Human dignity was fundamental to O'Connell
While the Liberator’s family were landed gentry, they were far from financially secure, with smuggling forming a major part of their income, a symposium to mark 250 years since Daniel O’Connell’s birth has heard.
Speaking at the event at Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery (30 July) Professor Patrick Geoghegan of TCD said that legal and financial insecurities were formative in O’Connell’s life, and this precarity underlaid his political empathy with oppressed Catholics, who suffered under the Penal Laws at the time, and with all of those excluded in society.
Legacy
O’Connell was in expectation of a legacy from his uncle, known as ‘Hunting Cap’ because of his refusal to wear a taxable beaver fur hat while hunting, but this inheritance did not arrive until the man died at 97.
Hunting Cap was an early symbol to O’Connell of resistance to authority, the professor explained.
The long-awaited inheritance meant that O’Connell was profligate from his teenage years, leading to financial instability and debt.
Though his actual birthplace in Carhan, Caherciveen, Co Kerry was simple, O’Connell disliked being described as from humble origins, Prof Geoghegan said, and he would state that he came from one of the finest and oldest families in Ireland.
Subjugated position
O’Connell’s consciousness of the Catholic population’s subjugated position influenced his advocacy and his subsequent vocal opposition to slavery, the event heard.
“He believed in human dignity and the fundamental rights associated with it,” said academic Jennifer T Keating.
Humanity’s full potential can only be unlocked if people are free, and O’Connell spoke against slavery in challenging environments, such as the US, she added.
Prof Geoghegan said that O’Connell saw himself both as connected to his people and as a chieftain with a great destiny.
O’Connell was fluent in Irish and French and knew his people well and was once warned in London that his soup was poisoned by a serving girl speaking Irish to him.
'Knew the law backwards'
“O’Connell’s great skill was that he knew the law backwards,” Prof Geoghegan said.
He also understood the popular mood, and his strength was appealing to juries, rather than to legal detail, Prof Geoghegan added.
O’Connell understood economic structures and was seen as a good landlord, operating a soup kitchen and lowering rents during the Great Famine.
Prof Geoghegan said that O’Connell was a conservative, opposed to the mob violence he saw during the French Revolution, but he gradually became radicalised by the repressive state of Britain.
The Liberator both joined the United Irishmen and was influenced by the French Revolution, he added.
“He became very suspicious of those who try to ensnare people into rebellion, because he thought that they didn’t really care about the people. They only cared about their own ambitions, and it was the people who suffered.”
While O’Connell was campaigning for Catholic Emancipation, he wasn’t himself practising, having moved to a Deist view of the world, the event heard.
However, he cared about civil and political rights for all those around him.
Devout
“As time went on, he became increasingly devout and religious, but the O’Connell of the 1840s is a very different person from the O’Connell of the 1790s,” Prof Geoghegan said.
“To expect any individual, especially a courageous and intelligent person, to continue to steadfastly adhere to the same principles and practices over the course of a lifetime, is unfair,” said Keating.
Prof Christine Kinealy described O’Connell as a pragmatist who knew when to compromise. He had a great fan in Queen Victoria, who admired his sparkling blue eyes but also described him as devious.
O'Connell's speeches were distributed widely and were very influential in the Irish parliamentary movement, and his popularity reached as far as Germany, France, and Italy.
His methods of mobilising public opinion, such as through mass meetings, were admired and replicated in other countries.
The features of his highly successful and courageous work as a barrister were translated to the political environment, bringing forward conversations in the British parliament.
O’Connell was a sophisticated thinker in a complex arena, the event heard, and his steadfast support for the abolition oƒ slavery indicate his clarity of thinking and compassion, and remain a worthwhile legacy.