The Times, O’Connell and Repeal — 1843
British discourse concerning the Irish Famine developed within a complex series of political contexts that helped frame and shape opinions and policy regarding Ireland. In his The Politics of Repeal Kevin B. Nowlan noted that any attempt to understand the Irish Famine runs into the problem that ‘too many of the factors involved stretch back into the years before 1845’ (1965, 1). Developments following the initial appearance of the potato blight in 1845, therefore, cannot be considered in isolation from a variety of pre-existing issues. Some of these, such as tenants’ rights and the tithe rent, were largely Irish issues. Broader debates about free trade, poor-law reform, and municipal and ballot reform stirred interest on both sides of the Irish Sea. Looming over all other problems in Anglo-Irish politics, however, was the controversy over the repeal of the Act of Union, a challenge to the very structure of the Empire. All of these issues had some bearing on how the British press and its readers would later react to the Famine in Ireland.
Obviously, we cannot investigate all of these political strands, some of which have a long history. We must, however, acknowledge one of the peculiarities of Anglo-Irish politics during the two decades preceding the Famine. To an extraordinary extent, one man emerged in the eyes of both the Irish and the British as the leader of Catholic and nationalist opinion in Ireland. Daniel O’Connell’s position as a unique Irish figure made him the focal point for those journals opposed to his policies and suspicious of the people who supported him. Although O’Connell was not generally well regarded by the British press, the enmity between him and The Times of London was particularly rancorous. This chapter will introduce the manner in which The Times, London’s premier daily newspaper, dealt with O’Connell and Ireland, focusing particularly on the first half of 1843. First, however, it is necessary to briefly review O’Connell’s rise to prominence.
In 1800, on the heels of the suppression of the United Irishmen’s Rising of 1798, the independent Irish parliament, under strong pressure from Westminster, dissolved itself, and, under the Act of Union, Ireland was politically united with England, Scotland, and Wales. With power centered in the Imperial Parliament in Westminster, Ireland’s identity as a separate cultural and political entity was to be submerged within the new United Kingdom. This action was propelled in part by the ongoing conflicts with France and the fear that the French would use Ireland as a back door for an invasion of Britain.1
Within Ireland the Protestant Ascendancy retained economic and political control. In its 1847 obituary of Daniel O’Connell The Times satirically, but somewhat smugly, looked back at the triumph of what it called, ‘a grand No Popery agitation.’ After 1800 a series of ultra-loyalist and anti-Catholic Protestant viceroys were appointed to administer Ireland. In response, however, Catholics began to use the courts to challenge Protestant domination. ‘The Orange order, of course, became alarmed,’ The Times recalled. ‘Obsolete statutes were called into activity and fresh powers were obtained from the Legislature’ (24 May 1847).
The foremost barrister among those challenging the Ascendancy was Daniel O’Connell. Born to Catholic parents in 1775, he was educated in France where he witnessed the start of the French Revolution. He studied law in London from 1794-96 and was called to the Irish bar in 1798. O’Connell defended numerous Catholics against the reinforced Penal Laws.
As early as 1815, O’Connell’s powerful, articulate leadership seemed dangerous to Dublin’s Protestant establishment. According to The Times, the Dublin city council, a body ‘so corrupt, so feeble, and so thoroughly Orange in its politics,’ decided to have O’Connell legally assassinated in a duel with a Captain James D’Esterre. As The Times writer commented, ‘This manner of dealing with an enemy is so perfectly Hibernian, that in Dublin it could not fail to meet with entire and cordial acceptance.’ The newspaper’s account of the duel carried a hint of nostalgic regret as to its outcome. A former officer of the marines, Captain D’Esterre was encouraged to provoke O’Connell into an affair of honour. ‘D’Esterre’s supposed skill as a shot, promised his success as the champion whom the Orange corporation sent forth to do battle’ (The Times, 24 May 1847). Instead, O’Connell managed to wound D’Esterre fatally. The Irishman was bound over by a judge with the instruction that he could accept no more challenges (Trench, 93-95).
In August of 1815 Robert Peel, the Conservative Chief Secretary of Ireland, challenged O’Connell to a duel. Since O’Connell could not accept the challenge on British soil, the adversaries arranged to meet on the Continent at Ostend. Peel crossed the channel and waited for his opponent. O’Connell was arrested by the English police at Plymouth and could not, therefore, meet Peel. Failure to settle this affair of honour left O’Connell open to Tory accusations of cowardice for the rest of his career.2
O’Connell’s popularity in Catholic Ireland continued unabated, however. He was the leading advocate for the repeal of the remaining penal laws that kept Catholics from sitting as judges, from serving on county or municipal bodies, or from entering Parliament. To force the government to remove these sectarian restrictions on the civil rights, O’Connell founded the Catholic Association in 1824, one of Europe’s first mass, non-violent political movements.
The Catholic Emancipation Movement culminated in O’Connell’s election as the Member of Parliament for Clare in 1828. As a Catholic, he could not take the required oath of office, which contained a repudiation of transubstantiation. The Tory government, therefore, faced a crisis. The Times (then supporting Emancipation) speculated that
being refused admittance to the Imperial Parliament, [the Catholics] will constitute a native Parliament in Dublin, sitting, voting, practically legislating, for their country, and leaving the connexion [sic] between the two countries dependent on a thread, which the slightest movement in the politics of Europe will suffice to snap asunder (Hinde, 76).
