England’s Revolution: The Young Ireland Rebellion of 1848

By Kivette Mace

            In 1848, revolutions ripped through Europe. Inspired by the February Revolution in France, people all over the continent attempted to remove unacceptable governments from power. However, “1848 has gone down in history…as the year when England was different. In that year a wave of revolution…overthrew constitutions, premiers, and even a dynasty, but in England…the middle classes rallied round the government and helped preserve the status quo.” Upon first examination this statement appears to be true, but with further investigation one discovers that there was also unrest within the United Kingdom. The Young Ireland group attempted to overthrow the English government in County Tipperary on July, 30, 1848. They were unsuccessful due to leadership that was unprepared for a military revolt. Lack of support from foreign countries and the domestic population also destroyed Young Ireland’s chances for success.

            Young Ireland was a group of intellectuals who created the Nation newspaper in 1842. The principal journalists and founders were Thomas Davis, John Blake Dillon and Charles Gavan Duffy. William Smith O’Brien, John Mitchel, and Thomas Francis Meagher became important leaders later. The nickname, Young Ireland, was one that they disliked at first, but was so appropriate to their age, idealism, and literary aspirations that the name remained. Young Ireland attempted to attract men from different backgrounds, including Catholics, Protestants, peasants, and landowners. They were quite popular, as reflected by the success of the Nation, which boasted a “readership [that] was possibly 250,000 by 1843.” Their ideology appealed to a wide range of people.

            Under the Act of Union of 1801 there had been a “rapid extension of a common language, a common market, a common labour supply and common political and social aspirations [that was] …eating away at both separatism and self-identity in Ireland.” Young Ireland rejected the right of the English to rule over them and, in addition, they rejected the idea that there was a common society that had made the Irish and English one nationality. They endeavored to show the Irish people that they were nationally and racially distinct from the English and their nationhood should be reflected politically by self-rule. To regain the Irish self-identity they encouraged the people to look back on their “rich and golden past.” They tried to resurrect use of the Irish language, Gaelic, which had fallen into disuse, and published stories of Irish history and Irish heroes in the Nation.

            Young Ireland became a political movement in the summer of 1846 when they broke away from Daniel O’Connell’s Repeal Association. In the past O’Connell “knew and felt that he was receiving…powerful support from them; but he knew also, that they were outside his influence….” This had led to disagreements in the past on many issues including the establishment of nondenominational colleges in Ireland, which Young Ireland was in favor of. The main problem was that O’Connell wanted self-rule within the British Empire while Young Ireland stood for a completely independent nation. The final breach was due to a change in British politics: The Whig government regained control of Parliament and O’Connell tried to renew an old alliance with them. Young Ireland could not accept this and, knowing that, O’Connell created a series of resolutions that he knew they would reject. The resolutions required that all members take an oath disavowing the use of physical force at any time and under any circumstance to gain independence. While Young Ireland had no thought of rebellion, for the moment they would not rule out the possibility for the future. In reply to the resolutions Meagher said,

[M]y lord, I do advocate the peaceful policy of this association….If that policy be pursued with truth, with courage, with stern determination of purpose, I do firmly believe that it will succeed. But, my lord, I dissented from the resolutions in question for other reasons…. I dissented from these resolutions, for I felt that by assenting to them I should have pledged myself to the unqualified repudiation of physical force in all countries, at all times, and in every circumstance. This I could not do, for my lord, I do not abhor the use of arms in the vindication of national rights. There are times when arms will alone suffice, and when political ameliorations call for a drop of blood or many thousand drops of blood.

So the secession of Young Ireland from the Repeal Association was due to prior “differences in temperament and feelings than from any substantial disagreement about the use of physical force, which both parties were opposed.” The break with O’Connell, the Great Potato Famine of 1845-1851, and the failure of Parliament to help with the disaster pushed Young Ireland into thinking that violence was the only way to solve the country’s problems. This led to plans for a rebellion in July 1848 that would be completely unsuccessful and humiliating.

            The Irish discontent with English rule started as soon as the Act of Union was passed in 1801. The disgruntlement peaked in 1845 with the first appearance of the potato blight. The Irish felt that they were being left to die without help from the government. When France experienced their first revolution in 1848 many Irishmen thought that it was a portent that Ireland’s time for independence had arrived. Young Ireland, caught up in revolutionary enthusiasm, proclaimed in the Nation, “Ireland’s opportunity, thank God and France, has come at last! Its challenge rings in our ears like a call to battle…. The consideration is not now of when, but of how Irish independence is to be won.” The question “how” presented the biggest problem to the leaders of Young Ireland when they tried to plan a movement against the government.

