External links
- Michael Doheny. The Felon's Track , Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son, 1920.
Irish Confederation | |
|---|---|
| Chairman | John Shine Lawlor |
| Founded | 13 January 1847 |
| Split from | Repeal Association |
| Ideology | Irish nationalism Young Ireland Irish Repeal |
The Irish Confederation [1] was an Irish nationalist independence movement, established on 13 January 1847 by members of the Young Ireland movement who had seceded from Daniel O'Connell's Repeal Association. [2] Historian T. W. Moody described it as "the official organisation of Young Ireland". [3]
In June 1846, Sir Robert Peel's Tory Ministry fell, and the Whigs under Lord John Russell came to power. Daniel O'Connell, founder of the Repeal Association which campaigned for a repeal of the Act of Union of 1800 between Great Britain and Ireland, simultaneously attempted to move the Association into supporting the Russell administration and English Liberalism.
The intention was that Repeal agitation would be damped down in return for a profuse distribution of patronage through Conciliation Hall, home of the Repeal Association. [4] On 15 June 1846 Thomas Francis Meagher denounced English Liberalism in Ireland saying that there was a suspicion that the national cause of Repeal would be sacrificed to the Whig government and that the people who were striving for freedom would be "purchased back into factious vassalage." [5] Meagher and the other “Young Irelanders" (an epithet of opprobrium used by O'Connell to describe the young men of The Nation newspaper [6] ), as active Repealers, vehemently denounced in Conciliation Hall any movement towards English political parties, be they Whig or Tory, so long as Repeal was denied.
The "Tail" as the "corrupt gang of politicians who fawned on O'Connell" were named, and who hoped to gain from the government places decided that the Young Irelanders must be driven from the Repeal Association. [7] The Young Irelanders were to be presented as revolutionaries, factionists, infidels and secret enemies of the Church. [5] For this purpose resolutions were introduced to the repeal Association on 13 July which declared that under no circumstances was a nation justified in asserting its liberties by force of arms. [7] The Young Irelanders, as members of the association, had never advocated the use of physical force to advance the cause of repeal and opposed any such policy. [8] Known as the "Peace Resolutions,” they declared that physical force was immoral under any circumstances to obtain national rights. Meagher agreed that only moral and peaceful means should be adopted by the Association, but if it were determined that Repeal could not be carried by those means, a no less honourable one he would adopt though it be more perilous. The resolutions would again be raised on 28 July in the Association and Meagher would then deliver his famous "Sword Speech". [9]
Addressing the Peace Resolutions, Meagher held that there was no necessity for them. Under the existing circumstances of the country, any provocation to arms would be senseless and wicked. He dissented from the Resolutions because by assenting to them he would pledged himself to the unqualified repudiation of physical force "in all countries, at all times, and in every circumstance." There were times when arms would suffice, and when political amelioration called for "a drop of blood, and many thousand drops of blood." He then "eloquently defended physical force as an agency in securing national freedom." [10] Having been at first semi-hostile, Meagher carried the audience to his side and the plot against the Young Irelanders was placed in peril of defeat. Observing this he was interrupted by O'Connell's son John who declared that either he or Meagher must leave the hall. William Smith O'Brien then protested against John O'Connell's attempt to suppress a legitimate expression of opinion, and left with other prominent Young Irelanders, and never returned. [7] [10]
After negotiations for a reunion had failed, the seceders decided to establish a new organisation which would be called the Irish Confederation. Its founders determined to revive the uncompromising demand for a national Parliament with full legislative and executive powers. They were resolute on a complete prohibition of place-hunting or acceptance of office under the existing Government. They wished to return to the honest policy of the earlier years of the Repeal Association, [11] and would be supported by the young men, who had shown their repugnance for the corruption and insincerity of Conciliation Hall by their active sympathy with the seceders. [12] There were extensive indications that many of the previously Unionist class, in both the cities and among land owners, were resentful of the neglect of Irish needs by the British Parliament since the famine began. What they demanded was vital legislative action to provide both employment and food, and to prevent all further export of the corn, cattle, pigs and butter which were still leaving the country. On this there was a general consensus of Irish opinion according to Dennis Gwynn, "such as had not been known since before the Act of Union."
The first meeting of the Irish Confederation took place in the Rotunda, Dublin on 13 January 1847. [11] [13] The chairperson for the first meeting was John Shine Lawlor, the honorary secretaries being John Blake Dillon and Charles Gavan Duffy. Duffy would later be replaced by Meagher. [12] Ten thousand members would be enrolled, but of the gentry there were very few, the middle class stood apart and the Catholic clergy were unfriendly. In view of the poverty of the people, subscriptions would be purely voluntary, the founders of the new movement would bear the cost themselves if necessary. [14]
In the 1847 United Kingdom general election, three Irish Confederation candidates stood - Richard O'Gorman in Limerick City, William Smith O'Brien in Limerick County and Thomas Chisholm Anstey in Youghal. O'Brien and Anstey were elected. [15]
Following mass emigration by Irish people to England, the Irish Confederation then organised there also. There were more than a dozen Confederate Clubs in Liverpool and over 700 members of 16 clubs located in Manchester and Salford. [16]
General
Additional reading
John Mitchel was an Irish nationalist writer and journalist chiefly renowned for his indictment of British policy in Ireland during the years of the Great Famine. Concluding that, in Ireland, legal and constitutional agitation was a "delusion", Mitchel broke first with Daniel O'Connell's Repeal Association and then with his Young Ireland colleagues at the paper The Nation. In 1848, as editor of his own journal, United Irishman, he was convicted of seditious libel and sentenced to 14-years penal transportation for advocating James Fintan Lalor's programme of co-ordinated resistance to landlords and to the continued shipment of harvests to England.