Peel and other Tory moderates in the Government shared this fear. Although opposed in principle to Catholic Emancipation, Peel managed to convince the more conservative Duke of Wellington to accept it. When the Emancipation bill was passed in 1829, O’Connell was hailed in Ireland as ‘The Liberator,’ though it was largely Wellington’s influence over the most conservative elements of the Tory party, as well as his willingness to oppose the wishes of his sovereign, George IV, that in the end carried the day.
In order to enhance the newly-won political power of Ireland’s Catholic middle class and to promote the country’s economic progress, O’Connell then decided to work for the repeal of the Act of Union and the restoration of an Irish Parliament under the Monarchy. After blundering into a disastrous defeat of his Repeal bill in 1834, however, O’Connell decided to shift his efforts towards reform for Ireland. His thorough dislike of Peel, as well as his dedication to liberal issues in general, propelled O’Connell into an alliance with the Whig opposition in Parliament.
Although the number of Irish MPs he controlled was modest, O’Connell was often able to attract the support of Irish Liberals, who were interested in reform in both Ireland and in Britain.3 In 1835 O’Connell secured an alliance with the Whigs, the so-called Lichfield House agreement, which linked O’Connell’s faction and its votes to the Whigs and placed O’Connell in virtually permanent opposition to the Tories. With O’Connell’s support the Whigs formed a government in the same year, maintained in office by its O’Connellite ‘tail.’ As a result, O’Connell became a convenient target for enemies of the Irish-Whig alliance and, thanks to his opposition to the Union, an increasingly hated figure in the eyes of many Englishmen. In the end O’Connell’s alliance with the Whigs did produce some modest reforms for Ireland, but at the price of English Radical and even some Irish support. After seven years, in the election of 1841, Sir Robert Peel and the Tories were able to return to government.
The years of cooperation with the Whigs had taken their toll on O’Connell’s political strength. His party did poorly in the election of 1841. With only eighteen MPs who would follow his lead, it was clear that he needed to rebuild his strength in Ireland, as well as in Westminster. Moreover, deeply hostile to Peel, O’Connell was convinced that the Tories would seek to return the Protestant Ascendancy to all of its former power. Therefore, the Liberator decided to rejuvenate his organization by returning to the mass politics he had originated during the Emancipation movement. This time, however, the goal would be the repeal of the Union (Macintyre, 262-63).
About the time that O’Connell was redirecting his political energies, some significant changes were taking place within Britain’s leading newspaper. Although The Times of London took its own course politically, rather than acting as a purely partisan organ, it had been generally sympathetic to Conservative issues, if not always the Conservative leadership. By 1841, John Walter, II, the paper’s conservative owner, began to take an active interest in politics, often allying himself with the Tory ‘Ultras’ on protection and on religious matters. In 1842, Walter appointed a new editor, John Thadeus Delane, then just twenty-three.
Delane had come down from Oxford in 1840 and worked as a reporter for one year before he took over the paper. His father, Joseph Delane, had been the financial manager of The Times for almost two decades. Therefore, John Walter had known young Delane since he was a boy. Brilliant, sociable, inquisitive, Delane brought to The Times a conservative and rather anti-Catholic mentality, which thoroughly suited John Walter’s own politics. Under Delane’s editorship, the paper’s circulation doubled from about 20,000 copies per day in 1842 to 40,000 by 1850. Thus, as O’Connell approached his last great campaign, The Times, strongly opposed to Repeal and led by a new, ambitious young editor, was prepared to meet any threat from Ireland, real or imagined.
Like most conservative Englishmen, Walter and Delane had a particular loathing for O’Connell and for everything for which he stood. According to the official history of The Times, Walter ‘hated O’Connell, his programme, and his religion’ (The Times, History, 8). Angus Macintyre observes that The Times hounded O’Connell until his death (156).
Even before O’Connell was able to build up momentum for his Repeal Movement, Delane focused his attacks on O’Connell’s position regarding the Irish Poor Law. Since the early years of the century, poor law reform had been a major issue in British politics. The Poor Law Reform Bill of 1834, which was to end outdoor relief and force the destitute into workhouses, had not included Ireland. However, the extent of Irish poverty could not be ignored, and, against the advice of a Parliamentary Commission that had studied the issues, an Irish Poor Law was enacted in 1838. It differed from the British law in one striking feature. While England’s paupers were guaranteed relief, albeit in the workhouse, Ireland could not offer public charity as a right to its huge numbers of poor.
