More often than not we find
ourselves living within a society which has not officially declared history
dead but has largely forgotten about it’s past. To move forward and become
stronger, a democracy needs to look back and reflect on what it went through,
to learn from past mistakes, to re-read and re-evaluate the works and lives of
active and passive leaders, politicians and various intellectuals. This, to my
mind is both necessary and definitely positive. Revisiting past events and
confronting them with our daily experiences would be educational and formative.
In reality very few are willing to go down this road and are more interested in
the exciting advances in technology that have admittedly brought progress but
have also contributed to many negative effects on the fabric of our society.
Daniel O’ Connell.
Some time ago, while on a
visit to the Emerald Island, Ireland, following as I usually do the popular
Michelin tourist guide book’s advice, I visited what turned out to be an
interesting call, Derrynane House situated on the Ring of Kerry, built in 1825
by an Irish politician who had been previously unknown to me, Daniel O’Connell
(1775-1847). Tersely described as “ a
Roman Catholic lawyer, known as the Counsellor and the Liberator, campaigned
for recognition of the rights of Catholics, he was elected MP for Clare in
1828; he denounced violence and organised mass meetings to rally support for
repeal of the Act of Union.”
O’Connell was born on the 6th
August 1775 and was the eldest son of ten children. He became a very well-known
lawyer in his time one, who it is said was renowned for his fearlessness in
court. But his handicap had been that he was a catholic and thus excluded as
his fellow Catholic country men from holding public office in Parliament, in
corporations, law, the army and the navy, as the Protestants could. The
argument, that time would prove to be mistaken, had been that Catholicism was
destructive of civil liberties and intolerant, and that those professing the
faith were subversive with a dual allegiance for pope and king.
Emancipation.
There were various
discriminations and civil disabilities against Catholics which had still been in existence after the Act of Union. The basic issue was that though a catholic
could run for office he was precluded from taking an oath which declared the
catholic religion as “superstitious” and “idolatrous”.
This led O’Connell to assume
the leadership actively campaigning for emancipation. This he achieved in
different steps. In 1823 he set up the Catholic Association mobilising the
majority of Irish Catholics. Then, in 1828 he forced the issue when he ran for
a By-election in County Clare, was elected but refrained from taking his seat
until the offending oath was abolished. His engaged campaigning and his eloquent
speeches finally led the British Prim Minister, the Duke of Wellington and Sir
Robert Peel to carry the Emancipation Act of 1929. This paved the way for Irish
and English Roman Catholics to all but a limited number of public offices.
His achievements.
Undoubtedly the Emancipation
Act will always remain his strongest legacy to the Irish nation. But his
speeches remain to-day a source of inspiration.
He was against violence and
for active democratic participation as he is recorded to have said “The
principle of my political life and that in which I have instructed the people
of Ireland is, that all ameliorations and improvements in political
institutions can be obtained by persevering in a perfectly peaceable and legal
course , and cannot be obtained by forcibile means, or if they could be got by
forcible means, such means create more evils than cure, and leave the country
worse than they found it”
He was always unmistaken about
church state relations as he stated “I am sincerely a Catholic, but I am not a
Papist. I deny the doctrine that the Pope has any temporal authority, directly
or in-directly , in Ireland.”
Lastly as Fergus O’Ferrall put
it “His whole life was dedicated to the proposition, which the Protestant
Establishment and many European Catholics could not understand , that it was
possible to combine the fullest civil liberty with the utmost religious
fidelity to the faith and the doctrine of the Catholic Church.”
To day we celebrate the memory
of this great irish politician the true liberator but we must admit that the prejudice,
bias, intolerance and at times injustices still persist against professed Catholics
in political life.
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