his father's triumphal car when the prisoners were released on the success of their appeal to the House of Lords, and became, during his father's frequent absences, the practical head of the repeal association in Ireland. In this capacity he strenuously opposed the ‘Young Ireland’ party, and incurred its bitter enmity. Allied as he always was with the Roman catholic priesthood, and trained too in his father's school of constitutional agitation, he was prone to detect and vehement in denouncing irreligious or lawless tendencies in the new party. To the succession to his father's ‘uncrowned kingship’ he asserted almost dynastic claims. The ‘Young Ireland’ party, willing to defer to the age and genius of the father, revolted against such pretensions on the part of his youthful and mediocre son. A bitter struggle ensued, but on his father's final departure from Ireland, he succeeded to the control, and, on his death, to the titular leadership, of the association, which, in his hands, declined so rapidly that for want of funds it was dissolved on 6 June 1848. He then appears to have made overtures to the ‘Confederates’ through William Smith O'Brien [q. v.], but speedily withdrew from them. ‘He was charged at the moment,’ says Duffy, whose antagonism to him seems to have been extreme, ‘with being a tool of Lord Clarendon's to keep separate the priests and the “Confederates;” but it is possible that he was merely influenced by doubt and trepidation, for his mind was as unsteady as a quagmire.’ At any rate, when the ‘Confederates’ attempted a rebellion, he thought it well to retire for a time to France.
When he returned, he openly took the side of the whig party. He became a captain of militia, reopened Conciliation Hall, and, until he sold it, held meetings in the whig interest. His name was still influential with the masses, though over the repeal members of parliament he had ceased to exercise any control, in spite of their election pledges of fidelity to him; and, aided by the support of several Roman catholic bishops, he carried on for some time a miniature agitation under the popular nickname of the ‘Young Liberator.’ When the tenant league was projected in 1850 to start a new land agitation, he used his influence against it; and he gave great offence during the excitement produced by the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill by voting against the motion with regard to colonial policy, which led to the fall of Russell's ministry in February 1851. The corporation of Limerick passed a resolution of censure on their member, and in August 1851 he accepted the Chiltern Hundreds to create a vacancy for the Earl of Arundel, who, in consequence of the secession of his father, the Duke of Norfolk, from the Roman faith, had resigned the family borough of Arundel on 16 July. On 21 Dec. 1853 he re-entered parliament as member for Clonmel; but his position in the House of Commons, always insignificant, was now one of obscurity. In February 1857 he quitted public life, on receiving from Lord Carlisle the clerkship of the Hanaper Office, Ireland; and on 24 May 1858 he died suddenly at his house, Gowran Hill, Kingstown, near Dublin, where he had lived for some years, and was buried in Glasnevin cemetery. He published a wordy and extravagant ‘Life and Speeches’ of his father in 1846, which was republished in 1854; and ‘Recollections’ of his own parliamentary career, a chatty but unsatisfactory book, in 1846, which was fiercely attacked in the ‘Quarterly Review’ (lxxxvi. 128).
He married, on 28 March 1838, Elizabeth daughter of Dr. Ryan of co. Dublin, and by her had eight children.
[John O'Connell's Works; Fitzpatrick's Correspondence by O'Connell; Webb's Compendium of Irish Biography; State Trials, new ser. vol. v.; Duffy's Four Years of Irish History and League of North and South.]
O'CONNELL, Sir MAURICE CHARLES (1812–1879), soldier and colonial statesman, the eldest son of General Sir Maurice Charles Philip O'Connell [q. v.], was born in January 1812 in Sydney, New South Wales. As an infant he was taken from Sydney to Ceylon, whence, in 1819, he was sent home to be educated, first at Dr. Pinkney's school at East Sheen, afterwards at the High School, Edinburgh. Thence he went to Dublin and Paris, where he was for a time a military student at the college of Charlemagne. In 1828 he entered the army as an ensign in the 73rd regiment of foot. For three years he served in Gibraltar and Malta, and in 1831 went with his regiment to Jersey, where he acted as its adjutant till 1835, being promoted lieutenant on 24 Jan. 1834. In 1835 he obtained leave to raise in Ireland a regiment of the British legion for Spain, was placed on half-pay on 24 July, and in September, within seven weeks after his marriage, embarked with the regiment, the 10th Munster light infantry, of which he had been gazetted lieutenant-colonel, to take service under Queen Isabella against Don Carlos. During nearly two years he led this regiment, fought several engagements with the Carlists, and earned much distinction, becoming in turn colonel and deputy adjutant-general of the British legion and general of brigade. On one occasion he nar-