The Nation was an Irish nationalist weekly newspaper, published in the 19th century. The Nation was printed first at 12 Trinity Street, Dublin from 15 October 1842 until 6 January 1844. The paper was afterwards published at 4 D'Olier Street from 13 July 1844, to 28 July 1848, when the issue for the following day was seized and the paper suppressed. It was published again in Middle Abbey Street on its revival in September 1849 until 1900, when it merged with the Irish Weekly Independent.
Daniel O'Connell (I) (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 instalment of Catholic emancipation in 1829 and allowed him to take a seat in the United Kingdom Parliament to which he had been twice elected.
Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, KCMG, PC, was an Irish poet and journalist, Young Irelander and tenant-rights activist. After emigrating to Australia in 1856 he entered the politics of Victoria on a platform of land reform, and in 1871–1872 served as the colony's 8th Premier.
William Smith O'Brien was an Irish nationalist Member of Parliament (MP) and a leader of the Young Ireland movement. He also encouraged the use of the Irish language. He was convicted of sedition for his part in the Young Irelander "Famine Rebellion" of 1848 but his sentence of death was commuted to deportation to Van Diemen's Land. In 1854, he was released on the condition of exile from Ireland, and he lived in Brussels for two years. In 1856 Smith O'Brien was pardoned and returned to Ireland, but he was never active again in politics.
John Blake Dillon was an Irish writer and politician who was one of the founding members of the Young Ireland movement.
Terence Bellew MacManus was an Irish rebel who participated in the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848. Sentenced to death for treason, he and several other participants were given commuted sentences in 1849 and transported for life to Van Diemen's Land in Australia. Three years later in 1852, MacManus escaped and emigrated to the United States.
Thomas Francis Meagher was an Irish nationalist and leader of the Young Irelanders in the Rebellion of 1848. After being convicted of sedition, he was first sentenced to death, but received transportation for life to Van Diemen's Land in Australia.
Young Ireland was a political and cultural movement in the 1840s committed to an all-Ireland struggle for independence and democratic reform. Grouped around the Dublin weekly The Nation, it took issue with the compromises and clericalism of the larger national movement, Daniel O'Connell's Repeal Association, from which it seceded in 1847. Despairing, in the face of the Great Famine, of any other course, in 1848 Young Irelanders attempted an insurrection. Following the arrest and the exile of most of their leading figures, the movement split between those who carried the commitment to "physical force" forward into the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and those who sought to build a "League of North and South" linking an independent Irish parliamentary party to tenant agitation for land reform.
Dr. Robert Cane (1807–1858), was born in Kilkenny, Ireland in 1807. He was a member of the Repeal Association and the Irish Confederation. He qualified as an M.D. in 1836, became a member of Kilkenny Corporation and was Mayor twice.
James Stephens was an Irish Republican, and the founding member of an originally unnamed revolutionary organisation in Dublin. This organisation, founded on 17 March 1858, was later to become known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood (I.R.B).
The Young Irelander Rebellion was a failed Irish nationalist uprising led by the Young Ireland movement, part of the wider Revolutions of 1848 that affected most of Europe. It took place on 29 July 1848 at Farranrory, a small settlement about 4.3 km north-northeast of the village of Ballingarry, South Tipperary. After being chased by a force of Young Irelanders and their supporters, an Irish Constabulary unit took refuge in a house and held those inside as hostages. A several-hour gunfight followed, but the rebels fled after a large group of police reinforcements arrived.
John Edward Pigot (1822–1871) was an Irish music collector and lawyer, who played a key role in the foundation of the National Gallery of Ireland.
James Fintan Lalor was an Irish revolutionary, journalist, and “one of the most powerful writers of his day.” A leading member of the Irish Confederation, he was to play an active part in both the Rebellion in July 1848 and the attempted Rising in September of that same year. Lalor's writings were to exert a seminal influence on later Irish leaders such as Michael Davitt, James Connolly, Pádraig Pearse, and Arthur Griffith.
Patrick O'Donoghue (1810–1854), also known as Patrick O'Donohoe or O'Donoghoe, from Clonegal, County Carlow, was an Irish Nationalist revolutionary and journalist, a member of the Young Ireland movement.
John Martin was an Irish nationalist activist who shifted from early militant support for Young Ireland and Repeal, to non-violent alternatives such as support for tenant farmers' rights and eventually as the first Home Rule MP, for Meath 1871–1875.
Thomas Devin Reilly(Tomás Damhán Ó Raghailligh) was an Irish revolutionary, Young Irelander and journalist.
Thomas MacNevin was an influential Irish writer and journalist, who died under "peculiarly sad circumstances" in a Bristol asylum.
John Kenyon (1812–1869) was an Irish Catholic priest and nationalist, who was involved in the Young Ireland movement and the Irish Confederation. He was renowned for his strong political and religious views which alienated him from many of his colleagues, and resulted in his being twice suspended from clerical duties. In particular, Kenyon was known for his opposition to the Irish political leader, Daniel O'Connell. Kenyon advocated the use of force to achieve political goals and refused to condemn slavery.
The United Irishman was a nationalist weekly newspaper published by John Mitchel in Dublin in 1848. It was suppressed by the British Government the same year.
