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John O’Connell and the Great Famine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

Maurice R. O’Connell
Maurice R. O’Connell*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Fordham University, New York
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Extract

Michael Davitt in his book, The fall of feudalism in Ireland, published in 1904, told the story.

it is related that Mr John O’Conneli, M.P., … son of the Liberator, read aloud in Conciliation Hall, Dublin [the meeting place of the Repeal Association], a letter he had received from a catholic bishop in west Cork, in 1847, in which this sentence occurred — ‘the famine is spreading with fearful rapidity and scores of persons are dying of starvation and fever, but the tenants are bravely paying their rents’ — whereupon John O'Connell exclaimed, in proud tones, ‘I thank God I live among a people who would rather die of hunger than defraud their landlords of the rent!’

Type
Articles
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 98 , November 1986 , pp. 138 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1986

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References

1 Davitt, , Fall of feudalism, p. 47 Google Scholar

2 A message to the Irish people (Dublin and Cork, 1985), p. 31.

3 Young Ireland: a fragment of Irish history (London, 1880); Four years of Irish history, 1845–1849 (London, 1883); The league of north and south (London, 1886): Thomas Davis: the memoirs of an Irish patriot (London, 1890); My life in two hemispheres (London, 1893).

4 Moody, T W, Davitt and Irish revolution, 1846–82 (Oxford, 1981), p. 504.Google Scholar

5 Dublin Evening Post, 18 Sept. 1847 Nation, 18 Sept. 1847

6 Nation, 8 Sept. 1847.

7 Ibid.

8 Nation, 8 Jan. 1848.

9 10 Vict., c. 31; O’Neill, Thomas P, ‘The organisation and administration of relief, 1845–52’ in Edwards, Dudley R. and Williams, T Desmond (eds), The Great Famine (London, 1957), p. 249.Google Scholar

10 O’Neill, loc. cit., pp 241–4. O’Neill’s interpretation of the food situation has been largely sustained by a scholar writing more recently, Dr DrBourke, P.M.A. (‘The Irish grain trade, 1839–48’ in I.H.S., 20, no. 78 (Sept. 1976), pp 164–6).Google Scholar

11 Dublin Evening Post, 18 Sept. 1847

12 This was Duffy’s description of John’s letter some weeks later (see below, p. 142).

13 Nation, 25 Sept. 1847 The style of the editorial is unmistakably that of Mitchel, and furthermore Duffy attributes it to Mitchel in a letter to William Smith O’Brien on 6 October 1847 (N.L.I., Smith O’Brien papers, MS 440/2224).

14 In his historical writings produced years later, Mitchel makes very few references to John O’Connell and says nothing about him in the context of this present study

l5 Four years, p. 497; C. G. Duffy to W S. O’Brien, 6 Oct. 1847 (N.L.I., Smith O’Brien papers, MS 440/2224). Neither in the letter, in Four years nor in any other of his books does Duffy make any further reference to John O’Connell’s public letter.

16 Duffy, , Four years, pp 176, 181–2, 186–7, 190, 194, 196, 211–12.Google Scholar

17 Cf. O’Connell, Maurice R., ‘O’Connell, Young Ireland and violence’ in Thought, 53 (1977), pp 381–406; idem, ‘Irish constitutionalism: a rescue operation’ in Studies, lxxv (1986), pp 318–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar