Editing Daniel O'Connell (section)

==="Testing" the Union===
O'Connell did prepare the ground for the [[Home Rule]] compromise, eventually negotiated between [[Irish Parliamentary Party|Irish-nationalists]] and [[Liberal Party (UK)|British Liberals]] from the 1880s to 1914. He declared that while he would "never ask for or work" for anything less than an independent legislature, he would accept a "subordinate parliament" as "an instalment".<ref name=":11">Quoted in {{cite book |last1=MacDonagh |first1=Oliver |title=Ireland: The Union and its Aftermath|date=1977 |location=London |isbn=978-1-900621-81-6|pages=58}}</ref> But for the predecessors to [[William Ewart Gladstone|Gladstone's]] Liberals, [[William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne|Lord Melbourne's]] [[Whigs (British political party)|Whigs]], with whom O'Connell sought accommodation in the 1830s, even an Irish legislature devolved ''within'' the United Kingdom was a step too far.

Having assisted Melbourne, through an informal understanding (the [[Lichfield House Compact]]), to a government majority, in 1835 O'Connell suggested he might be willing to give up the project of an Irish parliament altogether. He declared his willingness to "test" the Union: <blockquote>The people of Ireland are ready to become a portion of the empire, provided they be made so in reality and not in name alone; they are ready to become a kind of West Britons if made so in benefits and in justice, but if not, we are Irishmen again.</blockquote> Underscoring the qualifying clause{{snd}}"if not we are Irishmen again"{{snd}}historian J.C. Beckett proposes that the change was less than it may have appeared. Under the pressure of a choice between "effectual union or no union", O'Connell was seeking to maximise the scope of shorter-term, interim, reforms.<ref name="Foster">{{cite book |last1=Beckett |first1=J.C. |title=The Making of Modern Ireland 1603–1923 |date=1966 |publisher=Faber and Faber |isbn=0571092675 |location=London |pages=}}</ref>

O'Connell failed to stall the application to Ireland of the new [[Poor Law Amendment Act 1834|English Poor Law system]] of [[Workhouse]]s in 1837, the prospect of which, as de Tocqueville found, was broadly dreaded in Ireland.<ref name=":6" />{{rp|119–124}}As an alternative to [[outdoor relief]], the Workhouses made it easier for landlords to clear their estates in favour of larger English-export-oriented farms.<ref name="Foster" /> O'Connell's objection was that the poor-law charge would ruin a great proportion of landowners, further reducing the wage fund and increasing the poverty of the country. That poverty was due not to exorbitant rents (which O'Connell compared to those in England without reference to Irish practice of sub-letting), but to laws{{snd}}the [[Penal Laws against Irish Catholics|Penal Laws]] of the previous century{{snd}}that had prohibited the Catholic majority from acquiring education and property. The responsibility for its relief was therefore the government's.<ref>Lecky, W. E. H. (1912). ''Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland Vol II, Daniel O'Connell.'' Longman, Green & Co. pp. 175–177.</ref> To defray the cost O'Connell urged, in vain, a tax on [[Absentee landlord|''absentee'' rents]].<ref>Daniel O'Connell, speech from April 28, 1837, quoted in M. F. Cusack (2010),''The Speeches and Public Letters of the Liberator'', vol. 1, BibloBazaar, {{ISBN|978-1140123552}}</ref>

But as regards the general conduct of the [[Dublin Castle administration]] under the [[Whigs (British political party)|Whigs]], Beckett concludes that "O'Connell had reason to be satisfied, and "the more so as his influence carried great weight in the making of appointments". Reforms opened the police and judiciary to greater Catholic recruitment, and measures were taken to reduce the provocations and influence of the pro-Ascendancy [[Orange Order]].<ref name="Foster" />

In 1840 [[Municipal Corporations (Ireland) Act 1840|municipal government was reconstructed]] on the basis of a rate-payer franchise. In 1841, O'Connell became the first Roman Catholic [[Lord Mayor of Dublin]] since [[Terence MacDermott]] in the reign of [[James II of England|James II]]. In breaking the Protestant monopoly of corporate rights, he was confident that town councils would become a "school for teaching the science of peaceful political agitation".<ref name=":1" /> But the measure was less liberal than municipal reform in England, and left the majority of the population to continue under the landlord-controlled Grand Jury system of county government. In view of [[Thomas Francis Meagher]], in return for damping down Repeal agitation, a "corrupt gang of politicians who fawned on O'Connell" were being allowed an extensive system of political patronage.<ref>Griffith, Arthur (1916). ''Meagher of the Sword: Speeches of Thomas Francis Meagher in Ireland 1846–1848''. Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son, Ltd. p. vii</ref> The Irish people were being "purchased back into factious vassalage."<ref>O'Sullivan, T. F. (1945). ''Young Ireland''. The Kerryman Ltd. p. 195</ref>