O’Connell opposed the extension of the poor law to Ireland for a number of reasons. As a liberal, O’Connell generally adhered to a laissez-faire ideology. As a Catholic, he was very sensitive to any threats of government interference with the family and the role of private charity. He believed that the workhouse system threatened both. Of course, like most of his fellow landlords, O’Connell was not enthusiastic about the prospect of paying poor law rates. However, he also saw that landlords and big farmers would simply pass the rates onto their tenants, who already had to pay high rents, as well as tithes to the Church of Ireland. As an alternative to the Poor Law, O’Connell insisted that an Irish Parliament, legislating for the country’s economic good, would be far more effective in reducing poverty.4
The Times also opposed the poor laws of both Britain and Ireland. The paper strongly supported the old Conservative principle of supplying public assistance to the poor in the form of ‘outdoor relief,’ allowing them to remain in their homes and keep their families intact. Different as their positions were on the issue, Delane could have found areas of agreement with O’Connell. Instead he sharply criticized the Irish leader’s position.5
The Irish Poor Law was almost an ideal issue for Delane, for it allowed him to hammer both the Whigs, who supported it, and O’Connell, who opposed it. For the Irish leader, however, the controversy over the Poor Law tended to divide his followers, some of whom could not accept the Liberator’s objections to public charity (Macintyre, 226). O’Connell tried to focus attention on what he regarded as the worst aspects of the law, such as dividing families in the workhouse and granting relief to the ‘able-bodied poor.’ As reported in The Times, O’Connell argued that the Poor Law could not distinguish between the deserving and undeserving poor, but must support the indigent ‘no matter how that indigence has been produced, whether by dissipation, drunkenness, and extravagance, OR BY MERE MISFORTUNE’ (emphasis added by The Times.) Delane’s paper pounced upon the Liberator’s words. It attacked him for applying a
very pestilential, and very Whig principle…that it is to be assumed as an axiom that poverty NEVER results from misfortune, and it is therefore, always more or less a crime, (at least politically speaking) and cannot accordingly be entitled, upon any pretence, or in any shape, to public support from the state (The Times, 2 January 1843, 2).
Delane’s paper, true to the old Conservative sense of noblesse oblige, and glorying in what he considered the moral high ground, insisted that the Irish poor should be treated in a proper Christian manner:
[E]very Christian Government is bound, as a matter of police [policy], as a matter of morality; and as a matter of religion, to supply, freely, ungrudgingly, and at the public expense, with not workhouses or commissions, but at homes of their own, and with all the necessities of life, all those who from sickness or age, and poverty, are unable to maintain themselves; and to provide all those who could if so provided, maintain themselves…with the means, by giving them work… (The Times, 2 January 1843, 2; italics original).
Given the shift in attitudes that took place during the Famine, it is rather ironic to see O’Connell opposed to public relief and The Times championing the rights of the Irish poor.
Charity was, perhaps, not Delane’s only concern. The Times charged O’Connell with using the poor law issue to bolster his agitation for Repeal. Sarcastically, the paper’s leading article stated, ‘we cannot, of course, suspect…any sinister desire of promoting, in the misery of the people, the wretched objects of that faction of which Mr. O’Connell calls himself the head’ (2 January, 1843; italics added). The implication was that without state protection the Irish poor would be more susceptible to O’Connell’s manipulation.
The negative descriptors — ‘sinister,’ ‘misery,’ and ‘wretched’ — are examples of how Delane’s leader writers used language that consistently called into question any moral legitimacy O’Connell might claim. The little invalidating phrase towards the end, ‘calls himself,’ strips away O’Connell’s status as the Irish leader. It is a subtle example of what David Spurr calls ‘colonizing gestures in language’ (2). Although O’Connell was expert at building and controlling large-scale organizations, to The Times neither he nor his Irish followers could have any legitimate authority of their own. Real power resided solely at the societal and political hub of the empire in London, always the referential locus of The Times.
For his part, O’Connell made no secret of his intentions to use the unpopularity of the Poor Law rates to advance his cause. ‘There is nothing more likely to promote the Repeal,’ he wrote to the poor law guardians of County Cork in January of 1843, ‘than allowing the present poor law system to work out many more mischiefs…. If I could abolish the present poor law, I should deprive myself of a powerful weapon…’ (McCaffrey, 34-35). Eventually, Peel’s Government passed an amendment to the Irish Poor Law that shifted the responsibility for the rates from tenants renting land valued under four pounds to their landlords. Although it defused the issue of Poor Law rates as a cause of popular unrest, landlord-tenant relations became worse, as the former had a new incentive to evict the latter (Gray, 1999, 46-47). This particular change in the Poor Law would reap a grim harvest in the depth of the Famine.
As O’Connell began to wed issues of tenants’ rights to Repeal, Delane sought to counter the Liberator’s propaganda with an idealized view of landlord-tenant relations in Ireland. He and the paper’s owners, John Walter II, as well as his successor, John Walter, III, were committed to supporting the Union, as well as the Protestant Ascendancy, which in their view was quite capable of looking out for the best interests of the Irish tenantry without rancour and agitation. On 14 January 1843 The Times published the grateful testimony from the Tipperary tenants of the Earl of Miltown. Although County Tipperary was a center for agrarian unrest, in an address to his lordship, his tenants reportedly expressed
our heartfelt acknowledgement of the many benefits we have received…. There is no middleman between your Lordship and us. We have our land cheap, we are generously allowed for improvements, and have no fear of extermination. Thus has your Lordship given practical evidence that ‘property has its duties as well as its rights,’ and afforded an example worthy of the imitation of the landlords of Tipperary — an example which, if followed, will produce comfort, security, and peace… (The Times, 14 January 1843, 5).
Apparently, the Earl’s tenants enjoyed the kind of rights more commonly found in Ulster where improvements did not mean an immediate rise in rents but rather compensation from the landlord at the end of a lease. The phrase ‘fear of extermination’ referred to the threat of eviction, a strong reminder that the Earl, like any other Irish landlord, held the power of life and death over his tenants through his power to renew leases, and to continue, if he chose, the existence of his tenants-at-will, or to eject them. In many cases those who were refused tenancy were forced to leave the land without any means of support.
