Daniel O'Connell

Daniel O'Connell (Irish: Dónall Ó Conaill; 6 August 1775 – 15 May 1847), hailed in his time as The Liberator, was the acknowledged political leader of Ireland's Roman Catholic majority in the first half of the 19th century. His mobilisation of Catholic Ireland, down to the poorest class of tenant farmers, secured the final installment of Catholic emancipation in 1829 and allowed him to take a seat in the United Kingdom Parliament to which he had been twice elected. At Westminster, O'Connell championed liberal and reform causes (being internationally renowned as an abolitionist) but he failed in his declared objective for Ireland – the repeal of the Act of Union 1800 and the restoration of an Irish Parliament. In 1843, the threat of British military force induced O'Connell to call a halt to an unprecedented campaign of open-air mass meetings. The loss of prestige, combined with the perceived indifference of the Whigs he had supported in government to the Great Famine, dispirited and divided his following. In his final year, criticism of his political compromises and of his system of patronage split the national movement that he had singularly led. Irish nationalists continued to dispute O'Connell's legacy — honoured in 1922 in the renaming of Dublin's principal thoroughfare. Biographers have suggested that his combination of confessional politics and liberal principle, which had early imitators in Germany, was a forerunner of European Christian democracy.