scholarly journals Charles Trevelyan, John Mitchel and the historiography of the Great Famine

2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-212
Author(s):  
Christophe Gillissen
Keyword(s):  
Great Famine ◽  
John Mitchel

Cardinal Cullen, Early Fenianism, and the MacManus Funeral Affair

1995 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 549-563
Author(s):  
Oliver P. Rafferty
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Government ◽  
John Mitchel ◽  
The U.S ◽  
The Phoenix

The political threat posed by the growth of Fenianism in Ireland in the late 1850s and early 1860s has generally been underplayed by much present-day historiography. Even contemporaries were not disposed to see American Fenianism as much of a danger to the constitutional stability of Ireland. The Dublin police authorities decided to recall sub-inspector Thomas Doyle from his surveillance work in America in July 1860. By that time Doyle had sent dozens of reports on Irish-American revolutionary activity. On the basis of his reports the authorities knew that John O'Mahony and Michael Dohney, both of 1848 notoriety, were prominently involved in Phoenix and Fenian conspiracy. They also knew the general points of the ‘phoenix theory’ that England's difficulty was Ireland's opportunity, that men were being recruited and drilled in large numbers in the U.S. for a possible invasion of Ireland, that ‘O'Mahony's theory [was] … to root out the Government, to cut down the landlords, and to confiscate the land of Ireland’, and that John Mitchel had gone to Paris as an agent for the ‘phoenix confederacy’ in the U.S.

The Irish catholic clergy and emigration during the great famine

1947 ◽  
Vol 5 (20) ◽  
pp. 287-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver MacDonagh
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Catholic Clergy ◽  
Great Famine ◽  
Single Voice ◽  
The Catholic Church

The catholic church in Ireland never, as a church, defined for itself an attitude towards emigration. Priests and bishops, when they spoke of emigration, usually spoke as individuals, not as members of their order. The relatively small number who have left any opinions on record were not necessarily the most influential. We cannot be certain that their views represented the feelings of the clergy as a whole. The day to day conversations and advice of ordinary priests, of which we can know little, mere far more influential in this matter than the pastorals or public letters which survive. In the place of a single voice speaking with authority or the steady murmur of unanimity, we can hear only the heterogeneous confusion of a score of voices, some perhaps seriously distorted by the public controversy in which they were raised.

IV. J. S. Mill and the Irish Question: Reform, and the Integrity of the Empire, 1865–1870

1970 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. D. Steele
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Complete Agreement ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Social Basis ◽  
Great Famine ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Harsh Criticism ◽  
Irish Question

The first part of this study of Mill sought to show how much less radical he was on the subject of Irish land reform than is often supposed. In the earlier editions of the Principles of Political Economy from 1848 to 1857 there were passages which constituted a terrible indictment of landlordism, and insisted on the need for legislation to convert the tenant farmers into joint owners of their holdings: but in another passage this harsh criticism was substantially withdrawn, and the demand for fixity of tenure effectively retracted. Although they continued to reproduce the criticism and the call for a drastic measure, the editions of 1862 and 1865 were more moderate still in their conclusions on Irish land. With the progress of the changes in the economy and society set in motion by the Great Famine, Mill became more strongly convinced that the country should be left to evolve slowly under the existing law of tenure, only slightly amended. One cannot imagine Mill saying, ‘tenant-right…is equivalent to landlords' wrong’: but he and Palmerston were none the less in nearly complete agreement by 1865 on the degree of laissez-faire that was desirable in Ireland. For all his strictures upon aristocratic misgovernment and middle-class prejudice, Mill was too warm an admirer of British institutions to want to undermine their social basis over a wide area of the United Kingdom. The second part of this study deals with his action and his motives, in briefly advocating, without any reservations this time, the revolutionary land legislation from which he had always previously shrunk, despite his brave words written for the earlier editions of the Principles.

John O’Connell and the Great Famine

1986 ◽  
Vol 25 (98) ◽  
pp. 138-143
Author(s):  
Maurice R. O’Connell
Keyword(s):  
Read Aloud ◽  
Catholic Bishop ◽  
Great Famine

Michael Davitt in his book, The fall of feudalism in Ireland, published in 1904, told the story.it is related that Mr John O’Conneli, M.P., … son of the Liberator, read aloud in Conciliation Hall, Dublin [the meeting place of the Repeal Association], a letter he had received from a catholic bishop in west Cork, in 1847, in which this sentence occurred — ‘the famine is spreading with fearful rapidity and scores of persons are dying of starvation and fever, but the tenants are bravely paying their rents’ — whereupon John O'Connell exclaimed, in proud tones, ‘I thank God I live among a people who would rather die of hunger than defraud their landlords of the rent!’

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