The Death of Daniel O’Connell — May 1847
Although Daniel O’Connell had placed some hopes for reform and relief in Russell’s Whig government, disillusionment had set in by the end of 1846. Old and ill, the Liberator struggled to hold his Repeal movement together and to restrain unrest among the Young Irelanders, while at the same time trying to beg more aid for his country. His state of mind is suggested by his speech before the last Repeal Association meeting of 1846, as reported in The Economist. He had
…only a few words, a very few words to say, as his mind oppressed him too strongly…. He was frightened at the state of Ireland; and doubly so, because he did not think others were frightened enough…. Food was wanting in the north, south, east and west…. Never was a country in such danger — never was a government so loudly called on to do something.
Yet, O’Connell asked his countrymen to ‘give up the unhappy practice of stopping the transit of provisions—to resign all resort to violence, to give up all force, and to endeavour to assist each other in the terrible crisis, which was upon them (The Economist, 2 January 1847, 11b).
The following week, O’Connell seemed to have roused himself to propose an extraordinary plan to save Ireland and to pay for the sustenance of the nation. In the face of famine O’Connell finally turned his back on the liberal economic principles he had espoused throughout his career. In 1843 he had criticized the Irish Poor Law, in part because he believed that it could not distinguish between the deserving and undeserving poor. Back then, O’Connell had mixed his own religious convictions and moralism with Whiggish principles, not to mention a landlord’s disinclination to raise his rates. Now, O’Connell begged for government relief on an unprecedented scale.
The newspapers calculated that thirty persons died every day of hunger, but he believed that the figure was nearer three hundred and thirty…. It was the duty of the British Government to feed the people. Six months provisions were requisite for that purpose — it was for the British Government to provide it…. [He would ask Parliament] that a loan of 40,000,000l might be raised for the relief of the people of Ireland. The loan to be raised in the same manner as that for the purchase of the negroes in the West Indies (The Economist, 9 January 1847).
Daniel O’Connell’s health, precarious after his imprisonment, had begun to fail more noticeably as the Famine progressed. Seventy years old when the potato blight appeared in 1845, his leadership was fading, and his sons became the more frequent sources for newspaper quotes and letters to The Times. Sensing, perhaps, a vacuum in the Irish leadership, Punch’s ‘Almanack’ for the New Year’s issue of 1847 illustrated the month of March with ‘The New St. Patrick driving out “the Varmint’” (Figure 9.1). The wood engraving features O’Connell as a loathsome toad in a Repeal cap, hopping away from Mr. Punch, the ‘New Patrick,’ dressed as a knight in shining armor with the Irish harp upon his shield. In his right hand, instead of a sword, he waves a spade, the essential Irish agricultural implement, the digger of potatoes, the drainer of ditches and the ultimate tool for Irish survival. Apparently, starvation among the Irish peasantry had not dulled Punch’s sense of humour. Other members of the Irish party, embodied as snakes, crawl away in the various directions, suggesting, perhaps, the rift in the Repeal camp and O’Connell’s growing isolation. One ‘varmint’ carries a banner emblazoned with the skull and crossbones, an old symbol that John Doyle had used for Repeal in the 1830s, but here it seems to be more piratical. The drawing is accompanied by a parody of the song ‘Saint Patrick was a Gentleman.’
Sir Punch he was a gentleman
Who always loved the people
And stood in estimation quite
As high as any steeple
Gross humbug, fraud, and trickery,
He never was afraid of,
But took delight to rip them up
And show what they were made of.
Then life to Punch, whose baton fell
With blows so sharp and clever
On charlatans of every shape,
And put them down forever.
Figure 9.1: Punch, xii. (January [New Year’s Issue] 1847), [no page number].
To Punch, O’Connell was the chief ‘charlatan.’ The magazine had always viewed his collection of ‘rint’ for Repeal as a fraud. Now, in a time of famine, the ‘rint’ looked worse than ever. In the New Year’s issue O’Connell was cast as Joseph Ady, a notorious Quaker who had sent letters inviting people to send him twenty pounds to ‘hear something of advantage’ to them (Altick, 1997, 358-59). In Punch’s cartoon, the Repeal cap is turned into a jester’s hat with bells, and placed on the head of an Irishman, who listens like a fool to Daniel O’Connell depicted as wearing the broad-brimmed hat of a Quaker. The caption reads: ‘Now yer Honour’s got the money — What will I be hearing “to my advantage?”’ to which O’Connell replies, ‘Verily Friend when you canst get it thou wilt have repeal.’ Behind the Liberator is a box labeled ‘rint’ (Punch, xii., 1847, 5).
