Chapter The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries of Irish Politics - Study Guide by History

The Irish MPs at Westminster, with the exception of the O'Connellites during the 1830s and 1840s, were largely ineffective as in their small shifting groups they were unable to exert a major force on Parliament. This would change dramatically under the "Obstructionist" tactics of C.S. Parnell during the 1880s and 1890s when the Irish Nationalists' campaign for Home Rule caught the full attention of the British political system. Daniel O'Connell revived the issue of Catholic Emancipation in 1828 when he won the election in County Clare. The Conservative government of the Duke of Wellington, fearful of major Catholic disorder, eventually passed the Catholic Emancipation Relief Act in 1829, giving Catholics full civil rights of the times. During the 1830s and 1840 O'Connell and his supporters, the largest Irish grouping in Parliament before Parnell's days, strove to repeal the Act of Union. He allied with the Whigs during the late 1830s, though the O'Connellites dwindled in 1841 to just 18 MPs. Though they revived during the later 1840s the O'Connellites became overshadowed by the repeal movement that developed outside Parliament and faded after the death of their leader in 1847.

The serious social and economic problems that afflicted Ireland, and her existence within the Union, left the door to administrative and legislative experimentation open to the British government to apply a whole range of reforms (in the Church, economic, governmental, educational and agricultural). Some reforms were however implemented in their wider role as reforms destined for the United Kingdom as a whole. Others however were specifically tailored for Ireland, guided by the misconception that a 'solution' to the Irish 'problem' would be found in appeasing the religious and material grievances of the Roman Catholic mass of the population. Serious consideration of the true religious-political-constitutional web at the heart of the Irish 'problem' would not be a feature of the British government's attitude until the twentieth century. To Victorians, the Union was something sacred and hallowed. Thus in 1843 Robert Peel vowed his determination to preserve the Union at whatever cost, even civil war.

The Whig and Peelite Irish policies of the 1830s and 1840s, that is sound administration and concessions to Roman Catholics, failed to reconcile the majority of the population to the Union. The Tory policy under Peel followed a 'two pronged' nature - firm action in dealing with O'Connell's efforts to win support for the repeal movement (breaking up meetings by force and legislating), while tying to win Catholic support and confidence by addressing education and land issues. The paramount reason for the failure of the British government to gain enthusiasm for the Union during the mid-nineteenth century was undoubtedly the Great Famine (1847-48) which through death and emigration lost Ireland over 1 million of its population. There was a deep-rooted feeling that the British had abandoned Ireland in its hour of greatest need. However despite this, and the agitation of Daniel O'Connell and the Young Ireland movement or the Fenians slightly later, and despite the failure of the Union to bring social-economic prosperity to Ireland, there was no widespread or successful repeal movement until the latter years of the Victorian era.