Editing Daniel O'Connell (section)

===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}}