Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/779

Rh O C N N E L L disfigured by decided faults, was marked by a peculiar subtlety and manly power, and produced great and striking effects. On the whole, in the art of winning over juries he had scarcely an equal in the law courts. To understand, however, O Connell s greatness we must look to the field of Irish politics. From early manhood he had turned his mind to the condition of Ireland and the mass of her people. The Avorst 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 present 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 their efforts had not accomplished much, and 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 inaugurated a different policy, and had soon given the Catholic movement an energy it had not before possessed. Himself a Catholic of birth and genius, unfairly kept back in the race of life, he devoted his heart and soul to the cause, and his character and antecedents made him the champion who ultimately assured its triumph. Having no sympathy with the rule of &quot; the Saxon,&quot; he saw clearly how weak was the hold of the Government and the Pro testant caste on the vast mass of the Catholic nation ; having a firm faith in the influence of his church, he per ceived that it might be made an instrument of immense political power in Ireland ; and, having attained a mastery over the lawyer s craft, he knew how a great popular movement might be so conducted as to elude the law and yet be in the highest degree formidable. With these convictions, he formed the bold design of combining the Irish Catholic millions, under the superintendence of the native priesthood, into a vast league against the existing order of things, and of wresting the concession of the Catholic claims from every opposing party in the state by an agitation, continually kept up, and embracing almost the whole of the people, but maintained within constitu tional limits, though menacing and shaking the frame of society. He gradually succeeded in carrying out his pur pose : Catholic associations, at first small, but slowly assum ing larger proportions, were formed in different parts of the country ; attempts of the Government and of the local authorities to put them down were skilfully baffled by legal devices of many kinds ; and at last, after a conflict of years, all Catholic Ireland was arrayed to a man in an organisation of enormous power, that demanded its rights with no uncertain voice. O Connell, having long before attained an undisputed and easy ascendency, stood at the head of this great national movement ; but it will be observed that, having been controlled from first to last by himself and the priesthood, it had little in common with the mob rule and violence which he had never ceased to regard with aversion. His election for Clare in 1828 proved the forerunner of the inevitable change, and the Catholic claims were granted the next year, to the intense regret of the Protestant Irish, by a Government avowedly hostile to the last, but unable to withstand the overwhelming pressure of a people united to insist on justice. The result, unquestionably, was almost wholly due to the energy and genius of a single man, though the Catholic question would have been settled, in all probability, in the course of time ; and it must be added that O Connell s triumph, which showed what agitation could effect in Ireland, was far from doing his country unmixed good. 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 Avere engaged ere long in a crusade against tithes and the established church, the most offensive symbols of their inferiority in the state. It may be questioned 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 by scenes of appalling crime and bloodshed. Lord Grey, very properly, proposed measures of repression to put this anarchy down, and O Connell opposed them Avith extreme vehemence, a seeming departure from his avoAved principles, but natural in the case of a popular tribune. This caused a breach betAveen him and the Whigs ; but he gradually returned to his allegiance to them when they practically abolished Irish tithes, cut doAvn the revenues of the established church, and endeavoured to secularize the surplus. By this time O Connell had attained a position of great emi nence in the House of Commons : as a debater he stood in the very first rank, though he had entered St Stephen s after fifty ; and his oratory, massive and strong in argu ment, although too often scurrilous and coarse, and marred by a bearing in which cringing flattery and rude bullying Avere strangely blended, made a poAverful, if not a pleasing, 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. These were not the least useful years of his life, and they clearly brought out the real character and tend encies of his vieAvs on politics. Though a strict adherent of the creed of Rome, he was a Liberal, nay a Radical, as regards measures for the vindication of human liberty, and 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, which Avere gradually winning their Avay into Eng land, only grew stronger Avith advancing age; he denounced Chartism in unmeasured terms ; the sovereign had no more loyal subject ; and if, as became him, he often condemned the tyranny of bad Continental Governments, he reverenced the constitution and laws of England interpreted in a gener ous spirit. His conserA 7 atism, hoAvever, was most apparent in his antipathy to socialistic doctrines and his tenacious regard for the claims of property. He actually opposed the Irish Poor LaAV, as encouraging a communistic spirit ; he declared a movement against rent a crime ; and, though he had a strong sympathy Avith the Irish peasant, and advo cated a reform of his precarious tenure, it is difficult to imagine that he could have approved the cardinal principle of the Irish Land Act, the judicial adjustment of rent by the state. O Connell changed his policy as regards Ireland when Peel became minister in 1841. He declared that a Tory regime in his country Avas incompatible with good govern ment, and he began an agitation for the repeal of the union. One of his moti es in taking this course no doubt was a strong personal dislike of Peel, with whom he had often been in collision, and Avho had singled him out in 1829 for Avhat must be called a marked affront. O Connell, nevertheless, Avas sincere and even consistent in his con duct : he had denounced the union in early manhood as an obstacle to the Catholic cause ; he had spoken against the measure in parliament ; he believed that the claims of Ireland were set aside or slighted in Avhat he deemed an alien assembly ; and, though he had ceased for some years to demand repeal, and regarded it as rather a means XVII. 91