This inquiry analyzes the necessity for the Irish
Repeal Party's alliance with the Catholic Church, especially
during the two crucial years prior to the Great Famine, The
Repeal Party during this time sought to defend the predominantly
rural subsistence Irish society against British
policies of coercion and assimilation. The main organization
at the national and popular level to unify this Irish
resistance to British policies was the Irish Catholic Church.
Daniel O'Connell acted as the bridge between the
Parliamentary Irish Repeal party and the Catholic Church.
This was closely linked to his aims and methods which he
conceived in the immediate practical terms of Irish survival
against the threat of cultural and economic extinction. He
therefore rejected as unrealistic the more absolutist doctrine
of nationality of his Young Ireland critics and rivals
within his party. He recognized that their ultimate ideals
of physical resistance to the almost total military control
that Britain exercised over Ireland would be futile, and
possibly disastrous for the Irish people. He insisted,
instead, on "moral force" and Constitutional methods to
achieve peaceful co-existence with Ireland's more dominant
neighbour, Britain. His Catholic alliance was essential to
these pragmatic and constitutional ends. The introductory chapters set the historic framework
for this most important phase of the British-Irish conflict
from 1844 to 1846 which was centered around a struggle for
control of the Irish Catholic Church. Ireland's development
is traced from a position of almost complete domination and
control by Britain and a lack of organized resistance at the
Act of Union in 1800, to a political voice and organized
resistance at a national and popular level in 1844. In this
historical process, Daniel O’ Connelly Repeal Party, supported
by the Irish Catholic leaders, acted as a major catalyst.
Next, the trial of Daniel O'Connell in 1844 on charges
of sedition against the British government is examined as a
model in miniature of the British-Irish conflict that had
raged in the preceding years. It was the culmination of this
conflict, showing that the accused was also, in a political
sense, the accuser. O'Connell’s acquittal was a moral
refutation of British policies that supported the Protestant
government oligarchy practice of discrimination against
Catholic Ireland. Furthermore, it and the subsequent repercussions
in Britain, aggravated the growing dissension within
the ruling British Conservative party. From this point, the
policy of the British government towards the Irish Repeal
Party took a more devious turn, and never again directly
challenged O'Connell. Rather, it attempted to divide the
Irish nation, and especially its Catholic leaders, by
coercion and bribery. Also in 1844, the British government failed to persuade
the Papacy to compel the Irish Church leaders to abandon
Repeal. Instead, it only succeeded in strengthening the
bonds between Catholicism and the national movement of
O'Connell, which had become a "cause celebre" in the
Catholic context of Europe.
By 1845 the British policy towards the Irish Catholic
Church had shifted to belated recognition and half-hearted
conciliation. The increased Maynooth Grant of 1845 was a
prime example of an isolated and limited gesture. The
goodwill engendered by this was counteracted by the strength
of the anti-Catholic opposition to the Bill. In addition,
the immediate subsequent introduction of the Academical
Institutions (Ireland) Bill, without consulting the Irish
Church leaders, and with its implied threat to Irish culture
and Catholic influence, further reduced the favourable
impression that the British government had created among
the Irish Catholic leaders by the Maynooth Grant.
These British policies revealed the weakening of the
government's efforts at ideological assimilation, and the
strength of the Catholic base of Irish nationalism under
the leadership of Daniel O'Connell. The ensuing controversy
within the Repeal Party from 1845 between the more secular
physical force Young Ireland nationalists and O'Connell's
Catholic supporters served to intensify the latter's link with his moral, force and constitutional objectives. It was
not his failure of leadership in his last two years, as his
critics have supposed, that temporarily interrupted his
constitutional movement at his death. It was, rather, the
major tragedy of the Great Famine, compounded by British
administrative failure and the consequent abortive Young
Ireland rebellion in 1848, that left the constitutional
movement without a strong leader.
O'Connell's heritage and most permanent contribution
was to give the Irish Catholic Church a more unified and
active political role within the national movement, and
thus provide a base during those years from which the
Irish constitutional national movement in the late
nineteenth century could be launched. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/41870 |
| Date | January 1970 |
| Creators | Quigley, Kathleen Mary Molesworth |
| Publisher | University of British Columbia |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
Page generated in 0.0022 seconds