret ballot, arguing that it was the only way of ensuring that people could vote as they wished without being intimidated.¹⁹ And he ended his speech with another attack on the ‘oligarchy that lorded it over them with despotic sway’, blaming the aristocracy for burdening the country with eight hundred million pounds’ worth of debt.

Despite his great experience as a speaker, O’Connell found it difficult initially to adjust to the demands of the House of Commons. In the early years he spoke often—too often—and became ‘a noisy bore’ by trying to turn everything into a discussion of the Union.²⁰ The problem for O’Connell was that he failed to adapt to the style of the House. As a result his parliamentary career, which had begun so well, threatened to slide into mediocrity. O’Connell had not risen to become the leading barrister in Ireland without possessing a quick ability to learn about how systems operated, but it did take him some time to unravel the secrets of the Commons. In his correspondence with the great English utilitarian and social reformer Jeremy Bentham in 1831, O’Connell acknowledged that he had ‘shipwrecked his parliamentary fame’ by trying to do too much.²¹ He blamed this on having too high an opinion ‘of the moral worth and intellectual power of the House of Commons’, and in thinking he could ‘cleanse the Augean stable of the law’. And so he resolved to be less mild and gentle in his fight to secure political reform, justice for Ireland, and Repeal of the Union.

Back in Ireland, in between worrying about growing fat, O’Connell set about organising his Repeal campaign.²² On 6 April 1830 he founded The Society of the Friends of Ireland of all Religious Persuasions. The aims were economic, political, and moral. It sought to repeal duties on Irish malt, coal, and paper, prevent a duty on Irish tobacco, repeal the Union, reform parliament, campaign against sectarianism, and have slavery abolished in the British colonies.²³ But the society was suppressed by a proclamation of the lord lieutenant on 24 April, after only a few meetings, and O’Connell was forced to find a new way of leading his new campaign.

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