In comparison to this Irish idyll of landlord paternalism there were growing instances of agrarian violence, as the competition for land set small tenants against their landlords and against each other. ‘Outrages’ sometimes included attacks on landlords and their agents. The Times, arguing that Ireland’s problems were ‘social rather than political,’ claimed they could be cured by ‘reciprocal influences of good intentions on one side and grateful feeling on the other.’ Yet,
Jealousy, misapprehension, suspicion, hatred, revenge — every feeling which agitation could engender, suffering foster, and ignorance perpetuate, is in constant activity to thwart the intentions of benevolence and the schemes of speculation; and that country which possesses most abundantly the material and capabilities of improvement is doomed to suffer most from a recurring cycle of kindnesses which are received with distrust, and ingratitude which breeds disgust (The Times, 11 April 1843; italics added).
The leading article emphasized the division between landlord and tenant on moral, rather than on economic grounds, thus drawing the reader’s sympathy towards the former rather than the latter. By granting the Protestant landlords only positive qualities, while assigning to the largely Catholic peasantry wholly negative attributes, The Times normalized its ideological bias towards the Ascendancy, making it appear as simply a matter of common sense. This passage is also interesting for what it does not state. Although the landlords were supposedly guided by ‘benevolence’ and ‘kindnesses,’ as well as an eye for investment, there is no suggestion that, as a class, they paid their tenants for improvements on their holdings, granted them secure tenure, or gave them adequate employment on their estates.
Although The Times’ leader did not mention O’Connell, the word ‘agitation’ was one the paper constantly attached to him and his Repeal movement. The word reflects the conservative reaction to the new type of mass-movement politics O’Connell had helped to introduce into British and European liberalism. The Repeal movement itself was modeled on O’Connell’s earlier Catholic Association, the political and financial basis for the Emancipation campaign. Although he had been appalled at the violence of the French Revolution, O’Connell nevertheless understood the role that the masses could play in constitutional politics, providing they were disciplined and carefully led. Through his organizing ability and his skill as an orator, O’Connell was able to assemble thousands of Irish in peaceful gatherings that were part political meeting and part nationalist pageantry. As the size of the Repeal meetings of 1843 grew, they earned from The Times the epithet ‘monster meetings,’ a term that, like ‘agitation,’ placed them beyond the boundaries of civilized politics, in spite of the fact that the basic tactics had already been adopted by British reform movements.6
With the fall of his Whig political partners in 1841, O’Connell could see little hope for leveraging reform from the Tories. Therefore, he decided to push his attack on the Union, declaring 1843 ‘The Year of Repeal.’ From spring through fall tens of thousands of members of the Repeal Association assembled at mass meetings all over Ireland. O’Connell, insisting that the new Ireland would be founded upon the separation of church and state, hoped to attract a significant number of Protestants to the cause. At the same time, he vowed to eradicate the remaining elements of Protestant privilege, such as the tithe rent.7 Inevitably, rhetoric sometimes pushed ahead of political principles, and by the summer of 1843 some speeches at the Repeal mass meetings were becoming inflammatory and even sectarian.
In its focus on the most radical speeches The Times’ report of the Repeal meeting at Murree near Limerick in June of 1843 was typical of the paper’s coverage of the movement. One speaker was a Reverend Mr. Costelloe, one of the hundreds of Roman Catholic priests and prelates who had been politicized through O’Connell’s earlier Catholic Association (Broderick, 110–111, 124). Father Costelloe argued that Catholic Emancipation had not achieved enough. It had not abolished the tithes collected for the established Protestant church. He is reported to have asked, ‘Are not the entire population — the Roman Catholic people, priests and bishops — compelled to pay and pamper in idleness the alien parsons of an alien creed? Is this emancipation?’ (The Times, 17 June 1843, 7e). By implying that the ‘entire population’ of Ireland was Roman Catholic, Father Costelloe excluded all Protestant Irish. Moreover, in referring to an ‘alien creed,’ he rejected the legitimacy of the Anglican Church in Ireland, the church of which the Queen was head. The statement might have been seen by at least some of The Times’ readers as a rejection of the Queen’s spiritual authority, near heresy if not treason.
However, Father Costelloe was not to be caught in any implied slight to the Queen. Following the lead already established by O’Connell, the priest equated Repeal with loyalty to the monarchy. In referring to the recent dismissal of nationalist magistrates who had attended Repeal meetings, the priest is reported to have said:
…in the height of folly they [the authorities] now by the dismissal of the people’s magistrates goad to madness an already highly excited and much aggrieved people; but thanks to the unbounded influence of the bravest, though the most gentle and peaceful of mortals, thanks to…the pastors of the flocks, the enemies of Ireland will never again attain their malignant object [of pushing the Irish into violence]; the people bound by gratitude and affection to the Queen will still endure — they will still restrain their indignation, relying, as a safety valve, on the no distant prospect of a native Parliament. Misguided men may, as they have heretofore, shackled [sic] our religion, and curtail our civil rights; but as to the repeal of the union they are now too late. The movement has now advanced so far — it has rolled on with such might and majesty that they could with more facility stem the ocean tides than arrest its progress. (Cheers.) (The Times, 17 June 1843, 7e; italics added).