            Development of tactics for a rebellion was complicated by differences of priorities within the leadership. The two main antagonists were Mitchel and Duffy. Mitchel, a supporter of James Fintan Lalor’s tenant-right, which advocated community ownership of the land, contended that the whole feudal landlord-tenant system needed to be reformed. He said that the farmers and agrarian laborers who comprised the majority should overthrow the few English and Anglo-Irish families that owned most of the land. Duffy was concerned about encouraging a class war that would turn Irishmen against each other. He supported an uprising with the only goal being the overthrow of English rule over Ireland. Duffy was supported by other Young Irelanders, such as O’Brien, who owned land and were concerned for their own class. O’Brien also believed that support of community ownership would alienate the Protestant gentry, whose support Young Ireland was trying to secure.

            Mitchel would not advocate anything less than a rebellion that would link independence to agrarian revolution. In an 1847 letter to the men of Ulster Mitchel wrote,

[T]hese ‘Repealers’…have long been asking you to join in an effort…to place Ireland and Irishmen and all that is theirs under the feet of the Irish ‘gentry,’ instead of the English and Irish gentry combined….Nothing will cure [Ireland’s problems] save the total overthrow of the aristocratic system of government and the establishment of the People’s inalienable Sovereignty.

In December 1847 Mitchel, in the Nation, wrote articles encouraging the peasants to build barricades, including instructions on what every man, woman and child should do to make an insurrection successful. Duffy, in response, prohibited Mitchel from using the Nation as a pulpit for violence. Mitchel resigned from the paper and took the matter to Young Ireland’s political party, the Irish Confederation.

            The division of the Nation soon split the Confederation. The differences between Mitchel and Duffy caused the Confederation to draw up a set of guidelines for the party to follow. The resolutions, drafted by O’Brien declared, “we disclaim…any intention of involving our country in civil war, or of invading the just rights of any portion of its people.” Disappointed, Mitchel left the Confederation completely, for the same reason that Young Ireland had seceded from the Repeal Association in 1846. His departure deprived Young Ireland of one of its most promising and militaristic leaders.

            In May 1848 Duffy and Mitchel were both tried by the English government for crimes under the Treason Felony Act of 1848. Duffy was tried five times, but, because there were hung juries every time, he was acquitted. Mitchel, however, was convicted and exiled to Australia. The arrests did nothing to discourage the growing discontent and by the end of July 1848, it was believed in British governmental circles that an Irish rising was being planned for the autumn. The government took Young Ireland’s praise for revolution more seriously than the organization itself did. On July 22 Parliament suspended the Habeas Corpus Act. Membership in the Confederation was declared sufficient grounds for arrest and the Nation offices were seized. Ten thousand troops were also sent to the island.

            In actuality the government overestimated Young Ireland. The movement had few plans, strategies, or arrangements, and what they did have was incomplete, which presented more problems. After the English government took such actions against Ireland, they felt that they had no choice but to act and do so quickly. In addition to not having any concrete plans, Young Ireland did not have materiél or leadership. England had disarmed all of the population except English citizens living in Ireland and loyal Irish; these people were given arms. Because the decision to act occurred so quickly, leadership of the rebellion fell to O’Brien, who did not want the responsibility. He was forced into the role by Duffy and his own sense of fairness.

            O’Brien was nationalistic and committed to Young Ireland’s cause, but he was not a violent man, which made him unsuitable for the role of rebel leader. Even though they had all of these obstacles, Young Ireland felt pushed into going ahead with a rebellion. They could only hope that once started the revolution would “find root in discontent and spread on the angry fuel of the same discontent.” They would soon find that this hope was woefully unfounded.

            The goal of the rebels was to take control of Dublin, which would shut down the government. They believed that after this was accomplished risings would spring up all over the nation. The only real conflict happened on July 30 in Ballingarry in County Tipperary. O’Brien and the other Young Ireland leaders also misjudged the following that they had. They believed that they had “ten thousand men in Meath, twelve thousand in Cork, as many in Dublin, ten thousand in Limerick, fifty thousand in Slievenamon.” When rebellion came, only forty armed men and about one hundred peasant farmers participated. While the peasants were enthusiastic, they had no military experience and only stones and pikes as weapons. They were chased to a cabbage patch of a local widow’s garden and surrounded by the police and soldiers. The armed forces easily defeated them. When he saw that he had no substantial support, O’Brien abruptly called an end to fighting. O’Brien was stunned and disappointed by the lack of response from the peasants. Years later, while in exile in Australia for his role in the rebellion, O’Brien admitted that he was guilty of starting a revolution without realizing that he stood alone. The low turnout to fight might be surprising, when considering the anger felt toward the English government, but the masses were too preoccupied and downtrodden to focus on insurgence.