Along with the cartoon, Punch ran an accompanying satire, ‘The Irish Joseph Ady,’ in which ‘an old man, named Daniel O’Connell’ is brought up before a magistrate for practicing fraud. The magazine asserts that the old man promised his dupes ‘Repeal, to which, in the first place, the right of O’Connell’s victims was very questionable; in the next place the good it might do them was more doubtful still; and in the last place, there was no doubt that O’Connell had neither the intention, nor the power to give it them.’ Nevertheless ‘it was shown that he must have received, first to last, an amount of money that we do not name, lest it should seem incredible.’ The ‘prisoner’ defended himself, arguing that
he was an old man, and must do something for a livelihood. He had left a profitable business because he thought he could let the Irish people hear of something to their advantage; and it was very hard, after the trouble he had taken to have his right to be paid for his trouble disputed in this manner (Punch, xii., 1847, 4).
In the last ‘big cut’ that Punch devoted to O’Connell, John Leech employed one of his favorite themes: men of power caricatured as boys. Lord John Russell and Daniel O’Connell are shown playing cricket in poses based on a popular three-penny print of a childhood scene by Robert Seymour (Altick, 1997, 359; Punch, xii., 69). O’Connell is depicted as a fat boy wearing a Repeal cap and plaid trousers, running awkwardly from stump to stump. His bat, which he waves ineffectively, is labeled, ‘Repeal,’ a metaphoric reduction of the Repeal movement to a plaything. Lord John steps up behind him and, tapping the stump with the ball, stumps him out. The message was that Russell’s policies on Ireland had won, and that O’Connell did not play the game very well. It was a final dismissive message for an increasingly marginalized figure.
Punch’s demeaning treatment of Daniel O’Connell had been unrelenting since the comic paper first appeared. Depicted as a woman, as an exploitative rent-gatherer, as a charlatan, Punch’s images of Daniel O’Connell, like the cartoons of HB in the 1830s, helped obscure the fact that O’Connell was, as James N. McCord has stated, a politician ‘who worked well within the British parliamentary tradition and served as a constructive partner with the Whigs in reforming many of the basic institutions of the state’ (71). But who could take seriously the arguments of a fat old man in a ridiculous hat taking money from paupers? In December 1845, Mr. Punch, speaking as one showman to another, had lectured O’Connell on exactly this point:
There are times and seasons to take money from poor devils who are starving! — To be going round for money just now in Ireland — to take the last pence of the poor, ragged, kindly, hungry, foolish creatures — it turns my gorge somehow…let them off this time — the poor starving rogues — the good-natured simple Paddies, who roar at all your jokes, huzzah at all your lies, come leagues upon leagues to attend your show, and have paid their money so often! (Punch, xi., 1845,215).
As usual Punch managed to be condescending to both O’Connell and his followers. As for his image in England, cartoons such as ‘Jeremy Diddler,’ ‘The Doll Trick’ and ‘The Irish Joseph Ady’ made O’Connell into so ridiculous and untrustworthy a figure that none of his positions regarding Ireland could be taken seriously by any right-thinking Englishman.1
Irish appeals for assistance during the Famine had to overcome the ridicule and disbelief directed at Ireland through the caricatures of its most visible leader. The question of Irish relief was debated within a context of insurmountably negative attitudes, which The Times’ editorials and Punch’s cartoons on O’Connell helped to generate. O’Connell himself wrote to Thomas Matthew Ray on 6 February 1847, complaining of the difficulties of communicating the reality of the Irish Famine to the members of Parliament: ‘…there seems to be an ignorance of the real state of horror in which Ireland is plunged. How I wish that it were possible to make Parliament comprehend the enormous and hideous extent of the calamity which cries for a remedy’ (MacDonagh, 1989,313). He tried one last time on 9 February 1847, standing sick and barely audible before a House that afforded him the minimal respect of silence. The King of the Beggars begged for his people:
She [Ireland] was in their hands — in their power. If they did not save her, she could not save herself. He solemnly called on them to recollect that he predicted with the sincerest conviction, that one-fourth of her population would perish unless Parliament came to their relief (MacDonagh, 1989, 313).
A month after his final speech in Parliament, O’Connell departed London and on 22 March crossed the Channel. He traveled by slow stages to Italy, trying to reach Rome before he died. His death in Genoa took place on 17 May 1847.
