O Connell's Political Speech By Daniel O Connell

Here we have a political speech made by Daniel O’Connell in the House of Commons on the 4th of February in 1836. The speech is addressed to the House of Commons where Daniel O’Connell was a representative. Daniel O’Connell was an Irish statesman that was considered one of the most influential politicians in the History of Ireland. He was born into a high level class family in 1775; he was given the opportunity to study law in London, Paris and Dublin, thanks to the social status of his family. Even being a wealthy man, he led a political movement that made the British concede the emancipation to the Catholics in Ireland. Thanks to him, Catholic emancipation was approved in 1829 allowing Catholics to sit and be members of the English Parliament. In order to explain these circumstances we should begin by explaining the prior situation in Ireland before this speech took place. Ireland had been united to the English monarchy for a long time; however it had its own Parliament until 1800, when the Act of Union was signed. Ireland had a lot of issues to resolve. One of them was the administration of land. The land was owned by Protestants (the offspring of settlers), and at the beginning of the nineteenth century those Protestant owners were absentee landlords who lived in England. The majority of the Irish owned little land, and a lot of them were trying to live off small and uneconomical pieces of land. The poor situation of Irish agriculture and the unequal distribution of the