Daniel Oconnell

By: Andrew Hove

11/2/2009

Daniel O’Connell

The fight for freedom of religion has been waged on many different platforms, by many different people, in many different countries, across the course of history. A man in Ireland named Daniel O’Connell fought to regain the rights of his fellow Roman Catholics. He spent his entire life trying to bring the Catholic church in Ireland back to the glory days before religious oppression. Called “arguably the most intensely disparaged and celebrated Irish political figure of the nineteenth century,” (Foster, 1989 pg 295-302) O’Connell gained the respect of the entire Roman Catholic community when he created the Catholic Association. O’Connell, however, may have achieved much more in his lifetime had he acted and taken out the union. (Foster, 1989 pg 295-302) O’Connell will be remembered in history as a man who could have achieved so much more.

Daniel O’Connell was born in 1775 to a Roman Catholic family. He was unable to attend school in Ireland because of the religious persecution of the Roman Catholics at the time, so he went to France for the majority of his youth. He returned to Ireland in 1798 upon completion of his degree and entered law school. He then became a member of the Dublin bar and became a prominent lawyer. (Bloy, 1997 pg.1). O’Connell spent the next 20 years or so working to reform the laws that persecuted and penalized members of the Roman Catholic church. O’Connell remained unknown to the most of the general population at this time.

A glimmer of hope for the Catholic church came in 1821 when King George IV came to Ireland to meet with the head of the church. (anonymous. 2009, pg 1) He was extremely drunk presumably because he was ashamed of what he was doing. Due to the growing public outcry for equality he had no choice but to meet with the Roman Catholics.

O’Connell became an instant sensation amongst the Roman Catholics of Ireland when he created the Catholic Association in 1823. The Catholic...