Young Ireland also labored with little support – either foreign, or more important, domestic. In July 1843 Davis had warned against expecting help from a foreign power, but Young Ireland knew that they needed support if they were to be successful in throwing off English rule. Though they tried, they could not enlist any help from anyone, except Irish immigrants and descendants in England and, to a larger extent, the United States. The French and Italian governments, prominent citizens of the United States, and the English Chartists did not support the Irish attempt at independence.

France’s lack of support was the biggest shock and disappointment to Young Ireland. France and Ireland had a long record of cooperation. Ireland had sent men to France to help in the Revolution of 1789, and in turn Ireland’s republican aspirations were fostered by French influence after 1793. Second generation republicans in the Young Ireland movement hoped to get help from their French allies but they did not consider the precarious situation the new provisional government in 1848 was faced with. France was anxious to win British acceptance and recognition and, as a result, would not antagonize them by helping Irish rebels.

Britain had already granted informal recognition to the new French government, but made formal recognition conditional upon France showing “republican behavior.” The behavior that Britain was looking for was French noninterference with the British Empire. When the British government thought that the French government was showing too much sympathy to Ireland, they sent their diplomat Lord Normanby to Alphonse de Lamartine to encourage the French not to get involved. Lamartine assured Normanby that he saw Irish nationality as “identical with English nationality…[and] recognized no flag in the British Isles other than that of the United Kingdom.” This accounts for the aloof reception that O’Brien and fellow Irish delegates received when they went to Paris after the February Revolution to offer congratulations to the new provisional government. Lamartine in his official government reply said, “We belong to no party in Ireland or elsewhere…. We are at peace, and we are desirous of remaining on good terms of equality, not with this or that part of Britain, but with Great Britain entire.” What Lamartine failed to notice, so great was his craving for British recognition, was the Irish delegation had not asked for help at that time. Young Ireland knew that they would have no assistance from France, so did not bother to ask when they contemplated their own rebellion.

Italy was in a similar situation as France. Italy had long prized British acceptance and sympathy to their nationalist cause. So they would not risk losing British approval by interfering with United Kingdom concerns. Count Camillo Benso di Cavour of Piedmont said, “I wish at all costs to maintain the Union.…” Also, Italian nationalists did not like Irish Catholics siding with the Catholic Church about the future of papal lands in Italy. More importantly, Italians did not recognize the Irish cause as a true nationalist one. Camillo Benso di Cavour thought that the Irish did not really want an independent government, just better treatment by the British. Guiseppe Mazzini held the same opinion as he showed in an 1847 reply to upset Irish about not being included in the nationalist People’s International League. Even though Nation editor Davis asserted earlier to Young Ireland that a nation was a community devoted to a common country, heritage, culture, and will to share a future, Mazzini still equated Ireland with England and thought all that Ireland wanted was better government, not separate government.

            Young Ireland had slightly better success in England and the United States, where Irish nationalist immigrants developed more revolutionary fervor than Young Ireland did in their home country. For a short time, Young Ireland allied with the constitutional and democratic Chartist movement in England. But the Irish living in Britain could not organize a mass movement with the Chartists: there was no common schedule for insurrection and the Chartists had a general lack of enthusiasm for physical force. The European Revolutions of 1848 pushed Young Ireland “to abandon previous restraints” about using physical force, but reaffirmed that the Chartists were “true and respectable Britons by a scrupulous concern for legitimacy.”

Young Ireland looked to the United States for assistance because the large exile population and descendants of exiles who would willingly supply weapons and money. Irish-Americans were exhilarated by the news of revolution in Europe and also offered the latest military technology in the form of “an officer training corps drilled in the militia; the latest firearms…(including Colt revolvers) to supplement the native pike; and battle hardened veterans of the Mexican War.” The culmination of this military help was to be the Irish Brigade, but the plan washed out when distinguished Americans like Robert Tyler (son of President John Tyler) pointed out that the Irish Brigade would be an unconstitutional invasion of a foreign power. Even though the large Irish-American population was still willing to send money and arms, the rising took place so quickly that they did not have time to send anything to their homeland. The lack of foreign support left Young Ireland to rely entirely upon the Irish in their own country.

