The Palace and Park by Phillips, Forbes, Latham, Owen, Scharf, and Shenton

[Born at Cahir, in Ireland, 1775. Died at Genoa, 1847. Aged 72.] The great Irish agitator. A man of extraordinarily powerful talents and influence. His oratory, especially adapted to sway the hearts of an Irish multitude, obtained for him a rule throughout Ireland that has never been equalled. Thousands upon thousands of his fellow-countrymen were content to be governed by his will for good or for evil. The unprecedented opportunity was used by Daniel O’Connell, less for the advantage and happiness of his afflicted country, than for his own selfish ends. When the wrongs of Ireland clamoured loudly for redress, O’Connell was an agitator with a righteous cause sustaining his great eloquence. When those wrongs were in course of remedy--were remedied--he was still an agitator, but unsustained by any cause save that of his own pecuniary necessities. It is lamentable to think how much good might have been effected by the energies of O’Connell, and to what deplorable straits his policy had reduced Ireland before death took him from it. Had it been as much to his personal and pecuniary interest to render his country contented, peaceful, prosperous, as to keep her in a ferment of discontent, discord, and semi-rebellion, O’Connell would have proved one of the greatest benefactors of his kind. As it was, he left behind him a name, which is not uttered with opprobrium--simply because it is already nearly forgotten. The associations connected with his memory have nothing in common with the new epoch of tranquillity, order, and steady industry, upon which Ireland has entered. O’Connell was not so eloquent in the House of Commons as out of it. He was born for the multitude. His power of invective, his faculty of humour, his facility of illustration, his familiar tones, his burly form, his winning voice, were all elements that go to make up the successful demagogue. [By J. E. Jones.]