Dromoland Castle, County Clare, Ireland, above (now a hotel) was the boyhood home of William Smith O’Brien.

MP and Irish Nationalist William Smith O’Brien supported the repeal of the Act of Union that made pre-Famine Ireland part of the United Kingdom.  He paid dearly for his beliefs and the actions he took to make Ireland free.   Found guilty of treason and condemned to death in 1848, his sentence was commuted to transportation to Tasmania (Australia).  Why?  In the winter of 1848-49, 166 petitions were signed in Ireland (over 75,000 signatures) and England (7,830 signatures) pleading for the British Government to show the jailed leader mercy.  Trinity College, Dublin, has compiled a CD of the signatures and the original  petitions are housed in the Irish National Archives. 

Consider, for a moment, the logistics of gathering those signatures during the darkest days of the Famine.  Consider the rank and file farmers who refused to testify against O’Brien AND who refused to turn him in (he was captured by a British soldier) despite the reward of 500 pounds offered (this amount would have covered the cost of passage to America for well over 100 emigrants).  Consider the risk of putting one’s name to a petition in support of a leader the British so feared  – because of men like O’Brien, Parliament had suspended Habeas Corpus in Ireland and passed a number of anti-sedition acts specifically aimed at squashing demonstrations and appeals for Irish independence.  Consider, too, the options open to William Smith O’Brien – a rich Protestant born into the landed gentry who lived in luxury at Dromoland Castle.   What drove such a man to make his life’s work the pursuit of Catholic Emancipation?  That question must have been asked by many who weren’t able to grasp that O’Brien saw himself first and foremost as an Irishman.