Editing Daniel O'Connell (section)

==Emancipation and the agrarian crisis==
===The "Liberator"===
[[File:Catholic Emancipation.jpg|275px|thumb|left|Catholic Emancipation as a world upside down: held aloft, Daniel O'Connell promises Whigs – symbol of Ascendancy rank and property – for "ye all." ([[Isaac Cruikshank]] 1789–1856)]]
To broaden and intensify the campaign for [[emancipation]], in 1823, O'Connell established the [[Catholic Association]]. For a "Catholic rent" of a penny a month (typically paid through the local priest), this, for the first time, drew the labouring poor into a national movement. Their investment enabled O'Connell (derided by his enemies as the "King of Beggars") to mount "monster" rallies (crowds of over 100,000) that stayed in the hands of authorities and emboldened larger enfranchised tenants to vote for pro-Emancipation candidates in defiance of their landlords.<ref name="Geohegan 2020" />{{rp|168}}

The government moved to suppress the Association by a series of prosecutions but with limited success. Already in 1822 O'Connell had manoeuvred his principal foe, the [[Attorney General for Ireland|Attorney General]], [[William Saurin]], into actions sufficiently intemperate to ensure his removal by the [[Lord Lieutenant of Ireland|Lord Lieutenant.]]<ref name="Geohegan 2020" />{{rp|191, 225}} His confrontation with [[Dublin Corporation]], equally unbending in its defence of the "Protestant Constitution", took a more tragic turn.

Outraged at O'Connell's refusal to retract his description of the corporation as "beggarly",<ref>{{cite book|last=Millingen|first=John Gideon|title=The history of dueling: including, narratives of the most remarkable personal encounters that have taken place from the earliest period to the present time, Volume 2|year=1841|publisher=R. Bentley|pages=215|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VSH6ZhIuBucC&q=%E2%80%98beggarly+Corporation%E2%80%99+of+Dublin&pg=PA215|access-date=9 October 2020|archive-date=22 September 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210922231608/https://books.google.com/books?id=VSH6ZhIuBucC&q=%E2%80%98beggarly+Corporation%E2%80%99+of+Dublin&pg=PA215|url-status=live}}</ref> one of their number challenged O'Connell to a [[duel]]. John D'Esterre had thought O'Connell might back down, for he had earlier refused a challenge from an opposing lawyer. The former royal marine was in any case confident of his aim. Recognising that his reputation would never be safe if he again demurred, O'Connell accepted.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Patrick|first=Geoghegan|date=2013|title='When the blood was bubbling in my veins'|url=https://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/when-the-blood-was-bubbling-in-my-veins/|access-date=2021-12-24|website=History Ireland}}</ref> The duel took place on 2 February 1815 at [[Bishopscourt, County Kildare]]. Both men fired. O'Connell, unharmed, mortally wounded D'Esterre. Distressed by the killing, O'Connell offered D'Esterre's widow a pension. She consented to an allowance for her daughter and this O'Connell paid regularly for more than thirty years until his death.{{sfn|Gwynn|1929|pp=138–145}}

Some months later, O'Connell was engaged to fight a second duel with the [[Chief Secretary for Ireland]], [[Robert Peel]], O'Connell's repeated references to him as "Orange Peel" ("a man good for nothing except to be a champion for [[Orange Order|Orangeism]]") being the occasion. Only O'Connell's arrest in London ''en route'' to their rendezvous in [[Ostend]] prevented the encounter, and the affair went no further.<ref name=":7">Sagnier et Bray (1847), ''Biography of Daniel O'Connell'' (Paris: Rue des Saints-Pères). English Translation by Cathy Winch, Part 3. ''Church and State: An Irish History Magazine'', No. 130, 2011, p. 32</ref> But in 1816, following his return to faithful Catholic observance, O'Connell made "a vow in heaven" never again to put himself in a position where he might shed blood.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Geoghegan |first1=Patrick |title=Daniel's deadly duels |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/daniel-s-deadly-duels-1.723083 |access-date=25 October 2020 |newspaper=The Irish Times |date=14 March 2009 |archive-date=2 December 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201202234443/https://www.irishtimes.com/news/daniel-s-deadly-duels-1.723083 |url-status=live }}</ref> In "expiation for the death D'Esterre", he is said thereafter to have accepted the insults of men whom he refused to fight "with pride".<ref name=":7" /> ([[Thomas Moore]] privately proposed that "removing, by his example, that restraint which the responsibility of one to another under the law of duelling imposed", was "one of the worst things, perhaps, O'Connell had done for Ireland", and had given his penchant for personal abuse free rein).<ref name="Moore, Political and Historical Writings" />

