Chapter IV: Concerning Daniel O'Connell

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O the world at large Daniel O'Connell was known as "The Liberator," but to his friends and neighbours he was "The Counsellor." There is an atmosphere of intimacy and affectionate regard about the old word "counsellor " that cannot be said to surround the modern abbreviation "counsel." "Coun

sellor " suggests advice, "counsel" connotes fees. Counsellor Pleydell could never have been the same shrewd, loyal, jovial, lovable character under the designation Pleydell, K.c. There is an aroma in the word

Counsellor" that recalls going circuit in a post-chaise and sleeping at strange inns, and sitting round the circuit table watching the members drop one by one on to the floor. In Ireland it was to "The Counsellor " that the peasant went in his trouble, for it was he alone who could stand up to the Crown prosecutor, and bandy words with the judge, and bully the perjured witnesses of the prosecution into truth or shame.

Daniel O'Connell, in his career at the Bar, was rightly acclaimed by the people as "The Counsellor." He remained a stuff-gownsman to the end; he never asked for silk, and refused the judgeship offered to him. No Government ennobled him. He had two titles, but they were given him by his fellow-men. In the greater world

of politics he was "The Liberator "; in his own demesne in Kerry, on the Munster Circuit and among the peasantry of the West he was "The Counsellor."

By birth and nature Daniel O'Connell was Irish of the Irish. He was born on August 6, 1775, a mile up the creek from the little town of Cahirciveen, in the barony of Iveragh, in the south-west of Kerry, a country he loved to the last. Macdonagh tells us that he came of an ancient Gaelic sept, and that for a hundred years back his ancestors were farmers at Darrynane. Like all good Irish, Scots, and Welsh, he was proud of his ancestry, and did not easily bear to be crossed in his estimation of their worth. His enemies loved to taunt him with the fact that he was a grandson of a village tradesman, and had no right to the prefix O' to his name Connell.

"The vagabond lies!" he exclaimed on reading a sketch of his life in which this was stated. "My father's family were very ancient, and my mother was a lady of the first rank." When, however, in later years, he was appealing to large audiences of the English democracy, he would boast: "I have no pride of ancestry. I am the son of a grazier or gentleman farmer."

In the first four years of his life O'Connell was brought up in an Irish cabin, and learned the Irish tongue from the foster-brothers and sisters with whom he played on the mud floor. He never knew a word of English until he was four years old. From this date until he first left home in 1790 for a school at Cork he ran wild in West Kerry. Had nature intended him for a Counsellor he could have had no better early education for the profession before him. As Macdonagh writes, " He joined

in all the dances and hurling matches of the peasantry; he learned their songs and absorbed their favourite airs as they were played on bagpipes and fiddle at the festive gatherings. He heard their stories told in the Gaelic tongue by the blazing turf fires in the cabins during the long winter evenings-the hero tales, the folk-lore, the wild and beautiful legends, the superstitions, and the stories of the saints and holy places of Iveragh." This was his preparatory schooling. It may, as Mr. Pickwick imagined in a similar case, have been " rather a dangerous process," but it cannot be doubted that it gave O'Connell that deep insight to Irish character that few leaders of men have ever attained.

We may pass over his education in a Catholic college at Douay and his "eating a certain number of legs of mutton in London," which he did in the Hall of Lincoln's Inn, thereby becoming qualified to practise the law. He. was called to the Bar May 19, 1798, and soon jumped into fame. In his third year he made over four hundred pounds, and when he was thirty-two years old his income was over two thousand, five hundred. From this figure it rose to eight thousand a year, a gigantic income for a junior barrister at the Irish Bar.

But in his early days he was by no means well off, and one of the elders of the Bar is said to have given him some good advice in the first year of his call. "If, my young friend, you will follow what I am going to tell you, I shall show you how to save fifty pounds a year for seven years." O'Connell listened eagerly.

"Don't go circuit," said the old gentleman, with a chuckle.

But the lure of circuit was bound to appeal to a nature like Daniel O'Connell's. The adventure of it, the travelling, the fellowship, the change and excitement, the hope of fame these were things he loved, and the zest of them remained with him to the end of his days. He was out for big game and ready to take risks, and in a very few years he found the gains on circuit exceeded the expenses. He joined the Munster Circuit, which included Clare, Limerick, Cork, and his own beloved Kerry. In after years he used to speak almost with regret about the improvement in roads and methods of communication. Twenty to thirty miles was a good day's journey in his early days, and at the end of each stage was an excellent inn.

Of these the inn at Millstreet must indeed have been a model if O'Connell's memory is to be trusted. "I well remember," he said, "when it was the regular end of the first day's journey from Tralee. It was a comfortable thing for a social pair of fellow-travellers to get out of their chaise at nightfall, and to find at the inn, then kept by a cousin of mine-a Mrs. Cotter-a roaring fire in a clean, well-furnished parlour, the whitest table linen, the best beef, the sweetest and tenderest mutton, the fattest fowl, the most excellent wine (claret and madeira were the high wines then-they knew nothing about champagne), and the most comfortable beds."

O'Connells circuit triumphs spread to Dublin, and it was not long before he saw his picture in a magazine in a shop window, and laughed as he reminded himself that his "boyish dreams of glory" were attained. There was no more popular figure in all the Munster assize to wns

and folk would gaze lovingly after their handsome countryman and point him out with pride to the stranger, "That's Counsellor O'Connell, God bless him."

In reading some of his feats of advocacy, one is a little uncertain at times as to whether he is quite " playing the game," but we must remember that the Irish game is and always has been played under different rules from ours. The members of the Bench were not always competent, courteous, or fair in their dealings. They belonged to a different clan from the prisoner, who in many cases neither expected nor obtained justice. The Crown and the Crown witnesses were huntsmen and dogs, out to run the man in the dock to the death. Prisoner's counsel had no right to address the jury, and therefore it was only by putting irrelevant questions and arguing their validity that any form of speech could be made. O'Connell was an adept at making a series of interjectional speeches to

jury during the progress of the case, and no judge or Crown prosecutor could prevent him. He would ask a Crown witness some wholly improper questions, which always had the effect of bringing the Crown prosecutor on to his legs, with: "My Lord, I object to that question."

One can see the pleasant smile on O'Connell's broad features, and the genial twinkle in his blue eyes, as he begins a long argument to the judge for the benefit of the jury.

'My Lord, I had every right to put the question. It is quite material, and I am surprised at my friend's objections. If the witness answers in the affirmative, it is plain as a pikestaff my client is entitled to an acquittal, and if