Frank Bouchier-Hayes: Exactly 175 years ago today, a significant milestone in Irish history was reached when King George IV reluctantly gave the royal assent to the Roman Catholic Relief Act.
The king had bitterly declared a month earlier that the prime minister, the Duke of Wellington, was now "King Arthur", Daniel O'Connell was "King of Ireland" and he was merely "Dean of Windsor". Catholic Emancipation, as the parliamentary measure was more commonly known, was greeted much more favourably by Lord Ellenborough, who wrote in his diary: "That I should, if I lived, live to see this I did expect; but that I should see it so soon, and that I should happen to be a member of the government that carried it, I did not expect. I must say with what delight I view the prospect of having Catholics in Parliament."
The decision to grant Catholic Emancipation marked the first great U-turn of Robert Peel, the then home secretary and leader of the House of Commons, and Wellington, making them forever suspect to hard-line Protestants. Peel subsequently lost his seat at Oxford University, and the still to be seen slogan "No Peel" was burned into a door at Christ Church, his former college. Following the passing of the Act, the Duchess of Richmond invited the entire cabinet to dinner. On their arrival, they discovered that the dining room had been "decorated" with two hundred strategically placed stuffed rats.
The ill feeling that the duchess and others bore towards the government was due to the fact that by creating conditions in which Catholics could sit as MPs at Westminster, the Protestant nature of the Constitution was undermined.
Thomas Babington Macaulay recalled in 1833 the extreme reactions which the campaign for Catholic Emancipation had provoked in those who opposed the measure, by declaring "how restless, how versatile, how encroaching, how insinuating, is the spirit of the Church of Rome" and asking how anyone could "give power to the members of a Church so busy, so aggressive, so insatiable?" W.R. Le Fanu wrote in his celebrated memoir, Seventy Years of Irish Life, that "when the news that the Bill had become law reached our part of the country, we were all assembled to see the bonfires and rejoicings on the road that passed our gate, and the hearty cheers given for us". Le Fanu also remembered that when a local farmer named James Fleming was asked what emancipation meant, he replied that it meant "a shilling a day for every man as long as he lives, whatever he does".
Catholics, who had suffered as a result of the penal laws, had their situation gradually improved by a series of Relief Acts which culminated in the Act of 1829. It had originally been thought that Catholic Emancipation would accompany the Act of Union in 1801 but this plan had been shelved in the face of stiff regal opposition. Various efforts to get the government to agree to the measure failed until Daniel O'Connell founded the Catholic Association in May 1823. In January 1824, O'Connell introduced a scheme whereby a subscription of a penny a month would enable someone to become an associate member of the Catholic Association. Not alone did this payment, known as the Catholic Rent, give many people a sense of participation in the emancipation campaign, but it also enabled the creation of a network of committees and agents throughout the country.
Louise Fuller, in her book Irish Catholicism Since 1950, highlights the fact that the Catholic clergy managed the enrolment and collection of the Catholic Rent. She also draws attention to the fact that the parish structure was "used for the formation of association branches and the promotion of meetings and demonstrations, and priests were involved in bringing the voters to the polls at the time of elections".
In March 1825, the Catholic Association was declared an illegal organisation. O'Connell responded by renaming it the New Catholic Association in July of that same year. In the 1826 election, pro-emancipation candidates were elected at Louth and Waterford. Two years later, a most remarkable election contest took place. Vesey Fitzgerald, an Anglican who supported emancipation, was obliged to seek re-election prior to taking up a government appointed position. O'Connell decided to contest the election even though he would be unable under the current legislation to take his seat if he won. He knew that if he was successful, the prime minister would be faced with an uncomfortable decision. Either he could pass the Act that would enable O'Connell to take his seat or he could declare the election null and void.
When O'Connell was elected for Clare in what Peel termed "an avalanche", the decision was taken to pass a Roman Catholic Relief Act with two mean-spirited aspects.
The county franchise was raised from 40 shillings to £10, which removed the vote from the majority of those who had supported the emancipation campaign, and only those Catholics elected after the passing of the Act could avail of its terms.
Thus, O'Connell was obliged to seek re-election and was returned to parliament without opposition.
Daniel O'Connell aptly described the achievement of Catholic Emancipation as "one of the greatest triumphs recorded in history - a bloodless revolution more extensive in its operation than any other political change that could take place".
He also wrote of his hope that Catholics and Protestants would unite together to ensure that "something solid and substantial may be done for all".
One hundred and seventy five years after O'Connell wrote these words, such unity, in political terms, appears to remain as elusive as ever.
Nevertheless, the emancipation campaign sowed the seeds for later campaigns for self-government by demonstrating that democracy can work when people peacefully join together to pursue a commonly agreed and clearly defined end.