Meanwhile, in Dublin the Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Bessborough, the Protestant aristocrat who represented imperial power in Ireland, had died just one day before, on 16 May 1847. On 20 May, The Times admiringly quoted the account of the Earl’s death published in Dublin’s Freeman’s Journal. While Irish peasants were dying daily, metropolitan readers were offered a vision of fortitude represented by Bessborough’s near-heroic and ideal Victorian demise:
Although the malady under which his Lordship laboured was of a painful character, yet so great was his physical and mental energies that he continued to transact business almost up to the last moment of his existence…. [O]n Thursday last he wrote a letter to Lord John Russell on the state of this country…. On Sunday forenoon he sat up and performed the operation of shaving himself, and afterwards ate a chicken for dinner. He retained his senses to the latest moment.
This passage had four of the major virtues of the period neatly folded into it: a strong work ethic, cleanliness, rationality and a good appetite. Unlike many who died in Ireland that year, his Lordship departed neat, clean and with a full stomach.
In contrast, a week after this event The Times published the news of O’Connell’s death in Italy. The notice was from Galignani’s Messenger in the form of a letter from a reassuringly authentic source, a Dr. Duff, ‘an English physician called to attend him. ‘The letter was very direct and full of medical information. At the doctor’s first visit, O’Connell was found suffering from ‘profuse and involuntary diarrhea.’ O’Connell’s ‘great repugnance to swallow even the most simple medicine’ was commented on several times. Apparently, he refused any liquids for two days before he died. The symptoms given — sleepiness and incoherence — were those of dehydration. The loss of his mental powers was mentioned more than once. O’Connell was ‘incoherent,’ ‘the mind wavered,’ and ‘he imagined himself in London’ (May 24 1847, 3).
The Times referred to another correspondent who commented almost accusingly, on O’Connell’s ‘neglect of the advice of the physicians he consulted at Paris.’ These accounts seemed to suggest that O’Connell was obstinate and foolish, perversely refusing liquids and treatment, and suffering from ‘congestion of the brain.’ The picture was that of a slow, miserable end: ‘the breathing very laborious, the voice scarcely audible, and the words half formed.’ In contrast to Bessborough’s control and endurance, the dying O’Connell was reported in The Times as irrational, incontinent, half-asleep and mumbling. His refusal to take his medicine made his death a near metaphor for Ireland itself resisting the prescriptions of the British Parliament.
The Times continued to treat the deaths of the Viceroy and O’Connell rather differently. First, in its Parliamentary report, the paper ran a touching tribute to Lord Bessborough given by Lord John Russell. Responding in Parliament to a question about filling the suddenly vacant office of Lord Lieutenant,
Lord J. RUSSELL, whose voice faltered, and who evidently spoke under deep emotion, said: — Perhaps the house will permit me, in answering that question, to express the grief which we, and the Sovereign whom we have the honour to serve, have felt at the melancholy loss the country has sustained (hear, hear), in the death of a nobleman, whose intimate knowledge of Ireland, whose clear judgment, whose conciliatory qualities (hear, hear) were so well adapted to soften animosities which have long been the bane of that country, and to point the way to her future improvement (The Times, 19 May 1847, 3).
In his speech, Russell made references to the Queen, to Ireland’s age-old conflicts, and to the country’s ‘future improvement,’ as if to bring into the realm of normality the condition of a country in which widespread disease and death had become the real norm.
In contrast, the lengthy obituary on O’Connell published by Delane in The Times was a highly partisan History of the man and his era. The writer took note of the attention paid to O’Connell by public opinion on the Continent and in North America. He had, therefore, to admit that
The whole civilized world is so thoroughly and so unanimously persuaded of a fundamental justice in Mr. O’Connell’s cause, and an essential heroism in his character, that modesty as well as generosity compel us to deal tenderly with this belief. Whatever we may think of Mr. O’Connell, our respect for human nature will hardly allow us to believe all the world in the wrong. At the same time, fidelity to our own honest impressions, and to that national instinct which has so often proved right, requires us to state how every true-hearted Englishman regards the career of this extraordinary man.
It was possible, the article continued, that foreigners may have been dazzled by O’Connell’s eloquence. On the other hand,
We are able to compare words with facts. To the ordinary English mind, the calm result of a very long acquaintance is that Mr. O’Connell considered his cause so sacred as to dispense with all the obligations of decency and of truth. There are very few Englishmen, if any, who would believe one single statement to be correct, or one epithet to be just, merely because it had been uttered by DANIEL O’CONNELL (24 May 1847,4; italics original).