Father Costelloe’s reported remarks suggested that Irish forbearance rested on the popular assumption that the repeal of the Union was inevitable. For The Times’ readers the unspoken implication was that, if thwarted, the Irish might explode into violence.
When Daniel O’Connell rose to speak at Limerick he offered his listeners Repeal, ‘if you do not throw it away yourselves.’ With this statement O’Connell shifted into an appeal for temperance. Without naming him, the Liberator referred to the temperance leader, Father Theobald Mathew, ‘delegated by the Most High to second the endeavours for national freedom.’ Father Mathew had concluded his very popular campaign the previous year, and O’Connell was clearly trying to build on the momentum of the temperance movement. The Liberator was certain that ‘every blessing in this world and the next [would] be poured upon his [Mathew’s] head, and upon those who took the pledge….’ He then corrected himself, saying, ‘or rather upon those who kept it.’ He then asked how many in the audience were ‘teetotalers.’ When, ‘almost every person in the meeting raised his hand,’ O’Connell responded, ‘There is a sight for our revilers — there is a congregation of sober and moral men. (Cheers.)’ (The Times, 17 June 1843, 7e; italics original).
Having made his point for the hostile English press reporting his speech, O’Connell then proceeded to bait them and to titillate his Irish audience. ‘I want you to get arms. (Sensation.).’ O’Connell had always been adamant that Repeal could be won only by nonviolent ‘moral force.’ Therefore, his comments caused a stir. The Liberator, however, continued: ‘Now mind me — do you know the arms I want you to get — the repeal society’s card! Every man who has that is well armed.’ (17 June 1843, 7e). With this appeal to ‘arms’ — the repeal card — O’Connell not only ridiculed British fears of Irish violence, but, by flaunting his fund-raising methods, he snapped his fingers in the face of his critics. The Times, for example, seldom failed to mention O’Connell’s appeals for money, since the paper maintained that the whole Repeal movement was only a scheme to enlarge O’Connell’s personal fortune.
O’Connell’s talent for fund raising had a long history. In the struggle for Catholic Emancipation his organization, the Catholic Association, collected a ‘Catholic rent,’ a penny a month minimum donation, something that even many peasants could afford. The contributions strengthened the sense of belonging to a mass movement, even though few of those who gave their pennies would benefit from ‘emancipation.’8 The funds were used to support tenants who were evicted because they voted against the wishes of the landlords. Money also went to O’Connell in compensation for his largely abandoned law practice.
The cost of politics was high, especially for those who did not have an independent income. Members of parliament did not receive salaries. Even if a winning middle-class candidate had his election expenses paid for by an aristocratic patron or by other supporters, he still had to take up residence in London while Parliament was in session, an expense compounded if the member had a business to look after or profession to pursue. ‘In fact,’ writes Norman Gash, ‘there was widespread agreement that no man could pursue a political career with integrity unless he had a competence of his own’ (1971, 107). For example, when Richard Cobden was elected via a public subscription, the Whigs felt unable to offer him a post in the Government, in spite of his many contributions to Whig causes (1971, 109).
Having secured Catholic Emancipation, O’Connell continued to raise a ‘Tribute’ for his own expenses. When he began the Repeal Association, he returned to the ‘rent’ in order to generate the funds required by the new mass movement. These collections, O’Connell promised, would contribute to re-establishing Ireland’s own independent parliament through repeal of the Union. Thus, each month’s contribution, if only a penny, from a Repeal Association member was a tangible means of simultaneously supporting the leader of ‘the nation’ and resisting British authority.
The ‘rent’ (an ironic play on what was due to the landlords) paralleled a long-standing tradition in Ireland where Catholics paid an unofficial tithe to support the unestablished and formerly illegal Roman Catholic Church and its once outlawed clergy. For Irish Catholics such contributions were an inherent part of maintaining their religious and national identity. O’Connell’s fund-raising methods fitted into this Irish tradition of anti-establishment, self-imposed taxation. His collections sustained Repeal as an important cultural, as well as political, movement. The London press, especially The Times, the Standard and Punch, simply regarded O’Connell’s Repeal Rent as a matter of personal rather than political financing. O’Connell did not help matters by apparently blending his own needs with those of his organization. If separate books were kept by O’Connell and the Repeal Association, they have never been found.9
O’Connell had convinced many of his followers that Repeal was inevitable, particularly since the cause had the support of so many Catholic churchmen, a point The Times never tired of stressing. Describing the efforts to assemble the meeting near Limerick, for example, The Times reported:
The most extraordinary expedients have been employed at every chapel, many miles round to urge the people there [Ballycoreen, Co. Clare], and the Roman Catholic peasantry of Doonass are summoned to attend chapel, and to proceed there in a body after mass tomorrow morning, which being the festival of Corpus Christi, and a holyday, will give more éclat to the gathering (The Times, 17 June 1843, 7).
The Times’ editorial position regarding O’Connell and Repeal is evident not only in its reporting of the Limerick meeting, but also by the organization of material on the newspaper’s page. Next to the column devoted to Rev. Costelloe’s speech Delane ran a reprint from the Limerick Chronicle entitled, ‘The Army in Ireland.’ The article gave a running list of troop movements throughout southern Ireland from Waterford to the Shannon.