In July 1828, O'Connell defeated a member of the British cabinet in a parliamentary [[1828 Clare by-election|by-election]] in [[Clare (UK Parliament constituency)|County Clare]]. His triumph forced the issue of the [[Oath of Supremacy]]{{snd}}the requirement that MPs acknowledge the King as "Supreme Governor" of the Church and thus forswear the Roman communion. Peel and the Prime Minister, the [[Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington|Duke of Wellington]], recognised in O'Connell "a vast demonstration of populist political organisation, and clerical power" more challenging than a separatist conspiracy.<ref name=":12" />{{rp|301}} Wellington proposed a new [[Oath of Allegiance (United Kingdom)|Oath of Allegiance]] unexceptional to Catholics, and forced the issue by threatening to resign.<ref name=":022">{{Cite book |last=Holmes |first=Richard |title=Wellington: The Iron Duke |publisher=[[HarperCollins]] |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-00-713750-3 |location=London |pages=274–277}}</ref> The [[Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829|Catholic Relief Act]] became law in April 1829.<ref>{{cite web
 |url=http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/religion/cespeech.htm
 |title=The Peel Web-Wellington's speeches on Catholic Emancipation
 |last=Bloy
 |first=Marjorie
 |work=A Web of English History
 |year=2011
 |access-date=6 April 2011
 |archive-date=17 December 2010
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101217040247/http://historyhome.co.uk/peel/religion/cespeech.htm
 |url-status=live
 }}</ref> It was not made retroactive so O'Connell had to stand again for election. He was returned unopposed in July 1829.<ref name="Hist Parl">''[[The History of Parliament]] 1820–1832'' vol. VI, pp. 535–536.</ref>

Such was O'Connell's prestige as "the Liberator" that [[George IV]] reportedly complained that while "Wellington is the King of England", O'Connell was "King of Ireland", and he, himself, merely "the [[Dean (Christianity)|dean]] of [[Windsor Castle|Windsor]]". Some of O'Connell's younger lieutenants in the new struggle for Repeal{{snd}}the [[Young Ireland]]ers{{snd}}were critical of the leader's acclaim. [[Michael Doheny]] noted that the 1829 act had only been the latest in a succession of [[Roman Catholic relief bills|"relief" measures]] dating back to the [[Papists Act 1778]]. Honour was due rather to those who had "wrung from the reluctant spirit of a far darker time the right of living, of worship, of enjoying property, and exercising the franchise".<ref name="doheny">Michael Doheny's ''The Felon's Track'', M. H. Gill & Son, Ltd., 1951, pp. 2–4</ref>

===Tenant Disenfranchisement and the Tithe War===
Entry to parliament had not come without a price. With [[Jeremy Bentham]], O'Connell had considered allowing [[George Ensor]], a Protestant member of the Catholic Association, to stand as his running mate in the Clare election.<ref>Crimmins, James E.(1997), "Jeremy Bentham and Daniel O'Connell: their correspondence and radical alliance 1828–1831", ''Historical Journal'', xl (1997), pp. (359–387) 373.</ref> But Ensor had objected to what he identified as the "disenfranchisement project" in the relief bill.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Ritchey |first=Rosemary |date=2009 |title=Ensor, George |website=Dictionary of Irish Biography |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/ensor-george-a2931 |access-date=2023-02-17 |language=en}}</ref> Receiving its royal assent on the same day, the [[Parliamentary Elections (Ireland) Act 1829]], brought the Irish franchise into line with England's by raising the property threshold in county seats five-fold to ten pounds. This eliminated the middling tenantry (the Irish "[[forty-shilling freeholders]]") who had risked much in defying their landlords on O'Connell's behalf in the Clare election, and reduced the overall electorate in the country from 216,000 voters to just 37,000.<ref name=":11" />{{rp|301–302}}<ref>{{cite web |last1=Johnston |first1=Neil |date=1 March 2013 |title=The History of the Parliamentary Franchise (Research Paper 13–14) |url=https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/RP13-14/RP13-14.pdf#page=20 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211103090220/https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/RP13-14/RP13-14.pdf#page=20 |archive-date=3 November 2021 |access-date=21 June 2023}}</ref>

