Arthur O'Connor

CONCLUSIONS AND REFLECTIONS G.D.H. Cole once wrote, in a sketch of the life of the English revolutionary Ernest Jones, that he “was, by all ordinary standards, an unsuccessful man.” The same could be said of Arthur O’Connor. He was educated to become a lawyer but never practiced law. He was a parliamentarian whose career was cut short by his inability to tolerate the corruption it entailed. He was a central leader of an Irish revolution that failed to take power. He was Bonaparte’s anointed king-in-waiting whose coronation never came to pass. And for half a century he was a general who never saw battle. Nonetheless, like Ernest Jones, Arthur O’Connor led a remarkable life of considerable historical significance. He did not succeed in his primary objective of liberating Ireland from British domination. However, the movement he helped to create and lead—the United Irishmen of 1798—had a powerful impact on his own era and left an important legacy of revolutionary precedent for subsequent generations of Irish republicans and nationalists. Although O’Connor was not among the original founders of the United Irish Society, he was the foremost engineer of its transformation from a small reformist propaganda group into a powerful underground revolutionary army. Historians’ speculations concerning “what might have been” are always open to challenge, but few would deny that the Rebellion of 1798 might have succeeded in ending British rule in Ireland had O’Connor, Fitzgerald, and other authoritative leaders been on the scene to coordinate the actions of the rebel armies. The British victory was predicated on the decapitation of the United Irish movement. Among O’Connor’s most important specific contributions was his attempt in 1796 to enlist France’s military support for an Irish revolution. He was neither the first nor the last representative of the United Irishmen to engage in such diplomacy with the French government, but he was certainly the most effective. Before he and Fitzgerald appeared on the scene, the negotiations had stalled on the French insistence that the Irish rebels rise in advance of the arrival of French troops. It was O’Connor’s firm refusal to accept that condition that broke the diplomatic stalemate and brought about General Hoche’s offensive in late 1796, the largest and most serious of the French military expeditions to Ireland. O’Connor brought a number of positive attributes to the Irish revolutionary struggle. His social status as a landowning gentleman with an aristocratic pedigree gave him a major advantage in assuming a position of leadership. He was a charismatic orator, an accomplished writer, an able political organizer, and a diligent student of military strategy and tactics. As the most philosophically inclined of the United Irish leaders and arguably the most intellectually gifted, O’Connor became the movement’s leading theoretician. He utilized the most advanced socioeconomic views of the time (the “economical science” of Adam Smith) in an effort to develop a systematic theory of how a social transformation could be accomplished in Ireland. His 1798 work The State of Ireland was the most fully developed expression of his revolutionary ideology. O’Connor’s influence was magnified considerably by his association with Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who affectionately called O’Connor his “twin soul.” As a member of Ireland’s premier aristocratic family, Lord Edward’s social standing far eclipsed O’Connor’s, but in their joint political activities Fitzgerald looked to his more talented friend for guidance. They nevertheless perceived their relationship to be one of equals because its primary bond was their common devotion to Irish patriotism. CHARACTER ISSUES: COWARDICE? OPPORTUNISM? With regard to O’Connor’s character, historians and other commentators have frequently based their judgments on the testimony of those who for personal or political reasons disliked him. Also, as one of the few leading United Irishmen to survive the failed Rebellion he naturally became a target of blame for the defeat. Lord Edward’s daughter, for example, reflected unfounded suspicions that O’Connor had through cowardice or avarice betrayed his comrades: “I knew he [O’Connor] was suspected by most ’98 men from his having unaccountable money with which he bought property in France, where he settled when he was let out of prison.” The source of O’Connor’s money has been adequately explained in the preceding chapters, but can the fact of his survival nevertheless be attributed to serious flaws in his character? The Kilmainham pact saved O’Connor’s life and extended it by more than half a century, but his participation in it cannot be imputed to cowardice. Archival evidence makes it clear that the driving force behind the pact was not the United Irish prisoners’ fears for their lives but political machinations of the Pitt ministry and its agent in Ireland, Cornwallis. It is also worth noting that O’Connor’s factional foes Emmet and MacNeven, who have usually been portrayed by historians as brave patriots, joined in formulating and signing the Kilmainham pact. Generally speaking, O’Connor’s persistence in revolutionary activity in face of continuous threats against his life does not support the conclusion that he lacked physical courage. The charges of opportunism—a term often used vaguely and inconsistently—cannot be discussed without settling on a specific meaning. By my definition, an opportunist is a person who alters his or her self-professed principles to suit the immediate needs of narrow self-interest. A classic historical example of an opportunist in this sense is Talleyrand, who advanced his career by serving a variety of regimes founded on thoroughly incompatible political principles. Once O’Connor reached adulthood and broke definitively with his aristocratic uncle, he maintained a remarkable consistency in his principles. His actions were generally guided by those principles, in contrast to the opportunistic practice of making up sui generis “principles” to fit any desired course of action. Far from obsequiously bending his knee to power as Talleyrand did, O’Connor seemed always to go out of his way to seek out oppositionists to side with. In Ireland he scuttled a promising political career to throw in his lot with revolutionaries engaged in a dangerous conspiracy. In England he was drawn to a group of reformers who at the time represented a small minority of the ruling circles. In France he jeopardized his relations with Bonaparte by gravitating toward the Idéologues. It could be argued that O’Connor opportunistically took up the revolutionary cause because he felt he could ride it to power, but that was a high-risk option at best, and taking risks does not fit the profile of an opportunist. Genuine opportunists only flock to a revolutionary banner after the revolution succeeds in coming to power. There were minor episodes in O’Connor’s later life that might be interpreted as instances of opportunism, but the overall pattern was quite the opposite. It has also been suggested that O’Connor’s famous speech on Catholic emancipation was opportunistic because he was not really interested in Catholic emancipation per se and simply entered the debate on that subject in order to make a revolutionary proclamation. But in that speech he threw down the gauntlet to the established powers in Ireland and England and intentionally wrecked his parliamentary career. It was widely recognized at the time that he had taken a courageous (some said foolhardy) stand, something no genuine political opportunist would ever have dreamed of doing.