This day Captain Cathcart’s troop of the 10th Hussars arrived in garrison, and this morning Captain Bonham’s troop of the 10th Hussars left for Ennis, for which place the whole Grenadier Company of the 36th, and a detachment of the Light Company…marched yesterday morning. The entire force of the 81st depot at Clare Castle is ordered under arms at the repeal meeting at Ballycoreen to-morrow…. The forts at Scattery, Donaha, Tarbert, Carrick, Kileredane, and Kileeran on the Lower Shannon, are to be garrisoned by the Royal Marines daily expected in this river in an armed steamer…. All the regiments and depots in Ireland are ordered to complete their service ammunition to 60 rounds of ball cartridge a man…. The fortifications at Athlone are remounted with cannon, and reinforced with double guards. Athlone was formerly the extreme bulwark of the English pale on the borders of Connaught (The Times, 17 June 1843, 7).10
The account of troop movements ended with a reference to a unit en route from Gibraltar. It was a subtle reminder of the empire-wide power that Britain already wielded and was capable of bringing to bear upon any Irish unrest. In this context of imperial power, Ireland appears as an uncertain entity, somewhere between the metropolitan center in Britain and its vast colonial world.
Although Peel was under increasing pressure to proscribe the Repeal meetings, he had thus far refused, and the meetings remained legal. The appearance of the article on troop movements next to Fr. Costelloe’s speech, however, may have encouraged some of The Times’ readers to regard the Repeal meetings as seditious, dangerous and requiring a military response. Whether intentionally or not, Delane’s paper left no doubt as to Britain’s readiness to suppress any outbreaks of violence.
Delane made effective use of other reports from Ireland to counter the ‘monster meeting’ near Limerick. On the same page as the reports of the meeting and of troop movements, the editor placed another piece from the Limerick Chronicle, this one complaining of the negative economic impact of O’Connell’s Repeal movement.
Since the repeal agitation has become so hot, a greater stagnation of business in every branch of trade was never known in Limerick, and the shopkeepers complain universally of it, ascribing it truly to the political excitement and apprehension which occupies every mind at present. The utmost difficulty is found in the collection of rents (The Times, 17 June 1843, 7e).
Delane’s leader writer added this comment: ‘The foregoing observations apply with equal truth to, at least, three-fourths of the Kingdom. In Dublin trade is literally paralyzed, all business is at a stand-still, save reading the newspaper.’ Wealthy families were thinking of fleeing the city (The Times, 17 June 1843, 7e).
As though to counter such propaganda, O’Connell’s forces organized a demonstration in Dublin to call attention to the economic liabilities of the Union. With so many of the Repeal meetings having been held around the provinces, O’Connell was probably anxious to reassert his Dublin base, as well as to dramatize his argument that the Union had been an economic disaster for Ireland. A great parade of tradesmen was planned for 4 July. The vast procession would march from Phibsborough on the north side of the Liffey to Donnybrook south of the city.
In the run-up to the march the next day, The Times’ leader, anticipating Repeal propaganda, reiterated its charge that it was Repeal, not the Union, that was destroying Ireland’s economy.
Well may Mr. O’Connell call this the ‘Repeal year,’ for every day the fruits of his insane attempts to sever the union are evidenced either in the utter paralyzation of trade, the stoppage of intercourse between the two countries, the check given to ‘immigration’ and emigration…and in the justifiable reluctance of English capitalists to hazard 6d. of their money in a country abounding in natural capacities for the fair exercise of their speculation… (The Times, 4 July 1843, 7e).
Delane’s leader included a quick roundup of several Tory Irish papers, all complaining of the economic effects of O’Connell’s agitation.
Covering the Repeal march, The Times correspondent in Dublin reported that forty-three trades assembled and marched in order, including
tobacconists, shipwrights, coopers, saddlers, bakers, coachmakers, woolen operatives, hatters, tanners, tabinet and silk weavers, brass founders, tailors, stone-cutters, hosiers, bricklayers, cartwrights, house painters, curriers, spade and shovel makers, rope makers, stucco plasterers, sawyers…
and a host of others. The banner carried by the bricklayers read, ‘Before 1800 we numbered 3000. In 1843 we are only 300.’ The hosiers proclaimed, ‘Before the Union our numerical strength was 967. It is now but 100!’11
There were, of course, speeches. After what The Times reporter, with a rhetorical yawn, called ‘the usual amount of cheering,’ O’Connell at last stood to address the crowd. According to the report, the Liberator claimed, ‘It is impossible I could have more power. I have power enough. I have more physical force than ever monarch commanded or general led. The only question is how to use it’ (The Times, 5 July 1843, 6e). Although he went on to compare the masses that had paraded that day to Wellington’s forces at Waterloo, he also cautioned his listeners against any kind of violence.
Given the Liberator’s remarks, The Times might be forgiven for choosing to describe the parade in distinctly military terms. Readers were told that O’Connell stood on the balcony of his house in Merrion Square,
surrounded by his staff, for the purpose of receiving the ‘salute,’ and in right military array did each battalion time its movements; whenever a delay occurred, Mr. O’Connell, as the general commanding-in-chief, shouted in a stentorian voice ‘forward!’ and accordingly the battalion having given the ‘salute,’ marched past in quick time, to allow of the rapid advance of the next division.
The Times reporter wryly noted the inferior quality of the marching, but went on to add:
yet the mere attempt to imitate military subordination and parade made by this vast assemblage of the lower classes of Dublin appears as if they were impressed with the conviction that the crisis is to be permitted to arrive when discipline, union and physical force are to supplant the ‘peaceful and constitutional agitation’ at present inculcated by their leaders (The Times, 5 July 1843, 6e).
