5 - Ireland under Whig Government

Summary

Historiography of the 1830s

The years 1830–45, although often overlooked, are, as one historian has noted, a ‘little era in their own right’. It was this period rather than 1801–30 which set the ‘pattern for Anglo–Irish relations in the later nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries’. They are therefore utterly crucial. Three features are especially notable. The first is the dominance of O'Connell. One way of interpreting this period is to see it as his age. It was he who secured reforms from successive governments – Whigs and Conservatives – and, as traditional accounts would have it, he also summed up the aspirations of a people until 1843, wielding unambiguous popular authority. Or was it entirely so? Revisionists have seen in him more limitations and divisiveness than the conventional narrative might suggest. How successful was he lobbying for concessions in Parliament? Can we attribute to him anything more than undramatic bread-and-butter efficacy? There is a distinct possibility articulated by Dudley Edwards that he was politically emasculated by being in Westminster, that his ‘significance became greater in England than in his own country’ and that he lost touch with common people back home. Furthermore, a rosy view of his pan-Irish status is difficult to maintain in the light of his failure to cultivate a meaningful rapport with Ulster Protestants. He claimed to ‘hate bigotry of every kind, Catholic, Protestant or Dissenter’ but that did not necessarily mean that he was good at or even willing to understand those of a very different politico-religious persuasion.