Life
1803-1864; b. Dromoland Castle, Co. Clare, son of Sir William Edward [var.
Lucius]; ed. Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge; Conservative MP for
Ennis, 1828-31 [vars. 1825; 1826-1841], resisting opposition from Daniel
O’Connell’s candidate for in this seat; supported Catholic Emancipation;
joined O’Connell’s Anti-Tory Association, 1835; successfully
contested Limerick against Catholic and O’Connellite opposition,
MP 1835-49; supported anti-Tithes movement; proposed peasant ownership
of reclaimed land, 1838; resigned post as Commissioner of the Peace after
dismissal of pro-Repeal magistrates, 1843; joined Repeal Association,
1843 [var. 1844]; protested at state trial and subsequent imprisonment
of O’Connell (1843-44); became convinced that ‘Ireland has nothing
to hope from the sagacity, the justice and the generosity of the English
Parliament’, and joined Repeal Association, 1844; ; proposed Repeal
Pledge, Nov. 1844; informed ’82 Club in Dublin that he was returning
to Westminster to oppose Coercion Bill sought by Irish landlords; tells
Westminster house that 100,000 people are famishing in Ireland, and that
he has seem families eating meals ‘which any member of the house
would be sorry to offer to his hogs’; did not share anti-landlord
politics of Mitchel and Lalor; withdraws with Thomas D’Arcy Magee
and other Young Irelanders from Repeal Association, 28 July 1846; co-fnd.
Irish Confederation, acting as its leader, Jan. 1847; supported non-denominational Queen’s Colleges; objected to
O’Connell’s alliance with Whigs, believing that only the ‘shipwreck’
of successive English ministries could led to the establishment of a separate
Irish legislature; suspension of habeas corpus, 1848; arrested and tried,
with John Mitchel and T. F. Meagher, Mar. 1848; acquitted, though Mitchel
was retried under the Treason Felony Act (1848); Confederation outlawed,
26 July; at Irish League (formerly Irish Confederation) meeting on Tipperary-Kilkenny
border, O’Brien unique in favouring armed struggle; sought to establish
a National Guard and a Council of Three Hundred; started an abortive rising,
July 1848; said to have instructed his men not to attack private property;
police took refuge in house of widow Mrs McCormack (battle of the Widow
McCormack’s cabbage garden [var. patch]’), several insurgents
being killed when they attacked; arrested at Thurles; described the rising
as ‘an escapade’ and was the sole principal arrested, Michael
Doheny, James Stephens (his aide de camp), and John Blake Dillon escaping;
O’Brien sentenced to death; sentence commuted to transportation;
incarcerated in Kilmainham before being transported to Tasmania, reached
Van Diemen’s Land in 1849 after 4 months journey on board HMS Swift;
served his sentence at New Norfolk; released to America with conditional
pardon, 1854; returned to UK; wrote article in The Nation advocating
‘moral force’ rather than ‘physical force’ to the
Phoenix Club of Fenians; retired to Bangor, North Wales; issued Principles
of Government, 2 vols. (Dublin 1856); d. Bangor, 16 June; there is a statue
to on mid-O’Connell St. is by Farrell. PI DNB JMC DIB DIW DIH OCIL
[ top ]
Criticism
Richard & Marian Davis, eds., The Rebel in His Family: Selected
Papers of William Smith O’Brien (Cork UP 1998).
Richard Davis, Revolutionary Imperialist: William Smith O’Brien 1803-1864 (Dublin: Lilliput Press 1998), 420pp.
Robert Sloan, William Smith O'Brien & The Young Ireland Rebellion of 1848 (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2000), 320pp. [pb.].
Thomas Keneally, The Great Shame: A Story of the Irish in the Old World and the New (London: Chatto & Windus 1998), pp.205 et passim.
[ top ]
Notes
Roy Foster, Modern Ireland (London: Allen Lane 1988), p.315,
ed. Harrow and Cambridge; MP for Ennis, 1826-31; early a member of the
Repeal Association, he opposed O’Connell’s radical politics,
but swung towards extremism; co-fnd Irish Confederation and stressed the
need to employ ‘force of opinion’ against Mitchel’s more
violent counsels; urged formation of national Guard; arrested and tried
but released; planned rebellion, his name being omitted from War Directory
of 21 July; led insurrection at suspension of habeas corpus, 23 July;
sentenced and commuted; Principles of Government or Meditations in
Exile (1856); pardoned, 1856, abstaining from politics. BIBL, Richard
Davis, William Smith O’Brien, Ireland – 1848 – Tasmania
(Geography Publs. 1989), 83pp.
Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English, The Romantic Period, 1789-1850, (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980), Vol. I; p.84; W. S. O’Brien, writing during the trial of O’Connell, ‘Slowly, reluctantly convinced that Ireland has nothing to hope from the sagacity, the justice and the generosity of the English Parliament, my reliance shall henceforth be placed upon our own native energy and patriotism.’ (‘O’Brien Papers’, quoted in Denis Gwynn, Young Ireland and 1848, p.17. ALSO, Charles Gavan Duffy gives an account of William Smith O’Brien in Young Ireland, ‘His family were birth and possessions amongst the most distinguished of the Protestant gentry. ... He was the incarnation of public duty. At the forty years of age, with tastes, opinions, and friendships unchangeably formed, he separated himself from his associates of a lifetime, to join a party in their day of humiliation - many8 of whom offended his taste and some of whom alarmed his judgement - because he believed that in joining them he followed the path of duty. From his English education he derived manners which his country regarded as cold, but they covered a firmness of purpose and fidelity in friendship not always found in men of more expansive nature. He never attained to popular eloquence, but it was an impressive and hopeful spectacle in later times to see an Irish audience listening with eager interest to his measured and sometimes stilted language on the public platform; because they had come to understand that it represented his opinions and intentions with exact accuracy.’ (p.189-90.) Further, O’Brien made an inflammatory speech on his way back to Ireland from France: ‘I trust that the Repealers of Ireland will accept the aid which the Chartists are universally prepared to give.’ (quoted in Mitchel, The Last Conquest &c., Letter XVII, p.249.) Back in Ireland, he formed an Irish Guard and a council of Three Hundred, as a parliament; both bodies banned by the Castle. The rising which he ordered at Slievanamon, was opposed by the clergy. In prison, he wrote, ‘I am compelled to admit, that our escapade - it does not deserve the name of an insurrection - was in a supreme degree contemptible. ... [PARA] I am compelled to charge myself with having totally miscalculated the energies of the Irish People ... / I regret with bitterness that the events have strengthened the hands of our enemies, discouraged the hearts of our fiends, and dimmed for a time the hopes which led us to believe that an era was approaching fraught with national happiness and national glory.’ (‘O’Brien Papers’ quoted in Denis Gwynn, Young Ireland and 1848, p.234.) [89]
Justin McCarthy ed., Irish Literature (Washington: University of America 1904), gives ‘Amusements of the People’, an extract from Principles of Government.
Belfast Public Library lists Croagh Patrick under William S[mith] O’Brien (not so listed in British Library).
[ top ]
Famine speech (House of Commons, 27 April [1847]: ‘The circumstance which appeared most aggravating was that the people were starving in the midst of plenty, and that every tide carried from the Irish ports corn sufficient for the maintenance of thousands of the Irish people.’ (cited in Brendan Ó Cathaoir, ‘Famine diary’, Irish Times (27 April. 1996).
Brendan Ó Cathaoir, ‘Famine Diary’, Irish Times,
20 April 1996), cites William Smith O’Brien’s speech in Westminster
on 17 April 1846, when he stated that while accepting the Crown, he rejected
the imperial parliament; further argues that during the recent Coercion
Bill debate the Irish people were alienated, perhaps irrevocably; finds
linking relief with repression disingenuous; in exchanges with the Home
Secretary, Sir James Graham, he said ‘How different would have been
the conduct of an Irish government and an Irish parliament. An Irish government
would have summoned an Irish parliament to meet in November last, to consider
the steps necessary to meet the unforeseen calamity; instead of coupling
measures of coercion and relief [...] out of the resources of Ireland
they would have made preparations to prevent famine among the people;
cited incidents of deaths reported in Roscommon Journal and in letter
from Relief Commissioners, in answer to Graham’s assertion that he
had been officially notified of no cases. (See also under Mrs Elizabeth
Smith.)
Portrait: There is a posthumous port. of William Smith O’Brien by Dermod O’Brien [lent to Ulster Museum Irish Portraits Exhibition by Brendan O’Brien] (see Ann Cruikshank, Catalogue; 1965). See also Irish Book Lover 1, 2, 3.
Photograph of William Smith O’Brien and T. F. Meagher in prison in 1848 is reproduced in Myrtle Hill and Vivienne Pollock, ‘Images of the Past: Photographs as Historical Evidence’, in History Ireland, 2, 1 (1994). [Irish List]
O’Brien’s infant son Charles was brought into Kilmainham jail and christened in the Protestant chapel in his father's presence. (See Fraser Drew, ‘Ghosts of Kilmainham’, in Éire-Ireland, 4, 3, Autumn 1969, pp.110-13; p.111.)
[ top ]
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)