Editing Daniel O'Connell (section)

==Death, legacy and commemoration==
Following his last appearance in parliament, and describing himself "oppressed with grief", his "physical power departed", O'Connell travelled on a pilgrimage to Rome. He died, age 71, in May 1847 in [[Genoa, Italy]] of a softening of the brain ([[cerebral softening|Encephalomalacia]]). In accord with his last wishes, O'Connell's heart was buried in Rome (at [[Sant'Agata dei Goti]], then the chapel of the Irish College), and the remainder of his body in [[Glasnevin Cemetery]] in Dublin. His sons are buried in his [[crypt]].<ref name=":15" />{{rp|334–338}}

===Lack of a successor===
In leading the charge against the Young Irelanders within the Repeal Association, John O'Connell had vied for the succession. But Gavan Duffy records that the Liberator's death left no one with "acknowledged weight of character, or solidity of judgement" to lead the diminished movement out beyond the Famine. Such, he suggests, was the "inevitable penalty of the statesman or leader who prefers courtiers and lackeys to counsellors and peers".<ref>Brendan Clifford (1997) ''Spotlights on Irish History'', Aubane Historical Society, Millstreet Cork, {{ISBN|0952108151}}, p. 97</ref>

John O'Connell opposed Duffy's [[Tenant Right League]], and eventually accepted, in 1853, a [[sinecure]] position as "[[Clerk of the Crown and Hanaper]]" at [[Dublin Castle]].<ref name="Eir">[http://www.ricorso.net/rx/az-data/index.htm John O'Connell] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180725083231/http://www.ricorso.net/rx/az-data/index.htm |date=25 July 2018 }} at Ricorso</ref>

===Reputation as a landlord===
An article appearing in ''[[The Times]]'' on Christmas Day, 1845, created an international scandal by accusing O'Connell of being one of the worst landlords in Ireland. His tenants were pictured as "living in abject poverty and neglect". The Irish press, however, was quick to observe that this was a description of famine conditions and to dismiss the report as a politically motivated attack.<ref name="Galway Advertiser">{{Cite web |url=http://www.advertiser.ie/galway/article/76842/daniel-oconnell-a-man-not-without-flaws |title=Daniel O'Connell – A man not without flaws |work=[[Galway Advertiser]] |access-date=8 December 2019 |date=2 April 2015 |archive-date=8 December 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191208204634/https://www.advertiser.ie/galway/article/76842/daniel-oconnell-a-man-not-without-flaws |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=Literature and the Irish famine, 1845–1919|last=Fegan, Melissa.|date=2002|publisher=Clarendon Press|isbn=1-4237-6751-9|location=Oxford|oclc=67614412}}</ref>

To manage his property O'Connell employed a kinsman, John Primrose, who had a reputation as a strict agent.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Ó Tuathaigh |first=Gearóid |date=2009 |title=O'Connell, Daniel {{!}} Dictionary of Irish Biography |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/oconnell-daniel-a6555 |access-date=2023-04-25 |website=www.dib.ie |language=en}}</ref> But when cholera struck the Kerry coast in 1832, he instructed Primrose to "be prodigal of relief out of my means--beef, bread, mutton, medicines, physician, everything you can think of". When the Great Famine hit in 1845, he wished his son Maurice "to be as abundant to the people as you can", and was so intent on securing relief that he sought to buy the government food depot in [[Cahersiveen]], an offer refused from [[HM Treasury|the Treasury]] by  [[Sir Charles Trevelyan, 1st Baronet|Trevelyan]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Neville |first=Grace |title=Irish Food History: A Companion |publisher=Royal Irish Society |year=2024 |isbn=9781802050189 |editor-last=Mac Con Iomaire |editor-first=Máirtín |location=Dublin |publication-date=2024 |pages=(354–371) 368–369 |chapter=Food, Feast and Famine in the Correspondence of Daniel O'Connell |editor-last2=Cashman |editor-first2=Dorothy}}</ref>

===Eulogies and interpretation===
[[File:OConnellMonument.JPG|thumb|[[O'Connell Monument, Dublin|O'Connell Monument]] on [[O'Connell Street]] in Dublin]]
Calling O'Connell an "incarnation of a people", [[Honoré de Balzac]] noted that for twenty years his name had filled the press of Europe as no man since Napoleon. Gladstone, an eventual convert to Irish Home Rule, described him as "the greatest popular leader the world has ever seen".<ref name=":9" />{{rp|11–12}}

