Daniel O'Connell, an Irish statesman, born at Carhen, near Cahirciveen, county Kerry, Aug. 6, 1775, died in Genoa, May 15, 1847. He was the eldest son of Morgan O'Connell, a Catholic gentleman. At the age of 13 Daniel was sent to a school at Redington, Long Island, near Cove, or Queenstown as it is now called. Here he remained about a year, and in 1791 he was sent to the Jesuits' college of St. Omer in France, where he first gave indication of talent. In the following year he spent a short time at the English college in Douai; but on the outbreak of the reign of terror he returned home. He was called to the bar in 1798, and soon became distinguished as a brilliant and successful advocate. He had no sympathy with the violent revolutionary spirit of the period, which in fact throughout his life he opposed, in accordance with his well known saying that "he would accept of no social amelioration at the cost of a single drop of blood." His first political speech was made at Dublin, Jan. 13, 1800, at a meeting of Catholics to petition against the proposed legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland; the meeting was broken up by the military. From this period dates his career as a public agitator. In a few years he was in good practice and had gained a high reputation as a barrister.

He then be-came gradually absorbed in politics, and was soon the acknowledged leader of political reform in Ireland. He devoted himself with surprising force and energy to the question of the claims of the Roman Catholics of Ireland to political equality with Protestants. In 1815 O'Connell, having in one of his speeches applied the term "beggarly" to the corporation of Dublin, was challenged by Mr. D'Esterre, a member of the city government. A duel ensued, and D'Esterre received a wound of which he died. For this event O'Connell always expressed the deepest sorrow, and he never again accepted or offered a challenge. In 1828 the agitation of the Catholic emancipation bill reached its greatest height under the direction of the Catholic association. In June of that year O'Connell was elected to parliament from the county Clare by a large majority. On proceeding to take his seat, he refused as a Roman Catholic to take the test oaths which had been framed for the express purpose of excluding those who held his faith. His firm attitude on this point commanded general attention, and led to protracted and animated discussions both in parliament and before the people.

The agitation in Ireland, under his guidance, rose to such a height that at length the great leaders of the conservative party, Sir Robert Peel and the duke of "Wellington, resolved to concede emancipation to the Catholics. Parliament met Feb. 6, 1829; the speech from the throne recommended a final, equitable, and satisfactory adjustment of the Catholic claims; in the course of the session the last of the civil disabilities to which the Catholics had been so long subject were repealed; and in May O'Connell took his seat. In 1830 he declined the representation for Clare, and was elected for Kerry. He represented Dublin from 1832 to June, 1835, and again in 1837. In the latter part of 1835 he was elected for Kilkenny, and in 1841 for the county Cork, and in the same year lord mayor of Dublin. He proclaimed that a repeal of the legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland was the only means of obtaining justice for the latter kingdom. To compensate him for the loss of his income as a lawyer, and to reward his public services, an annual subscription was organized among the Irish people, under the denomination of "rent," and paid to O'Connell. In 1842 and 1843 immense gatherings, or monster meetings as they were called, were held by the repealers on the royal hill of Tara, the Curragh of Kill-tare, the Rath of Mullaghmast, and other historical places.

Some of these assemblages were estimated at 500,000 persons. The liberator, as O'Connell was now familiarly called, appeared at them, making the most exciting speeches, but taking extreme care in action to keep his followers within the bounds of law. At length he called a monster meeting at Clontarf near Dublin on Sunday, Oct. 8, 1843; and the preparations for it, including a body of "repeal cavalry," had such a military air that the government thought it time to interfere. On Oct. 7 a proclamation was issued declaring the public peace endangered by these meetings, and warning all persons to keep away from Clontarf. O'Connell countermanded the meeting, and the people generally stayed away. On Oct. 14 he was arrested by order of the government, together with his son and eight of his coadjutors, on charges of conspiracy, sedition, and unlawful assembling. They were tried and found guilty. O'Connell was sentenced to imprisonment for twelve months and to pay a fine of £2,000, and was bound over to keep the peace for seven years. An appeal was made to the house of lords, and the decision of the Irish judges was reversed. This trial gave a death-blow to the repeal movement.

For a while the monster meetings continued, but very soon dissensions broke out between O'Connell and some of his associates belonging to the party of "Young Ireland," who scoffed at his renunciation of physical force in seeking political reforms. He grew anxious and feeble and at length ill, and had to abandon political agitation altogther, to which indeed the famine now creeping over Ireland put a sudden stop. At length his physicians directed that newspapers should be kept from him, and no one admitted to his presence who would speak of Ireland. Early in 1847 he set out on a pilgrimage to Rome, hoping to die there with the blessing of the pope; but he sank too rapidly, and died on the way at Genoa. His heart was embalmed and carried to Rome, and his body taken back to Ireland. - See the "Life and Speeches of Daniel O'Connell," by his son John O'Connell M. P. (2 vols., London, 184G), and "The Liberator, his Life and Times," by L. F. Cusack (London, 1872).