Rationalising the sacrifice of his freeholders, O'Connell wrote privately in March 1829 that the new ten-pound franchise might actually "give more power to Catholics by concentrating it in more reliable and less democratically dangerous hands".<ref name="Hoppen">{{cite book |last1=Hoppen |first1=K. Theodore |title=Ireland since 1800: conflict and conformity |date=1999 |publisher=Longman |isbn=9780582322547 |edition=Second |location=London |pages=22, 24}}</ref> The Young Irelander [[John Mitchel]] believed that this was the intent: to detach propertied Catholics from the increasingly agitated rural masses.<ref name="mitchell">[[John Mitchel]], ''Jail Journal, or five years in British Prisons'', M. H. Gill & Son, Ltd., 1914, pp. xxxiv–xxxvi</ref> Once in Parliament, however, O'Connell did speak in favour of parliamentary reform, invoking "the great  principle of democratic liberty" in support of a broader franchise.<ref name=":4" />{{rp|135}}

In a pattern that had been intensifying from the 1820s as landlords cleared land to meet the growing livestock demand from England,<ref>{{cite journal|last=Murray|first=A.C.|s2cid=157628746|year=1986|title=Agrarian Violence and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Ireland: the Myth of Ribbonism|journal=Irish Economic and Social History|volume=13|pages=56–73|jstor=24337381 |doi=10.1177/033248938601300103}}</ref> tenants had been banding together to oppose evictions, and to attack tithe and process servers. De Tocqueville recorded these [[Whiteboys]] and [[Ribbonism|Ribbonmen]] protesting:<blockquote>The law does nothing for us. We must save ourselves. We have a little land which we need for ourselves and our families to live on, and they drive us out of it. To whom should we address ourselves?... Emancipation has done nothing for us. Mr. O'Connell and the rich Catholics go to Parliament. We die of starvation just the same.<ref name=":6" />{{rp|123}} </blockquote>

In 1830, discounting evidence that "unfeeling men had given in favour of cultivating sheep and cattle instead of human beings", O'Connell sought repeal of the Sub-Letting Act which facilitated the clearings.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|last=O'Ferrall|first=Fergus|title=Gill's Irish Lives: Daniel O'Connell|publisher=Gill and Macmillan|year=1981|isbn=0717110419|location=Dublin|pages=94–96}}</ref> In a ''Letter to the People of Ireland'' (1833)<ref>{{Cite web|title=The Catholic Standard and Times 20 June 1833 – Catholic Research Resources Alliance|url=https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/?a=d&d=cst18330620-01.2.13&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN--------|access-date=2021-12-29|website=thecatholicnewsarchive.org}}</ref> he also proposed a 20 per cent tax on [[absentee landlord]]s for poor relief, and the abolition of [[tithe]]s<ref name=":5" />{{rp|79}} levied atop rents by the [[Church of Ireland|Anglican establishment]]{{snd}}"the landlords' Church".

An initially peaceful campaign of non-payment of tithes turned violent in 1831 when the newly founded [[Royal Irish Constabulary|Irish Constabulary]] in lieu of payment began to seize property and conduct evictions. Although opposed not only to the use of force but to agrarian combinations in general,<ref name=":16" />{{rp|131}} O'Connell defended those detained in the so-called [[Tithe War]]. For all eleven accused in the death of fourteen constables in the [[Carrickshock incident]], O'Connell helped secure acquittals. Yet fearful of embarrassing his Whig allies (who had brutally suppressed [[Swing Riots|tithe and poor law protests]] in England), in 1838 he rejected the call of the Protestant tenant-righter [[William Sharman Crawford]] for the complete elimination of the [[Church of Ireland]] levy. In its stead, O'Connell accepted the {{anchor|Tithe Commutation Act}}Tithe Commutation Act.<ref>{{cite book|editor1=Moody, T. W. |editor2=Martin, F. X. |year=1967|title=The Course of Irish History|publisher=Mercier Press|location=Cork|page=375}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Kee |first=Robert |title=The Most Distressful Country |publisher=Quartet Books |year=1976 |isbn=070433089X |location=London |pages=191}}</ref> This exempted the majority of cultivators{{snd}}those who held land at will or from year to year{{snd}}from the charge, while offering those still liable a 25 percent reduction and a forgiveness of arrears.<ref>{{cite web |title=Irish Tithe Act Of 1838 |url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/irish-tithe-act-1838 |website=encyclopedia.com |access-date=15 September 2020 |archive-date=22 September 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210922231609/https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/irish-tithe-act-1838 |url-status=live }}</ref> It did not, as feared, lead to a general compensating increase in rents.{{sfn|Lecky|1912|p=169}}