            The population of Ireland fell drastically during the 1840s. In 1841, the population was 8,175,000 people, but ten years later that had dropped to 6,552,000. It is generally estimated that one million people died as a result of the famine and another million emigrated out of the country. As a result, there were fewer people to appeal to when Young Ireland tried to recruit people for their insurrection. The people left behind were those who were too poor to leave, mostly peasants. Young Ireland did not have a large appeal to this segment of the population, even though they had attempted to attract them. When Duffy and O’Brien rejected the Lalor-Mitchel plan for agrarian revolution, they not only lost Mitchel, but also the support of the peasants. After this, the rebellion was seen as a middle and upper class issue and not many peasants were interested. For many, politics was just a way to earn money by selling votes to the candidate with the most money. Furthermore, Irish people were more interested in local issues than national concerns. By 1848, the preoccupation of the Irish was not who was running the government, but where the next meal was going to come from.

            The Great Potato Famine was in its third year when the rebellion occurred. Malnutrition and diseases, such as typhus, fever, dysentery and scurvy ran rampant through the country. Destitute, the people were committing crimes in order to be put in jail (where there was food) or transported to other countries (a free way of emigrating). The food shortages caused difficulties in organizing a rebellion. To appeal to the peasants, Young Ireland tried to induce them to “fight for the harvest and not let their crops be sold.” Even with this persuasion there was still little reaction from the peasants. The Leitrim Resident Magistrate attributed the lack of response for the rebellion to it coinciding with the harvest. The peasants had too many concerns to give support to a movement that was not directly related to alleviating hunger and disease. At this point survival was considered more important than the issue of a foreign-controlled government.

            The Catholic clergy did a great deal to discourage those who might have been interested in fighting in the rebellion. There was only a small number who supported Young Ireland. The principle of the Church was that a rebellion had to have a chance of success before it could be supported. The clergy did not believe that there was even a slim chance of success and remained loyal to the O’Connellite faction of repealists. Pope Pius IX forbade the clergy from participating in politics and suspended Father Kenyon, who was one of the few priests to swear allegiance to Young Ireland. This was a strong deterrent in keeping other priests from following Father Kenyon. Priests discouraged their congregations from participating in any kind of physical violence by telling them to “behave well.”

On July 27 O’Brien led over 100 men and was hoping to pick up more on the way to meet with Meagher. The parish priest of Mullinahone went among the men during a meal stop and ordered them to desert the insurrectionary force or be consumed by the fires of hell. Half an hour later, when they left, one-third of the force had defected. By the end of the day, only twenty men were left. Three days later, with a meager force, O’Brien made a stand in County Tipperary, which was crushed in a short time by the police. After his arrest, O’Brien expressed his “sincere belief that it was through the instrumentality of the superior order of the Catholic Clergy that the insurrection was suppressed.” In Mitchel’s Jail Journal, he recorded that O’Brien many years later still blamed the clergy for the failure. While O’Brien was correct in thinking that the clergy played a large role in the demise of the Young Ireland rebellion, he was wrong in thinking that they were the only cause. There were many things working against the success of the movement, including his own leadership.

All Irishmen felt the consequences of the 1848 Irish rebellion whether they participated in the rising or not. Relations within Ireland became more strained: Protestants quarreled with Catholics, nationalists clashed with supporters of the Union, and strain between the classes was at an all-time high. The Catholic Church was falsely accused by Irish Protestants who were loyal to England of giving widespread support to the insurgents. England stopped what little charity was going to Ireland because the Irish were seen to be ungrateful in their rebellion. Irish relations with the United States and Europe changed. Physical force advocates began to look to the Irish population of the United States instead of Europe because of the support received for the rebellion. All of the leaders of the 1848 Rebellion, except Charles Gavan Duffy, were exiled from Ireland. Many participants left the island too, including James Stephens, Thomas Clark Luby, John O’Mahony, and Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, who became leaders of the Fenien movement (also know as the Irish Republican Brotherhood) in 1858. It was in the United States that O’Mahony founded the Fenien movement. The greatest significance of the Young Ireland rising of 1848 was that it revived the use of physical force in the fight for independence from England. For forty years prior to 1848, peaceful constitutional means had been the only way Irish separatists had dealt with England.

England was not immune from the discontent and insurrection that raged through Europe in 1848. The Irish population was very unhappy with the English for a variety of reasons: government apathy during the famine, the system of landlord-tenant society and economy, and not allowing them to have any form of self-government. This discontent led to an attempt by Young Ireland to oust English government from Ireland, but the movement had such poor leadership and support that it had no chance of success. Lack of planning, resources, foreign support, mass support, church support, and no military leadership doomed the rebellion before it started. The rising was important, though, in that it revived the use of violence in obtaining Irish independence and influenced participants, such as Stephens and O’Mahony, to carry on what Young Ireland started in 1848.