Introduction
William Smith O’Brien is a controversial and misunderstood figure within Irish political history. As a member of the British establishment, and an aristocratic member of the Church of Ireland he cuts an unlikely and sometimes absurd figure against his fellow Irish Catholic nationalist revolutionaries. However, his influence in the British political establishment aroused sympathy for Irish nationalism and his legacy as the acceptable face of revolutionary zeal developed a level of tolerance in Britain for Irish issues that provided a more sympathetic platform for the dialogue on independence. In strong contrast with the absurd caricature of a reluctant revolutionary dressed in a swallowtail coat and a top hat, scrapping with the local constabulary for Irish independence amongst Widow McCormac’s cabbages, Smith O’Brien led an articulate and successful movement to oppose the worst aspects of imperial rule and implement the relationship that set Ireland on its independence trajectory. His positing of an Irish constitution based on the French ideal inspired his design of the Irish Tricolour and was adapted to articulate the repeal movement. His contribution to the acceptance of the Irish language is similarly overlooked.
Life of William Smith O’Brien
WIlliam Smith O’Brien was born on the 17th October 1803 in Co.Clare and was the second son of Sir Edward O’Brien - an Irish parliamentarian who sat in the House of Commons from 1802 to 1826. His mother was Charlotte Smith an Irish woman who inherited Cahermoyle House, an early 19th century house in Country Limerick where he lived with his wife, Lucy, and their seven children. As direct descendents of Brian Boru (the High King Of Ireland) and a leading Church of Ireland family the O’Briens owned large estates in County Limerick and County Clare. William was privately educated in England and later studied law in London and Dublin. In 1828 he followed his father’s footsteps and joined the Tory party in Westminster representing Ennis and by 1835 was the MP for Limerick. In Parliament he lobbied for help and a broader education for the Irish poor and at home he promoted the Irish language. Politically, William Smith O’Brien initially aligned himself with Daniel O’Connell’s anti-union Repeal Association, a movement for independence and democratic reform in Ireland during the 1840s. He led a faction of dissatisfied nationalists within the Repeal Association known as the Young Irelanders. However following personal disputes with O’Connell and political disputes over the Repeal Association’s compromises on Irish independence (which Smith O’Brien believed were inspired by O’Connell’s personal grudges), and the stated intention of empowering the Catholic church’s political authority, the Young Ireland movement broke away from the Repeal Association. In 1847, Smith O’Brien and others formed the Irish Confederation, with the intention of gaining full legislative and executive independence from Britain. The mood in Ireland was supportive because of general disappointment in Britain’s mishandling of the famine, and the contagious wave of nationalism and liberalism on the European mainland. Many of these European revolutions were bloodless and William Smith O’Brien hoped that uniting the Irish landlords and the tenants would oblige Britain to grant independence but instead, in July 1848 Britain announced that members of the Irish Confederation, the Young Irelanders, could be arrested and imprisoned without trial. Wiliam Smith O’Brien, and the other leaders, were forced to decide between fleeing Ireland, surrendering to the authorities or open rebellion. Faced with the threat of imprisonment, the young Irelander leadership chose to rebel and the following day led a march from County Wexford towards Dublin, gathering support as they went.
The Young Ireland Rebellion
William Smith O’Brien had travelled from Dublin to Wexford on the 22nd July to visit friends and still wore his Dublin attire when he discovered that the habeas corpus’ was suspended and his arrest was ordered. The next day, he was joined by Thomas Francis Meagher, John Blake Dillon and other leaders of the Irish Confederation who pushed for an immediate rebellion, rising in Wexford, with the goal of travelling through the country to Dublin - gathering support as they went. In the large towns of Wexford and Kilkenny, thousands of people turned out to follow, many of them armed. Wiilliam Smith O’Brien confidently promised them an independent Ireland within ten days. From the 23rd until the 29th July, they moved from town to town, giving public speeches and recruiting support. However, there was very little in the way of logistical support for this rebellion. William Smith O’Brien ordered that only those who could feed themselves could join. The Irish Confederation had been founded on the premises of honour, morality and reason and William Smith O’Brien therefore refused to let his rebels steal as they travelled through the countryside, and so, with little money available, many of his supporters dropped out of the march for lack of food. The rebel numbers depleted as it progressed towards Dublin and support fell away.
In Tipperary at a village called The Commons, less than 100 of the most determined rebels remained for a gathering on the 28th July. Smith O’Brien’s supporters had erected barricades to prevent his arrest because the Irish Constabulary were shadowing the rebellion. When the rebels saw the constables, they left their barricades in The Commons and chased them across the fields. Sub-Inspector Trant and his 46 armed constables took refuge and barricaded themselves in a large two-storey house belonging to a Widow, Mrs McCormack near Ballingarry, County Tipperary. Her five children were kept in the house, possibly as hostages. The rebels surrounded the house and there was a stand off since the house was very secure. William Smith O’Brien was directly outside the house and spoke with the police through the windows but at some point shooting broke out. The police account claims that O’Brien ordered the rebels to kill the police inside and tried to burn down the house, police, hostages and all. Other accounts say the police opened fire without provocation. Two rebels who attempted to extract O’Brien from the immediate danger were wounded. Two more rebels were later killed. No police were hurt.
The battle continued for a few hours until police reinforcements and a troop of British cavalry approached. The rebellion ran out of ammunition and steam and so the rebels faded away into the countryside. William Smith O’Brien was spotted and arrested at Thurles railway station a week later attempting to return to his family. Other leaders of the abortive rebellion were also arrested or escaped Ireland.