O'Connell had his imitators. In the [[German Confederation|German states]] (where he counted [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe|Goethe]] and [[Ludwig I of Bavaria|Ludwig I]] of [[Kingdom of Bavaria|Bavaria]] among his admirers), O'Connell became a "folk hero" among Catholics (his portrait hanging in many homes and taverns), particularly in the [[Rhine Province|Rhineland]] where the Catholic majority grated upon their union with [[Lutheranism|Lutheran]] [[Prussia]]. Beginning in 1848, his Catholic Association served as a model for the mass-membership ''Katholischer Verein Deutschland''.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Grogan |first=Geraldine |date=1991 |title=Daniel O'Connell and European Catholic Thought |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30091513 |journal=Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review |volume=80 |issue=317 |pages=56–64 |issn=0039-3495}}</ref>

In France, [[Flora Tristan]], mocked as "O'Connell in petticoats", imitated the Liberator's rhetorical flourishes and his policy of nominal subscriptions in support of a very different emancipatory project, her Chartist-inspired vision of a single "Workers' Union".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Collins |first=Marie M. |last2=Weil-Sayre |first2=Sylvie |date=1973 |title=Flora Tristan: Forgotten Feminist and Socialist |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23535978 |journal=Nineteenth-Century French Studies |volume=1 |issue=4 |pages=(229–234) 232 |issn=0146-7891}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Cross |first=Máire |url= |title=In the Footsteps of Flora Tristan: A Political Biography |date=2020 |publisher=Liverpool University Press |isbn=978-1-802078824 |location=Liverpool |pages=3 |language=en}}</ref>

[[Frederick Douglass]] said of O'Connell that his voice was "enough to calm the most violent passion, even though it were already manifesting itself in a mob. There is a sweet persuasiveness in it, beyond any voice I ever heard. His power over an audience is perfect".<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/frederick-douglass-and-ireland-in-his-own-words-a-compelling-account-of-a-historic-moment-1.3632025|title='Frederick Douglass and Ireland: In His Own Words': A compelling account of a historic moment|newspaper=[[The Irish Times]]|access-date=4 July 2020|archive-date=28 February 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200228202627/https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/frederick-douglass-and-ireland-in-his-own-words-a-compelling-account-of-a-historic-moment-1.3632025?mode=amp|url-status=live}}</ref>

O'Connell's [[Eloquence|oratory]] is a quality to which [[James Joyce]] (a distant relative) plays tribute in [[Ulysses (novel)|''Ulysses'']]: "a people", he wrote, "sheltered within his voice."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Joyce |first1=James |title=Ulysses |date=1921 |location=Paris |pages=121}}</ref> Other Irish literary figures of the independence generation were critical. For W.B Yeats found O'Connell "too compromised and compromising" and his rhetoric "bragging".<ref name=":15" />{{rp|327–328}} [[Seán Ó Faoláin]] sympathised with the Young Irelanders but allowed that if the nation O'Connell helped call forth and "define" was Catholic and without the Protestant north it was because O'Connell was "the greatest of all Irish realists".{{sfn|Ó Faoláin|1938}}

In 1922, following the creation of the [[Irish Free State]], O'Connell was honoured in the renaming of [[Sackville Street (Dublin)|Sackville Street]], Dublin's broadest thoroughfare. Yet the [[Chairman of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State|chairman of the new government]] (until his assassination later in the year), [[Michael Collins (Irish leader)|Michael Collins]], was damning in his assessment. O'Connell had been "a follower and not a leader of the people". Urged on by "the zeal of the people, stirred for the moment to national consciousness by the teaching of [[Thomas Davis (Young Irelander)|Davis]], he talked of national liberty, but he did nothing to win it". O'Connell's aim had never risen above establishing the Irish people as "a free Catholic community".<ref>{{Cite book|last=Collins|first=Michael|title=The Path to Freedom: Articles and Speeches by Michael Collins|publisher=Mercier Press|year=1985|isbn=1856351262|location=Dublin|page=120}}</ref> Those who declared their continued fealty to the [[Proclamation of the Irish Republic|Republic that had been proclaimed in 1916]] on what was now [[O'Connell Street]], dismissed his legacy in similar terms.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Donncha |first=Mícheál Mac |date=29 August 2019 |title=Daniel O’Connell was not a ‘liberator’ of the people |url=https://www.anphoblacht.com/contents/27657 |access-date=2025-01-18 |website=www.anphoblacht.com |language=en}}</ref>

The predominant interpretation of O'Connell in the last generation may be that of a liberal Catholic, as portrayed in Oliver MacDonagh's 1988 biography.<ref>{{cite book |last1=MacDonagh |first1=Oliver |title=O'Connell: The Life of Daniel O'Connell |date=1991 |publisher=Weidenfeld and Nicolson |location=london |isbn=9780297820178}}</ref><ref name="Bew and Maune" /> This builds on the view of the historian Michael Tierney who proposes O'Connell as a "forerunner" of a European [[Christian Democracy]].<ref>Michael Tierney, "Daniel O'Connell", ''Collier Encyclopedia'' (1996)</ref> His more recent biographer Patrick Geoghegan seeks to return O'Connell to the national story. Echoing a reassessment that was offered by [[Éamon de Valera|Eamon De Valera]],<ref>{{Cite web |last=Ireland |first=Office of the President of |date=1997 |title=Address by President Mary Robinson Tribute to Daniel O'Connell the Reform Club London 15th May. |url=https://www.president.ie/en/media-library/speeches/address-by-president-mary-robinson-tribute-to-daniel-oconnell-the-reform-cl |access-date=2025-01-20 |website=president.ie |language=en}}</ref> he has O'Connell forging "a new Irish nation in the fires of his own idealism, intolerance and determination" and becoming for a people "broken, humiliated and defeated" its "chieftain".<ref name=":15" />{{rp|346}}

===Memorials===
[[File:Daniel O'Connell 1929 issue set3.jpg|thumb|Set of O'Connell commemorative postage stamps, 1929|left]]
In 1855, O'Connell's plot at [[Glasnevin Cemetery]] was marked with a 55m-high  [[Irish round tower|Irish Round Tower]]. Shut in 1971 when damaged by a [[Ulster loyalism|loyalist]] bomb (retaliation for the [[Irish Republican Army (1922–1969)|IRA]]'s destruction of [[Nelson's Pillar]] in [[O'Connell Street]]), the tower was re-opened in 2018.<ref>{{Cite news |date=2018-04-14 |title=O’Connell Tower reopens in Dublin after 47 years |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-43753317 |access-date=2025-01-09 |work=BBC News |language=en-GB}}</ref>

[[O'Connell Monument|His statue]] (the work of [[John Henry Foley]]) was erected in 1882 at the bottom of Sackville Street, renamed O'Connell Street in 1922. O'Connell Streets also exist in [[Athlone]], [[Clonmel]], [[Dungarvan]], [[Ennis]], [[Kilkee]], [[Limerick]], [[Sligo]], and [[Waterford]]. A Daniel O'Connell Bridge, opened in 1880, spans the [[Manuherikia River]] at [[Ophir, New Zealand|Ophir]] in [[New Zealand]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.engineeringnz.org/programmes/heritage/heritage-records/daniel-oconnell-bridge/|title=Daniel O'Connell Bridge|publisher=Engineering New Zealand|access-date=30 December 2020|archive-date=24 January 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124145820/https://www.engineeringnz.org/programmes/heritage/heritage-records/daniel-oconnell-bridge/|url-status=live}}</ref>

A set of Irish postage stamps depicting O'Connell were issued in 1929 to commemorate the centenary of [[Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829|Catholic emancipation]].<ref>[https://irishamerica.com/2020/03/youve-got-mail-irish-history-from-stamps/ You've Got Mail: Irish History From Stamps] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210302162547/https://irishamerica.com/2020/03/youve-got-mail-irish-history-from-stamps/ |date=2 March 2021 }} Irish America, March/April 2020.</ref>

There is a statue of O'Connell outside [[St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne|St Patrick's Cathedral]] in Melbourne, Australia.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Catholic Church and Community in Australia|author=O'Farrell, Patrick|publisher=Thomas Nelson (Australia), West Melbourne|year=1977}}</ref> [[Derrynane House]], O'Connell's home in Kerry, has been converted into a museum honouring the Liberator.<ref name="dh">{{cite web|url=http://www.heritageireland.ie/en/South-West/DerrynaneHouse/|title=Derrynane House|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090312063843/http://www.heritageireland.ie/en/South-West/DerrynaneHouse/|archive-date=12 March 2009|access-date=23 January 2009}}</ref>

=== Film ===
[[File:Official Movie Poster for The Liberator.jpg|thumb|Official Movie Poster for The Liberator]]
O'Connell's life was the subject of a 2022 feature film produced by Red Abbey Productions titled ''The Liberator''.<ref>{{Citation |last=McCann |first=William |title=The Liberator |url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15939728/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_8 |type=Biography, Drama, History |access-date=2023-06-12 |others=William McCann, Peg Scanlon Murphy, Molly Smillie |publisher=Red Abbey Productions}}</ref>