abhorrent to him, and he warmly supported Jeremy Bentham's scheme of codification. At Darrynane he administered justice in rough and ready fashion. Denied the privileges and responsibilities of constructive statesmanship, he nevertheless possessed all the elements that go to make a statesman, and his appreciation of the relative importance of the means to the end rendered him impatient alike of coercion and of the doctrinaire schemes of the Young Ireland party. The bent of his mind was essentially practical. As an orator he held a high, though not the highest, place in parliament. Gifted by nature with a fine ear and a sweet sonorous voice, he spoke easily, unaffectedly, and fluently. He was a ready debater, and was at his best when least prepared. But, unless strongly moved by indignation, he seldom indulged in flights of rhetoric such as his friend Sheil delighted in. Outside parliament, when addressing an open-air meeting of his own countrymen, he reigned supreme, and by the simple magic of his eloquence played at will upon the passions of his audience, stirring them as he pleased to indignation or to pity, to laughter or to tears. He was capable of much exaggeration, and loved to produce the effects ‘which the statement of a startling fact in an unqualified form often causes’ (Lecky). In his hands the system of agitation by mass meetings reached a perfection it never attained before or since. Knowing the value of order and sobriety, he gave every support to the temperance movement of Father Mathew, and he boasted, not without reason, that not a single act of disorder marred the splendour of the magnificent demonstration at Tara.
His position in history is unique. Few men have possessed his personal influence, and still fewer have used commanding influence with equal moderation. The statute-book contains little evidence of his power, but he re-created national feeling in Ireland; and as long as his physical vigour was maintained, kept alive among his countrymen faith in the efficacy of constitutional agitation.
[There is no adequate life of O'Connell. Useful biographies have been published by W. Fagan in 1847, by M. F. Cusack in 1872, by J. O'Rourke and O'Keeffe in 1875, and by J. A. Hamilton in 1888. In addition to the Irish and English newspapers, the principal accessible sources of information are John O'Connell's Life and Speeches of his father, 1846; and his Recollections and Experiences during a Parliamentary Career from 1833 to 1848; Irish Monthly Mag., vols. x.–xv.; Fitzpatrick's Correspondence of Daniel O'Connell; O'Neill Daunt's Personal Recollections; and the Parliamentary Debates. To these may be added for special information Wyse's Sketch of the Catholic Association; Diary and Correspondence of Lord Colchester; Howell's State Trials, vol. xxxi.; Hamilton's State of the Catholic Cause from the issuing of Mr. Pole's Circular Letter, Dublin, 1812; Memoirs of Sir R. Peel; Parker's Sir Robert Peel, from his private correspondence; Letters and Despatches of the Duke of Wellington; Bowring's Life and Works of Jeremy Bentham; Torrens's Memoirs of Viscount Melbourne; Fitzpatrick's Life of Lord Cloncurry, and Life and Times of Dr. Doyle; Special Report of the Proceedings in the case of the Queen v. Daniel O'Connell; Duffy's Life of Thomas Davis, and Four Years of Irish History. Mr. W. E. H. Lecky has given a fairly impartial estimate of his position in history in his Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, and interesting articles of more or less value will be found in the Dublin Review for 1844, Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, 1846, Macmillan's Magazine, 1873, Catholic World, 1875, Nineteenth Century, January, 1889, by Mr. Gladstone.]
O'CONNELL, JOHN (1810–1858), Irish politician, third son of Daniel O'Connell the ‘Liberator’ [q. v.], by his wife Mary, daughter of Dr. O'Connell of Tralee, was born in Dublin on 24 Dec. 1810, and was destined by his father, whose favourite son he was, for law and politics. He was called to the Irish bar at the King's Inns, Dublin, and was returned to parliament for Youghal, on 15 Dec. 1832, as a member of his father's ‘household brigade.’ In 1835 an unsuccessful petition was presented against his return by his opponent, T. B. Smyth (afterwards Irish master of the rolls). Till 1837 he sat for the same constituency; he was then returned unopposed for Athlone on 4 Aug.; on 3 July 1841 he succeeded Joseph Hume in the representation of Kilkenny without a contest, and in August 1847 was returned both for Kilkenny and for Limerick, and elected to sit for the latter place. During this period he had taken a very active part as his father's lieutenant in the repeal agitation. He prepared various reports for the repeal association on ‘Poor-law Remedies’ in 1843, on ‘Commercial Injustices to Ireland,’ and on the ‘Fiscal Relations of the United Kingdom and Ireland’ in 1844, and also in the same year his ‘Argument for Ireland,’ which was separately published and reached a second edition in 1847. He also wrote for the ‘Nation’ his ‘Repeal Dictionary,’ separately published in 1845. He shared his father's trial in 1844, and his imprisonment in Richmond gaol, where he organised private theatricals, and conducted a weekly paper for his fellow-prisoners; rode in
