Daniel O'Connell Quotes

I love liberty as conducive to increase the portion of human happiness. A great deal of the misery of man can clearly be derived from the form of government under which he lives. Oppression harasses his faculties. Privilege confined by accident insults his understanding.

How cruel the Penal Laws are which exclude me from a fair trial with men whom I look upon as so much my inferiors...

It is to be found at once in the religious dissensions which the enemies of Ireland have created, and continued, and seek to perpetuate amongst ourselves, by telling us of, and separating us into wretched sections and miserable subdivisions; they separated the Protestant from the Catholic, and the Presbyterian from both; they revived every antiquated cause of domestic animosity, and they invented new pretexts of rancour; but above all, my countrymen, they belied and calumniated us to each other—they falsely declared that we hated each other, and they continued to repeat the assertion, until we came to believe it; they succeeded in producing all the madness of party and religious distinctions; and whilst we were lost in the stupor of insanity, they plundered us of our country, and left us to recover at our leisure from the horrid delusion into which we had been so artfully conducted.

My days – the blossom of my youth and the flower of my manhood – have been darkened by the dreariness of servitude. In this my native land – in the land of my sires – I am degraded without fault as an alien and an outcast.

I am most thoroughly convinced that the Repeal alone can keep secure the religion and the liberties of the Irish people.

Ireland lay in torpor till roused by the call for religious liberty. She would, I fear and I am convinced, have relapsed into apathy if liberty of conscience had been speedily conceded. Let them delay Emancipation but yet a little while, and they will find that they have roused the sleeping lion of Ireland to awaking activity, which will not permit our further slumber till Ireland is herself again. (Loud applause.)

And now I make this declaration—that if the Repeal of the Union depended upon my change of opinion, or the suppression of my sentiments with respect to the slavery of the negro, I would neither change the one nor suppress the other. I am not bound to look to consequences in a matter of principle like this, and this, therefore, I do say, that, come what may, I shall never cease to pour out my entire heart and soul in reprobating and in calling down the curses of mankind upon that vile system.

Benefactor of the Human Race,—I avowed myself on the hustings this day to be a ‘Benthamite,’ and explained the leading principles of your disciples—the ‘greatest happiness principle’—our sect will prosper.
I begin my parliamentary career by tendering you my constant, zealous, and active services in the promotion of that principle. You have now one Member of Parliament your own.

Let us then, my beloved countrymen, sacrifice our wicked and groundless animosities on the altar of our country...let us rally round the standard of Old Ireland, and we shall easily procure that greatest of political blessings, an Irish King, an Irish House of Lords, and an Irish House of Commons.

You must, I repeat, force your question on the Parliament. You ought not to confide in English liberality. It is a plant not genial to the British soil. It must be forced. It requires a hot-bed. The English were always persecutors. Before the so-styled Reformation the English tortured the Jews and strung up in scores the Lollards. After that Reformation they still roasted the Jews and hung the Papists. In Mary's days the English with their usual cruelty retaliated the tortures on the Protestants. After her short reign there were near two centuries of the most barbarous and unrelenting cruelty exercised towards the Catholics, a cruelty the more emaciating because it was sought to be justified by imputing to them tenets and opinions which they always rejected and abhorred. The Jews too suffered in the same way. I once more repeat, Do not confide in any liberality but that which you will yourself rouse into action and compel into operation.

Our enemies have long duped the people of England—indeed, that was not difficult; so dishonest and besotted a people as the English never lived. (Loud cheers.) Yes; they are dishonest and besotted! Individuals—many individuals, and classes amongst them, I respect and reverence; but as a nation, I must say, and I can prove it, that they are most profligate and quite lost in folly.

Good God! what a brute man becomes when ignorant and oppressed! Oh, Liberty, what horrors are perpetrated in thy name! May every virtuous revolutionist remember the horrors of Wexford!

The Protestant alone could not expect to liberate his country—the Roman Catholic alone could not do it—neither could the Presbyterian—but amalgamate the three into the Irishman, and the Union is repealed. Learn discretion from your enemies—they have crushed your country by fomenting religious discord—serve her by abandoning it for ever. Let each man give up his share of the mischief—let each man forsake every feeling of rancour. But, I say not this to barter with you, my countrymen—I require no equivalent from you—whatever course you shall take, my mind is fixed—I trample under foot the Catholic claims, if they can interfere with the Repeal; I abandon all wish for emancipation, if it delays that Repeal. Nay, were Mr. Perceval, to-morrow, to offer me the Repeal of the Union, upon the terms of re-enactment the entire penal code, I declare it from my heart, and in the presence of my God, that I would most cheerfully embrace his offer.

Let us show to Ireland that we have nothing in view but her good; nothing in our hearts but the desire of mutual forgiveness, mutual toleration, and mutual affection; in fine, let every man who feels with me proclaim that if the alternative were offered him of union, or the re-enactment of the penal code in all its pristine horrors, that he would prefer without hesitation the latter, as the lesser and more sufferable evil; that he would rather confide in the justice of his brethren, the Protestants of Ireland, who have already liberated him, than lay his country at the feet of foreigners.

So soon as Protestants of all sects combine to obtain our legislative independence the utmost cordiality will prevail, as in 1782, between all Irishmen, and we will be able to make the mighty change with perfect safety to person and property, and to the continuance of the connection between the two countries.