‘Modesty,’ ‘generosity’ and tenderness became light burdens as The Times plunged into O’Connell’s biography.
Addressing the ‘real’ history of the O’Connell family, The Times asked:
…have they been ‘jobbers, hucksters, peddlers, smugglers, and everything base and beggarly?’ or are they the lineal descendants of the Sovereign Lords of Iveragh, and have they, through successive generations, preserved the purity of gentle blood and the reputation of honourable men?’Alas! Who can tell? If there be one thing in this world less worthy of credence than another it is an Irish pedigree (24 May 1847, 3).
The writer commented on the ‘obscure locality’ from which O’Connell came, his education, and a suggestion that he ‘was intended for the priesthood…. But it is difficult to imagine anyone more incapable than he was of maintaining even those outward signs of holiness which are generally observed by the ecclesiastics of his persuasion.’
Regarding O’Connell’s abilities as a lawyer, ‘There are men in the Temple who would laugh to scorn the best specimens of his special pleading.’ As to his political work, The Times’ writer confidently asserted: ‘It is a generally received opinion that, from the very starting point of his career, he displayed every quality, good and evil, of a perfect demagogue’ (The Times, 24 May 1847, 3).
The Times’ anti-Catholic bias was demonstrated in the obituary’s sneering description of O’Connell ‘as the great agent of what was called “Catholic Emancipation.”’ Instead of focusing on O’Connell’s organizing and political skills, the paper enjoyed itself with a somewhat satiric curse-on-both-houses account of O’Connell’s early battles with the entrenched and corrupt Orange-dominated Dublin Council. Although the paper noted that the Orange side did its best to resuscitate some old Penal Laws as a weapon against Catholic Emancipation, it condemned O’Connell for his vigorous defense of his co-religionists in the courts. The paper did, of course, discuss both the duel with the Orange champion D’Esterre and the aborted challenge from Peel (The Times, 24 May 1847, 3).
The Times dismissed O’Connell’s contribution as a member of Parliament by insisting that being a ‘mouth piece of the priesthood and populace of Ireland usually made it necessary that the tone of his speeches should harmonize with the feelings of a rude and passionate multitude.’ The writer did concede, however, that the Irishman had some ability: ‘on subjects distinct from the party squabbles of his countrymen, scarcely any one addressed the house more effectively than did Mr. O’Connell.’ This introduced The Times’ theme that O’Connell had possessed a considerable talent that had been corrupted and wasted.
Had he not belonged to a proscribed race, been born in a semi-barbarous state of society, been blinded by the fallacies of an educational system which was based upon Popish theology; had not his intellect been subsequently narrowed by the influence of legal practice, and the original coarseness of his feelings been aggravated by the habits of…a mob-orator, he might have attained to enviable eminence, legitimate power, and enduring fame. …[Instead] he devoted herculean energies to the acquisition of tribute from his starving countrymen, and bestowed upon his descendants the remnants of a mendicant revenue, when he might have bequeathed them an honourable name (The Times, 24 May 1847, 3).
The Tory Standard for 24 May carefully tip-toed its way into its editorial on Daniel O’Connell, gently pointing out to its readers that the grand old man of Irish politics was older than he had let on. Given O’Connell’s years, it was ‘less painful’ to realize that the ‘learned gentleman’ had fallen ‘to his ground “as a shock of corn in its season“ than to suppose that his end was hastened by reflection upon the condition, in this miserable year, of the unhappy country in which…he has exercised a greater influence than was exercised by any other.’ The Standard’s editor, Dr. Stanley Lees Giffard, was described by a contemporary as being an ‘honest Orangeman, and as violent and fanatical as most of his faith’ (Griffiths, 1990, 121). Having tipped its hat respectfully to the deceased, his paper then unleashed a Protestant tirade.
Mr. O’Connell was not a philanthropist — was not in any sense a patriot…. Mr. O’Connell was a Papist (we do not use the word offensively) — a Papist of the sixteenth century (for Irish Romanism is still in the sixteenth century), and whoever employs this simple clue will…reconcile whatever of falsehood, coarseness, and even inhumanity may be alleged against him, with the most absolute submission to the dictates of conscience….