The Times reprinted a piece from the Evening Mail, a Dublin Tory paper, sarcastically suggesting, ‘on some fine simultaneous meeting day every true Irishman shall bring — quite peaceably — a musket or sithe [sic] in his hand, and a few days provisions at his back’ (The Times, 5 July 1843, 6e).
Both O’Connell and Delane were in oddly similar positions regarding this parade. In order to suggest the dangers of frustrating Repeal expectations, O’Connell wanted to maximize his apparent power by marching his supporters in quasi-military fashion without, at the same time, actually threatening or intending violence. Delane, for his part, had to find a balance between decrying the threat of Repeal, and thus contributing to O’Connell’s power, and dismissing the whole movement as mere puffery and a deceitful exploitation of the Irish masses. On 10 July ‘Our Own Correspondent’ reported that the Repealers were circulating a rumor in Dublin that O’Connell and his lieutenant William Smith O’Brien had suddenly left the city for London.
The impression on men’s minds seemed to be that he [O’Connell] had been summoned by Her Majesty to arrange the terms and settle all preliminaries upon the formation of the Irish Parliament. It turned out, however, that the burly agitator, attended by his head pacificator, had posted down to Kilkenny this morning (The Times, 10 July 1843, 3e).
The elevated expectation of an audience with the Queen contrasted with a mere trip to Kilkenny provided just the humorous, ironic distance The Times liked to place between O’Connell’s promises and his performance. Nevertheless, the writer subtly hinted at violence by referring to O’Connell’s size, as if it were threatening, and by bestowing upon Smith O’Brien the satiric title, ‘head pacificator,’ intended to remind readers that (unlike O’Connell) O’Brien was in favor of using physical force to secure Repeal.
As the Repeal meetings continued to grow in size, Parliament became increasingly disturbed. In mid-July, when pressed on the subject of the monster meetings, the Whig leader, Lord John Russell, tried to walk the fine line between his once and perhaps future ally, O’Connell, and his own rejection of Repeal. The best he could do was to allow that the meetings were ‘not illegal.’ The Duke of Wellington was less sanguine. In a speech before the House of Lords, he addressed Russell’s comments. As reported by The Times:
My lords, I do not consider myself competent to decide whether they [the Repeal meetings] are or are not illegal; but this I know, that they are attended by very large numbers of persons, — whether 10,000 or 100,000, I am sure I can’t tell…but they were attended by very large numbers, regularly organized, who marched to the meetings under the command of persons on horseback, with bands and banners, in regular military array, and after attending the meetings, they dispersed at the word of command (hear, hear), without violence, without riot or breach of peace, and marched back 30 Irish miles (no small distance), and no violence committed on the way (The Times, 11 July 1843).
In the above passage, Wellington tacitly admitted the non-violent and hugely popular nature of the meetings. To the Duke, however, the self-control and discipline of the Repeal Association’s supporters made them all the more threatening. He urged their lordships ‘to consider the power exerted in calling these meetings, the discipline exhibited, and the authority possessed by those who effected such discipline….’ Wellington clearly recognized that a separate nexus of power, the Repeal leadership, was attempting to assert itself. In his eyes, however, its actions did not constitute legitimate politics but rather intimidation. Claiming to have had experience in ‘these revolutions,’ Wellington pointed out that in eighteenth-century France the revolutionaries had been able to operate openly because they used ‘terror’ and ‘deception,’ implying that these were the tools of O’Connell and his mass meetings (The Times, 11 July 1843). Wellington thus negated any responsibility the Irish might have had for their own disciplined behavior. O’Connell’s followers were controlled by threats and by the deceptions of a deceitful leader. The Duke refused to grant any credit to the Irish people for their discipline, sobriety and peacefulness. O’Connell’s followers themselves only appeared to be joined in rational, democratic, peaceable behavior. Instead, to Wellington they constituted a potential revolutionary force.
At the same time, Wellington could not resist ridiculing the enemy, even if this detracted from his argument. He joked that ‘when a learned gentleman [O’Connell] declares that “Napoleon had not in Russia such an army as there is here, and the Duke of Wellington had not such a one at Waterloo,” why, very possibly not, my lords. (Loud laughter.)’ (The Times, 11 July 1843). At this point, the difference between printed text and the delivery of speech becomes apparent. One has to imagine the condescending intonation, the timing, and the drawl with which the last sentence must have been delivered by Wellington to produce that loud laughter from his peers. The Repeal agitation was both a threat and a joke to the House of Lords, and ultimately to the readers of The Times. Wellington, like Delane, was caught between his images of O’Connell as a dangerous revolutionary and as an Irish buffoon.
This is not to argue that the opposition to Repeal was necessarily foolish or misguided. This was a troubled period in both England and Ireland. Chartism and Anti-Corn Law agitation disturbed Conservatives at home, as did fears of agrarian unrest and Repeal agitation in Ireland. Even if these fears in retrospect seem exaggerated, the social fabric of the United Kingdom appeared to be under stress. Yet while O’Connell’s insistence on Repeal may have sounded radical, it was not seditious. O’Connell was not attacking the empire, the monarchy or the Parliament. He did want to change the constitution but not to foment rebellion. He had been careful not to spell out what specific changes would occur as a result of Repeal, apart from re-establishment of an Irish Parliament. He had, therefore, left room for negotiation and, given the reforms he had tacked onto Repeal, perhaps compromise. Yet, few in Britain could accept him and his followers as a ‘loyal opposition.’ Quite the contrary. O’Connell was demonized by the Government and much of the press, which sought to deprive him and his followers of any legitimacy in their desire for limited self-rule. Unfortunately, given traditional British attitudes toward the Irish, the negativity aimed at O’Connell and his movement could easily become generalized attacks on the Irish people.
O’Connell was keenly aware of this, and he used it as an issue. At his mass meetings, O’Connell called attention to the demeaning attitude of the British press toward the Irish. In his Dublin speech in July, the Liberator held up pages he had extracted from The Times. Reading from them, he pointed to
the abuse of the Irish people. (Hear, Hear)…. They call us a dirty race—a lazy race—superstitious beasts—brutes—savages, worse than the cannibals of New Zealand. (‘Oh, oh.’) …They call us robbers, perjurers, assassins, wholesale murderers, and they call our clergy ‘sanguinary scoundrels,’ ‘Surpliced ruffians’…‘demon priesthood’ (The Times, 5 July 1843, 7a).
O’Connell himself was hardly shy in his choice of language when attacking his opponents. Yet, the tendency to demean, which seems imbedded in British discourse about Ireland, went beyond the norms of hard-hitting political debate. David Spurr suggests that such debasement is one of several tropes that ‘come into play with the establishment and maintenance of colonial authority, or, as sometimes happens, those that register the loss of such authority.’ Such terms are among the ways by which ‘relations of power manifest themselves’ (3). In the context of twentieth-century French imperialism, Jean-Paul Sartre asked: ‘How can an elite of usurpers…establish their privileges? By one means only: debasing the colonized to exalt themselves, denying the title of humanity to the natives…’ (quoted in Lebow, 13). Although by the 1840s Ireland’s relationship to Britain can not be understood simply within a colonial framework, it is not clear that the British press knew any language, other than that derived from colonialism, to account for Ireland and the Irish.
Notes
1. During the Rising of 1798, the French made several attempts to land forces in Ireland. A small force under General Humbert had remarkable, albeit short-lived, success.
2. According to Oliver MacDonagh, it was O’Connell’s wife Mary who tipped the magistrates to the impending duel, thereby preventing her husband from meeting Peel; see MacDonagh, 1987, 135-37.
3. For O’Connell’s support for liberal causes generally, see Macintyre 165-65; Nowlan, 1965, 5-6, 7, 49.
4. See Macintyre, 209-11, 217-18, 225. For the role of religion in the development of O’Connell’s economic ideas, see James Guilfoyle’s articles in the New Hihernia Review, 2:3 and 2:4 (1998).
5. John Walter, II was strongly opposed to the New Poor Law. According to the official history of The Times, in the early years of Delane’s career as editor it is not always clear when an editorial position was his or one taken at the behest of Walter, the chief proprietor. See The Times, History, 2-3.
Unlike his predecessor in the editor’s chair, Thomas Barnes, Delane rarely wrote his own leaders. However, he ‘directed a vigilant eye on leader writers, reporters and printers….’ Upon arriving at his office in Printing House Square, the leading articles ‘were his first care.’ Until 1853, he read all of the correspondence and personally selected the letters to go into the paper. He once commented, ‘I believe not a column has been published in The Times which had not some of my handwriting in the margin.’ See Times, History, 55, 60.
6. The structure and function of O’Connell’s organizations were adapted by Liberals and Radicals campaigning for political and economic reform in Britain. At a point when Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington were thinking of suppressing the Repeal Association, Edward Geoffery Smith Stanley reminded the Government that the British Anti-Corn Law League was modeled on O’Connell’s Repeal Association. ‘[I]f one be suppressed and the other is left untouched, an appearance of unequal justice will be given — if we attack both, we shall embark on a sea of trouble….’ See Nowlan, 1965, 45).
7. O’Connell coupled his demand for Repeal to the major reforms that he had hoped to achieve through his previous alliance with the Whigs: fixity of tenure for tenants, repeal of the tithes, protectionist legislation for Irish manufacturers, democratic suffrage by secret ballot, and the abolition of the poor laws, to be replaced by public works aimed at improving the land. See McCaffrey, 32-33; also The Times, 10 June 1843, 3f. Since he would return to these reform proposals after the collapse of the Repeal movement, it is not clear to what extent O’Connell might have been willing to exchange Repeal in 1843 for these far-reaching reforms. See MacDonagh, 1989, 240.
8. Since the forty-shilling freeholders were disenfranchised in the bill that granted Emancipation, Ireland actually ended up with a smaller electorate.
9. See Macintyre, 120-21. For O’Connell’s income and expenditures see Maurice R. O’Connell, 1990, 13-29.
10. The Limerick Chronicle’s passing reference to the fifteenth-century border defense, the ‘pale’ that had excluded the ‘wild Irish’ from English-held territory, was a clever reminder of the centuries-old conflict between the two nations and of the enduring dominance of England over Ireland.
11. The Times, 5 July 1843, 6e. Some historians have questioned the negative impact of the Union on the pre-famine economy in Ireland. For example, see Cormac Ó Gráda, 1994, 307-308.