This page was created by Lindsey Atchison. The last update was by Audrey Gunn.
Daniel O'Connell
“[A barquentine] had… carried the remains of Daniel O’Connell, M.P. – ‘the Liberator’ to Ireland’s Catholic poor – from his death-place at Genoa in August of that year, to be laid to rest in his motherland. Seeing the ship was like seeing the man; so it appeared from the passengers’ tearful praying.”
-Star of the Sea XVII
Daniel O'Connell was born to Roman Catholic parents in County Kerry, Ireland, in 1875. O’Connell was adopted and raised by a childless uncle, who supported O’Connell’s secondary education at two English colleges, which O’Connell had to flee after revolutionaries forced their closure. O’Connell was eventually able to finish his education at Lincoln’s Inn, in London, after which he took a position as a lawyer in Ireland in 1798, marrying his cousin Mary O’Connell a few years later.
O’Connell was “innately conservative in politics,” and wrote in opposition to the 1798 and 1803 Irish rebellions that “no political change whatsoever is worth the shedding of a single drop of human blood” (Wallace 78). Despite this conservatism, O’Connell vehemently opposed the 1800 Act of Union, speaking against it in his first public speech. He also championed the rights of Catholics, founding the Catholic Association in 1823 (Wallace 78).
The Catholic Association worked to elect members of Parliament that would support Irish self-rule; in order to protect the “forty shilling freeholders” (those eligible to vote) who were sympathetic to their cause, O’Connell founded the Order of Liberators in 1826, earning himself the title “The Liberator.” O’Connell’s work paid off in 1829, when the English government passed a bill permitting Catholics to become members of Parliament, and O’Connell himself was elected an MP (Wallace 79).
In his new position, O’Connell continued to work for the rights of the Irish. He “negotiated the informal ‘Lichfield House compact’ with the Whigs” in 1835, which led to “four years of enlightened administration, attributed to the Dublin Castle under-secretary, Thomas Drummond” (Wallace 79). O’Connell began a series of “monster rallies” in 1843, (so called due to the massive audiences, which were estimated to exceed three-quarters of a million people), in which he spoke out against the English government (Wallace 79).
The final monster rally was banned by the government; O’Connell canceled it in an effort to maintain peace. Despite this, he “soon faced charges of creating discontent and disaffection among the Queen’s subjects,” of which he was quickly convicted (Wallace 79). Although the charges against O’Connell were later dropped by the House of Lords, his health suffered greatly during the three months he was in jail, and his movement was falling apart in favor of the Young Ireland revolutionaries. O’Connell began a trip to Rome in 1847, hoping to improve his health, but died in Genoa, Italy on May 15 (Wallace 79).
Within Star of the Sea, Daniel O’Connell serves as a powerful reminder of the many Irish working to liberate their country through political means. The reaction of the Star of the Sea passengers demonstrates his importance to the people of Ireland, and their “tearful praying” (XVII) for O’Connell is also demonstrative of the passengers’ commitment to their religion, even in the face of severe oppression.
Works Cited
O’Connor, Joseph. Star of the Sea. Orlando: Harcourt, 2002. Print.
Wallace, Martin. 100 Irish Lives. Totowa: Barnes & Noble Books, 1983. Print.
Researcher/Writer: Audrey Gunn
Technical Designers: Lindsey Atchison and Sarah Liebig
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