In case its readers did not quite make the connection between centuries, the paper reiterated that
Mr. O’Connell was a Papist of the sixteenth century — of the century in which Sir THOMAS MORE was a torturer and a murderer — in which even the highest intellectual gifts did not restrain from murder, conspiracy, and assassination, so many sincere and learned men as lighted the fires of Smithfield, arranged the sacrifice of St. Bartholomew in France, and fell by the executioner in England for plots against the life of ELIZABETH.
According to the Standard’s logic, O’Connell’s ‘only real allegiance’ was to Rome, via the ‘French Emperor.’ It was O’Connell’s dedication to the Pope that accounted for his opposition to the Union, since without it Ireland would revert to Papal domination (Standard, 24 May 1847).
The Manchester Guardian, which had shared some of O’Connell’s liberal attitudes, published a less hostile obituary. It emphasized the Irish leader’s antipathy towards revolution. It even noted that he had joined loyal Yeomanry units in Ireland during the rebellions of 1798 and 1803. The paper also recalled O’Connell’s support of reform in England (29 May 1847, 2).
Frederick Bayley’s Illustrated London News treated Daniel O’Connell’s death as a premier news event that demanded dignified and sympathetic reporting. The journal gave extensive pictorial coverage to the arrival of the Liberator’s remains in Dublin. For the issue of the week ending Saturday, 29 May 1847, Bayley published a front-page article, along with a portrait of the Liberator, a poem in his honor, an article on his ancestry and a full-page obituary, plus reprints from the French press. In terms of column inches in a single issue, the subject was the most thoroughly covered in that year.
The Illustrated London News began its editorial with the words, ‘“There’s a great spirit gone!” must have been the feeling if not the expression of all on hearing of it [O’Connell’s death].’ Recalling his victory in winning Catholic Emancipation, the journal challenged the vitriolic obituaries on O’Connell from the British Press.
Whoever does battle with old and dominant systems excites too many enmities in those arrayed against him, to receive fair measure at their hands; they will not allow greatness to the man by whom they have been defeated, though, if they ask themselves how, with the full command of the Legislature, the Throne, offices, power, and wealth — with all the strength that an empire can bring to maintain an old injustice — they have been driven from their position and compelled to yield, their own answer, that it was effected by a very ordinary, and, in some respects, a worthless man, convicts themselves of singular bad fortune or extreme incapability (Illustrated London News, 29 May 1847, 337).
The ILN reminded its readers of the treatment that much of the press had given to Cromwell in his time: that he had been denounced as a vulgar, ambitious brewer and a consummate hypocrite. Yet he ‘dethroned the Stuarts and governed the kingdom ably….’ Likewise, the journal recalled that the British press described Napoleon as ‘a wretched dwarf stained by every vice and weakness,’ although thirty years later ‘a thousand records…prove his immense genius, and show how egregiously men erred in their estimate’ (337-38).
The comparison of O’Connell with these heroic antecedents suggests that Frederick Bayley’s leader writer saw the Irishman as a comparable national leader of European stature. In terms of the immediate effect of O’Connell’s death, the Illustrated London News was wary of the possible outcome: ‘We fervently hope the preservation of peace may prove not to be among the things for which the people of England are indebted to O’Connell’ (338). The ILN implied that O’Connell’s insistence upon a policy of using moral rather than physical force to effect change had kept the Irish in check for decades.
Bayley’s writer suggested another force that might compel the English to act — the Famine itself, the ‘pressing problem of how all are to exist.’ Considering the Famine in the context of the Union, the Illustrated London News stated, ‘It is quite certain a new era is opening in that country [Ireland]; with O’Connell dies its old History….’ He left behind him a challenge of ‘fair dealing, justice, and immediate exertion, that England can no longer be deaf to…Ireland can be neglected no more or she will drag England down with her’ (338). The leader noted that in the end O’Connell had failed to rouse Parliament to action. However, given ‘the state of the country, and at his age, he could not do much more.’ (It is ironic that on the same page containing the sketch of O’Connell’s life the ILN published instructions for cooking Indian or corn meal, the principal substitute food made available to Ireland.)
The Illustrated London News also printed a letter from a correspondent, dated Genoa, 18 May, which gave a detailed account of the religious activities surrounding O’Connell’s death. The correspondent may have been a Catholic priest in O’Connell’s entourage. In any case, the letter represents a more heroic and devout passing of the Liberator than the clinical death watch published by The Times had suggested.