Aftermath and Conclusion
O’Brien was sentenced to death for his leadership of the Young Ireland Rebellion, but his family political connections in Britain, a popular public petition and Queen Victoria’s personal intervention saved his life. Instead of execution for treason O’Brien was exiled for life to Van Diemen’s Island - now Tasmania. During his five years there, he wrote his diaries and painted and explored under guard. He was released on parole and was granted a full pardon in 1856 and was allowed home to Ireland. When he was under sentence of death he had signed his estate over to his eldest child - Edward, but on his return, he was an embarrassment to some of his family and his son withheld the money and property William had signed over. William Smith O’Brien toured Europe and America and gave lectures but he died in Wales in 1864 aged 61.
The rebellion ended the repeal movement and the actions of ‘the cabbage garden heroes of 1848’ (quote from Robert Peel, who William Smith O’Brien subsequently challenged to a duel) effectively set back Irish independence for a generation until the home rule movement. However ill advised or ludicrously portrayed, the rising sparked international sympathy for Ireland and directly resulted in the creation of the Fenian Brotherhood in the United States and later the Irish Republican Brotherhood in Ireland. However, the involvement of O’Brien in the rebellion, as a representative of aristocratic protestant Ireland gave the British establishment alot to worry about and won an independent Ireland sympathy in many political and social quarters in the empire..
From his diaries, we understand that William Smith O’Brien later regretted his decision to rebel when threatened with arrest in 1848. If he had surrendered to the authorities and been tried, there would have been no case or evidence against him and the British Crown would have been embarrassed on the world stage. O’Brien would have been released and the cause of Irish nationalism strengthened. However the decision to rebel was forced on him by hotter heads, dwindling support and spiralling events and according to Richard Davis’s book Revolutionary Imperialist - Willaim Smith O’Brien was a ‘reluctant rebel’. In his defence affidavit on ‘the affair at Ballingarry’, Smith O’Brien blamed the rising solely on the unjustified nature of the warrant for his arrest. Thomas Meagher and others blamed the failure of the rising on O’Brien’s leadership style and sense of morality that forbade the requisition of food and shelter from the famished local population. Smith O’Brien accounted for his failure in the rising because he didn't have support from the clergy, without whose sanction the Irish people would not fight. One other criticism by Thomas Meagher, (who wanted to burn the farmhouse down with the police and Mrs Macauliffe’s children inside) was that O’Brien lacked revolutionary warfare experience. This is unjustified because O’Brien had suggested two guerilla actions to arm the rebels and thwart the constabulary during the march to Dublin that his lieutenants rejected.
William Smith O’Brien’s legacy is always tarnished by the Young Ireland Rising’s failure but his contribution to Irish politics and the Language are overlooked. By virtue of his rank and upbringing O’Brien represented a reasonable case for Irish Independence that the British establishment could not ignore. At home though, William Smith O’Brien’s wife Lucy died and his children, (except one) rejected nationalism. He continued to campaign around the world for Irish independence and watched helplessly as European nations gained their’s while Ireland didn’t.
Review
It has been difficult to be totally objective about a national figure that is maligned in so many accounts, but is also an iconic figure within my own family, we even use his furniture on a daily basis. Following the failed 1848 rising, the authors of the primary sources are evidently keen to distance themselves or to blame someone else. In William’s case, he was the scapegoat for the nationalists, the lone wolf in the dock for the British empire and the black sheep to his family. Commentary is essentially negative. It is only his own diaries, (which we have at home) written in exile after the event, and the affidavit he prepared for his defence against the treason charge (also in our collection) that seems to defend his reputation. However - the pages are faint and I find his hand writing very difficult to read. Later biographers and historians such as Richard Davis and our family historian Grania Weir (O’Brien) have provided a more balanced view that restores his reputation and reminds us of his significant contribution to Irish independence, the downtrodden of Ireland and the nation’s cultural heritage that we enjoy today.
It was not an accident that his statue once stood alongside the ‘Liberator’s’. In 1870, his statue was originally sited directly facing O’Connell’s on D’Olier Street, but its relocation in 1929 to its present site reflected the statue’s impact on Dublin’s traffic planning policies and ignores William Smith O’Brien’s impact on Ireland.
William Smith O’Brien’s dining table and side board
Bibliography
O’Brien. Grania R. These My Friends & Forebears. The O’Brien’s of Dromoland. Ballinakella Press. Ireland 1991. pp 7, 104, 106,113 - 150, 198
Touhill. Blanche M. Wiliam Smith O'Brien and His Irish Revolutionary Companions in Penal Exile. University of Missouri Columbia and London, 1981
Davis. Richard, William Smith O'Brien Ireland 1848 Tasmania. Geography Publications, Kennington Road, Templeogue, Dublin 6W, 1989
Davis. Richard, Revolutionary Imperialist. William Smith O'Brien, 1803-1864. Published by the Lilliput Press, 62-63 Sitric Road, Arbour Hill, Dublin 7. 1998
Davis. Richard, To Solitude Confined The Tasmanian Journal of William Smith O'Brien, 1849-1853. Crossing Press, PO Box 1137, Darlinghurst 2010, New South Wales.
Davis. Richard and Marianne edited. The Rebel in his Family. Selected Papers of William Smith O’Brien. Cork University Press, Cork, Ireland. 1998
Smith O’Brien. William, Affidavit Unpublished, Family collection.
Smith O’Brien. William, Tasmanian Journals. Unpublished, Family collection.
Smith O’Brien. William, European tour Journals. Unpublished, Family collection.
William Smith O’Brien’s travel diaries
Front page - William Smith O’Brien’s affidavit
Song, ‘Oh, Weep Not For Me’, written by William Smith O’Brien, from exile in Tasmania
Poem, ‘Spring to the Exile’, written by William Smith O’Brien, from exile in Tasmania