19th Century Irish History Articles - Union with Britain and the Rise of O'Connell by Dr. Samuel Couch

Article: 19th Century Ireland
I. Union with Britain and the Rise of Daniel O'Connell

by Dr. Sam Couch, Ph. D.
Owner, Rising Road Tours

By the beginning of the 19th Century, British Prime Minister William Pitt believed that the time had come for a legislative union between England and Ireland. The Irish parliament did not agree. The English Parliament, however, approved the measure. In order to gain consent of the Irish, the government supplied bribes such as titles, pensions, situations, and cash in exchange for votes.

Under Union, the Irish membership at Westminster would be reduced from 300 Irish members to 100. This meant certain boroughs would be disfranchised. There was little opposition from Catholics. Orangemen were opposed to union because they feared the enfranchised papists. The Ascendancy gentry were reluctant to lose their recently won independence.

This generated the needed majority for the bill that passed the Act of Union. The bill was passed 158 to 115. On January 1, 1801, Union was enacted and the Irish parliament no longer existed. The two countries now became the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland." Catholic emancipation was not granted.

Robert Emmet, a 24-year old idealist and revolutionary, proposed an insurrection in Dublin with the goal of taking the castle. In a mood that Yeats later characterized as the "delirium of the brave" Emmet led a crowd of Dublin "Liberty Rangers" to attack Dublin Castle on July 23, 1803. Lord Kilwarden, the liberal chief justice, and his son-in-law were dragged from their coach and murdered. There was skirmish in the Coombe but the event quickly petered out and Emmet fled to hiding in the mountains. He was arrested a month later. He was hanged in Thomas Street on 20 September and decapitated the following day. His "epitaph" speech from the dock and the romantic trappings of his adventure made him the "darling of Erin" for nearly two hundred years.

Union seemed to change little. The richer Protestants of the Ascendancy remained privileged and received as much patronage as before. Since there was no central law enforcement, local magistrates deferred to local grandees and set up small and virtually independent oligarchies. Agitation for Catholic emancipation revived old Protestant paranoia. As a condition of Union, Pitt promised immediate Catholic emancipation. In 1805 Grattan introduced legislation intended to move emancipation forward. Full emancipation did not occur for over a quarter of a century.

Ireland itself still was a place of extreme rural poverty. Walter Scott in his 1825 diary noted the naked filthy denizens of the windowless, chimneyless, furnitureless cabins on the extreme edge of human misery. The base level of Irish society earned nothing by their casual and itinerant work except the doubtful tenure of a plot of worthless ground on which to grow potatoes and build a hut of sod. These plots, many of less than an acre, were the final terms in a geometrical progression of subdivision of land that literally could not be subdivided further.

This was in contrast with the residences of the strong farmers and the Big Houses that were the rage in the time. The 1841 census showed a population of 8,175,124 which represented an increase of six million in the 150 years since the Treaty of Limerick. About 1/2 of the land was held by Catholics on long lease and 1/5 was owned outright. This meant that a significant number of the landlords were Catholic and that many of the middlemen in subdivision were also Catholics. Most of the 18th century grand absentee landlords sold their properties to lesser men with money and by the 1820s a large proportion of the land was held by "presentees" (as opposed to "absentee" landlords) whose lifestyles, set unconsciously by their English opposite numbers meant that many lived permanently beyond their means. The main purpose of the landholdings was to provide income no matter how it was generated.

About this time, Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847) "The Liberator" came into prominence. He was one of the most popular leaders in Ireland and the world. He dominated Irish politics for almost fifty years. His mission was to emancipate Catholics. O'Connell was educated in France and had seen the excesses of the early part of the French Revolution. The barbarities of 1798 confirmed his conviction stated in an 1843 speech, "Not for all the universe contains would I, in the struggle for what I conceive my country's cause, consent to the effusion of a single drop of human blood, except my own." He was raised in Kerry where his family on both sides managed to keep the trappings and some wealth of an old Gaelic family. A friendly Protestant holding it in his own name had preserved their land. With the Relief Act of 1792, O'Connell was allowed to become a lawyer. He made a mark by his forensic brilliance and rhetorical skills. He gave hope to the poorer Catholics while basing his strength on a Catholic middle class that had now consolidated its position. He used monster meetings and local organization to accomplish these ends.

Much of the political ward work done by Catholics in America takes its cue from tactics learned under O'Connell.

In the early 19th century, secret societies were out of control in Ireland. Most of them were in rural areas. Some were specifically political and others were quite anti-Protestant. Hedge and other schoolmasters were assumed to provide the education of subversion.

The main source of discontent among Catholics and Protestants alike was the tithes that all that lived in the Anglican parish had to pay towards the support of the local clergyman. This inequity led to confrontations so serious in 1831 that the agitation is known as the "Tithe War."

The public mind was beginning to see the justice of emancipation as a means to quell these troubles. This partly had to do with O'Connell's "monster meetings." These changes also were influenced by the writings of Thomas Moore. In 1820 Grattan made a last attempt to plead the case for emancipation in Commons. Ill, he left for England to plead the cause but died in London before making his case. In legend, his last words were pleas for emancipation.

O'Connell and Richard Lalor Shiel founded the Catholic Association in 1823. This constitutional association found its greatest support in the parishes (like the ward system in American politics) and which supported itself by collection of the "Catholic rent." This penny a month dues was affordable to event the most destitute. Undying loyalty of this group led O'Connell to be called "King of the Beggars." This "rent" was the chief agency through which Catholic emancipation in Ireland was ultimately achieved.

In 1826 association-sponsored candidates (still Protestants) defeated anti-emancipationists. It became clear however that in the next election the organized Catholic vote could unseat many of the sitting members.

In 1828 a vacancy arose in Clare. When no sympathetic Protestant could be found to stand against the incumbent, O'Connell decided to stand. Under the law no Catholic could sit in parliament, but nothing said he could not be elected. O'Connell ran for the post and was declared winner on July 5, 1828. When the Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel saw the possibility of a rival parliament of elected Catholic MPS he proposed an "Act for the relief of His majesty's Roman Catholic subjects" which passed in 1829. Since franchised Catholics now had many members in the rank and file and since many police and soldiers were Catholic, Peel could not insure domestic order. The opposition Tories refused to seat O'Connell saying the act was not retroactive. He was returned unopposed a month later. In retaliation the Tories abolished the "forty-shilling freeholder" franchise which reduced the Irish electorate by 80 percent. It was not until 1850 and the Act of the People (Ireland) Act that emancipation began to be felt. By then Ireland was a very different place.

This series of articles is based on lectures given by Dr. Samuel Couch to Irish Studies courses at Georgia Southern University and Young Harris College between 1997 and 2004. Documented sources come from Couch's research and studies in American universities and with scholars in Ireland. The articles are in no way intended to be comprehensive.

Background materials come from, but are not limited to, readings in the following books:

Duffy, Sean, ed., Atlas of Irish History. Gill & Macmillan: Dublin. 1997.
Joyce, P.W., Outlines of the History of Ireland from the Earliest Times to 1905. M.H. Gill & Son: Dublin. 1909.
Killeen, Richard, A Short History of Ireland. Gill & Macmillan: Dublin. 1994.
Smyth, Daragh, A Guide to Irish Mythology. 2nd ed. Irish Academic Press: Dublin. 1996.

Any lack of attribution to primary sources is unintentional and the sole responsibility of Dr. Couch.

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Article: 19th Century Ireland I. Union with Britain and the Rise of Daniel O'Connell

Article: 19th Century Ireland
I. Union with Britain and the Rise of Daniel O'Connell