He never murmured, though his internal sufferings, at times at least, must have been great. Every one was struck with his serenity, his recollection and fervour in receiving the last rites of religion: The adorable name of Jesus, the prayer of St. Bernard to our Blessed Lady, mingled from time to time with verses from the Psalms…he continued to recognize his confessor, and to respond to his suggestions (347).
The letter ends with the mention of a requiem mass at which the Governor-General and the foreign Consuls were expected to be present, a suggestion of the esteem in which O’Connell was held on the Continent.
To accompany its obituary Illustrated London News commissioned a drawing by William Harvey memorializing O’Connell. In it the great man stands on a pedestal. An angel crowns him with a circlet inscribed ‘Catholic Emancipation,’ while three women weep beneath the pedestal. Even the winged figure on the Irish harp looks up to O’Connell’s image in grief and dismay. At the foot of the pedestal lies a snake-tailed monster with Medusalike hair, a gorgon, probably intended to represent the penal laws (345).
The Illustrated London News’ 14 August issue featured the ‘Funeral Obsequies of Mr. O’Connell,’ headed by an elaborate drawing combining a medallion image of the Liberator with a wreath of shamrocks, a pall-draped coffin, a mourning Hibernia and the harp of Erin (see Figure 9.2). This section contained several pages of text, as well as illustrations, such as the ‘Sea Chapel,’ a tent erected over the coffin on board the ship that brought ‘The Liberator’s’ remains back to Dublin. There were also several drawings of the procession through Dublin, featuring the triumphal car that bore O’Connell through the city after his release from prison two year earlier. Now it was draped with pall, its seat of honour empty (see Figure 9.3).
The procession through Dublin had all the trappings of a state funeral. The last such event London had seen was in 1827 for George Canning, and it did not see another until the extravaganza of Wellington’s funeral procession in 1851. The coverage given to O’Connell in the Illustrated London News was, of course, overshadowed by the 110 pages devoted to the late Duke spread over 15 numbers (Sinnema 181, 201nl). Yet, given that O’Connell had never been a member of a government, and had been controversial throughout all of his career, the attention given him by the ILN was impressive. Although this may have represented some interest in the Liberator on the part of Bayley, the editors and publishers must have assumed that, given O’Connell’s status and the controversies surrounding him, the coverage given his funeral would sell papers.
Figure 9.2: Illustrated London News, x. (1847), 104.
Figure 9.3: Illustrated London News, x. (1847), 108.
The contrast of the Illustrated London News’ coverage of O’Connell with those of The Times and the Standard is striking. The ILN pointed out the Liberator’s strengths and successes; The Times concentrated on what it considered his many failures. While The Times could only portray O’Connell as an Irish demagogue fixated on his parochial issues, the ILN placed him within the broader context of British politics: ‘After he entered the House of Commons he by no means confined himself to Irish affairs. His speeches on the Reform Bill were among the best of that memorable period; he assisted in carrying Corporation Reform, and he took part in the discussion of the Anti Corn-Law League…’ (29 May 1847, 338).
Significantly, Delane’s paper could not resist using its commentary on O’Connell to call into question the Irish character. Whether gentleman or peasant, the Irishman could be diverting in England. According to The Times, however, put him back in his own land and ‘the humour of the picture will at once be turned into sadness; the “romancing” will become lying; the cant, hypocrisy, and the social complaisance will sink into a mean, petty, paltry, fawning mendicancy, at which it is more natural to weep than to laugh, — to be angry than to be amused’ (24 May 1847, 4).
Figure 9.4: Illustrated London News, x. (1847), 346.
The Illustrated London News, however, treated O’Connell with sympathy and dignity, publishing a sketch ‘taken just previous to his leaving England’ (see Figure 9.4). After all the Punch cartoons of O’Connell as a buffoon in a funny hat, the ILN’s sketch shows the tired, aging Irishman as a sober, responsible figure. Even the Repeal cap looks respectable, like a beret one might see on a dignified old man on the Continent.
Note:
1. Punch’s ‘The Irish Conjuror and His Celebrated Doll Trick’ (viii., 18) depicts O’Connell as a showman working a doll that could be transformed by the flick of the wrist. The caption states: ‘Now throw some money into the Ring, if it were only a farthing each, Ladies and Gentleman, say a farthing each, and you will see the celebrated Doll Trick all over again.’ The context appears to have been O’Connell’s suggestion that the Union could be converted into a type of federal arrangement.
