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From The Nineteenth Century.
DANIEL O'CONNELL.*

BY THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P.
FOR the large majority of persons now
living in Great Britain, O'Connell has
come to be nothing but a name. A name,
it is true, with some vesture of awe and
suspicion hanging around it, like a ghost;
a name with some lingering capacity to
make us feel uncomfortable; yet in the
main a name only, like Chatham, or like
Strafford. But for the small proportion
of those now inhabiting the island, and
for all who were breathing and moving
upon it,

ὅσσ ̓ ἐπὶ γαῖαν ἐπιπνείει τε καὶ ἔρπει, forty and fifty years ago, from the highest to the lowest, O'Connell was, and was felt to be, not a name only but a power. He had, in 1828-9, encountered the victor of

the Peninsula and of Waterloo on the battle-ground of the higher politics, of those politics which lie truly inter apices, and had defeated him, and had obtained from his own lips the avowal of his defeat. Moreover, O'Connell was a champion of whom it might emphatically be said that alone he did it. True, he had a people behind him; but a people in the narrower rather than in the wider sense, the masses only, not the masses with the classes. The Irish aristocracy were not indeed then banded together, as they are now, in the cause that he thought the wrong one. Many of them supported Roman Catholic emancipation; but none of them comprehended that, in the long reckoning of international affairs, that support would have to be carried onwards and outwards to all its conse

quences. He saw, at the epoch of the Clare election, what they did not see, that the time had come when, to save the nation, a victim must be dedicated even from among the nation's friends, like the great king's daughter at Aulis to preserve the host commanded by her own father. O'Connell was the commander-in-chief, although as yet they hardly knew it; and even the most illustrious supporters of

Correspondence of Daniel O'Connell the Liberator. Edited, with notices of his life and times, by W. J. Fitzpatrick, F.S.A. London, Murray, 1888. 2 vols.

8vo.

Roman Catholic emancipation, on whichever side the Channel, were but the rank and file behind him. His were the genius and the tact, the energy and the fire, that won the bloodless battle. By the force of his own personality he led Ireland to St. Stephen's, almost as much as Moses led the children of Israel to Mount Sinai ; and he accomplished the promise of Pitt, which Pitt himself had labored, and labored not in vain, to frustrate.

I assume, then, that this remarkable man, whom before reaching the end of these remarks I shall call a great man, has passed out of the mill-stream of politics into the domain of history. There, it is to be hoped, we may contemplate and examine his career in something of the solemn stillness of Glasnevin, where his remains repose beneath the soaring tower, the pre-eminently national symbol of his

country.

We have now supplied to us for the first time, through the enterprise of my old friend Mr. Murray, the material necessary for this examination. The preceding biographers of O'Connell have not had access to the stores of the singularly characteristic correspondence in which, while his whole heart was set upon the purpose of the time, he has unconsciously limned himself for posterity. The small but very interesting volume of the Rev. Mr. Rourke is of too limited a scope, and was written with too partial an access to sources, for the exhibition of the entire

man. The "Life and Times of the Liber

ator," + containing, as might be expected from its title, much extraneous matter, does not fill the void. The "Select Speeches" were published by his son Mr. John O'Connell, with "historical notices" of indispensable facts and dates, but with an express disclaimer of any attempt at biography. From the expressions used by Mr. Fitzpatrick in his preface, I gather that the present work is substituted for the more formal biography, which was at one time meditated by his family.§

The Centenary Life of O'Connell. By the Rev.

John O'Rourke, P.P., M.R.I.A. Dublin, 1878.

The Liberator, his Life and Times. Kenmare Publications. 2 vols. 8vo. (1873?)

See preface to Select Speeches. 2 vols. 12mo. Duffy, Dublin (without date). § Ibid.

Unless I am much mistaken, the history | his account I must mention further on in of Ireland, especially for the last two hun- some detail, in being brought slightly yet dred years, is not only a narrative replete sensibly into personal contact with him in itself with the most singular interests, (now nearly fifty-five years ago), and thus but is also a normal exercise for instruc- having experience of his kindly and wintion in the basis of modern history at ning manners. But those who know only large. If this be so, then neither the the hearty good-will of millions upon miltimely and most dispassionately written lions of the English people towards Irevolume of Mr. Lefevre,* nor even the land at this moment, can have but a faint comprehensive collection now before me, conception of the fearfully wide range of will supply the last word that is to be mere prejudice against O'Connell half a posthumously spoken of O'Connell, as to century ago. Even Liberal candidates whom Mr. Greville,† most dispassionate were sometimes compelled by popular of judges, has stated that "his position opinion publicly to renounce him and all was unique there never was before, and his works. A very small part of this averthere never will be again, anything at all sion may have been due to faults of his resembling it." And once more, he was own; but, in the main, I fear that, taking "the most important and most conspicu- him as the symbol of his country, it exous man of his time and country." If he hibited the hatred which nations, or the has now passed away from the clatter and governing and representative parts of nathe rowdyism of every-day politics, tions, are apt to feel towards those whom in this sphere I think cannot be stated they have injured. My own delinquencies more strongly than in these words: I voted steadily with the opposition on Irish questions in the Melbourne period, and I had entered the Cabinet of Sir Robert Peel in 1843 when the prosecution of the Liberator, in connection with the monster meetings, was undertaken. One very slight plea only can I offer for myself. I was not blind to his greatness. Almost from the opening of my Parliamentary life I felt that he was the greatest popular leader whom the world had ever seen. Nevertheless I desire to purge myself, by this public act, of any residue of old and unjust prepossession, to Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart.*

To where, beyond these voices, there is peace, our time will surely not be lost in an endeavor to ascertain what manner of man it is that stands figured on the canvas before us. For Mr. Fitzpatrick, while presenting to us a collection of moderate extent, selected without doubt from a far larger mass of papers, has not only woven them into a web of fair average continuity, but has, as a sculptor would, presented to us his hero "in the round," so that we may consider each of his qualities in each varied light, and judge of their combination into a whole, whether it is mean or noble, consistent or inconsistent, natural or forced.

It is with something of a sense of special duty, and likewise with a peculiar satisfaction, that I make this small effort at historical justice in the case of the Irish Liberator, as he is most justly called. In early life I shared the prejudices against him, which were established in me not by conviction, but by tradition and education. As a young and insignificant member of Parliament, I never (so far as my memory goes) indulged in the safe impertinence of attacks, which it would have been beneath him to notice. I was fortunate, from an occurrence which on

• Peel and O'Connell. 8vo, London, 1887. ↑ Greville Memoirs, Second Series, iii. 86.

There cannot but be many, in whose eyes O'Connell stands as clearly the greatest Irishman that ever lived. Neither Swift nor Grattan (each how great in their several capacities!) can be placed in the scale against him. If there were to be a competition among the dead heroes of Irish history, I suppose that Burke and the Duke of Wellington would be the two most formidable competitors. But the great duke is truly, in mathematical

Macbeth v. 3

phrase, incommensurable with O'Connell. | life are simple. He was born in the There are no known terms which will county of Kerry on the 6th of August, enable us fairly to pit the military faculty 1775. He received his college education against the genius of civil affairs. It can at St. Omer and Douay, during the years hardly be doubted that, if we take that of the French Revolution. At this period, genius alone into view, O'Connell is the there are sufficient indications that in greater man; and I will not so much as character, though not in mere opinion, broach the question, in itself insoluble," the boy was father of the man." It whether and up to what point of superiority the exploits of the great duke in the field establish an excess in his favor. With respect to Burke as against O'Connell, it seems safe to say that he was far greater in the world of thought, but also far inferior in the world of action.