The Sun.
London, England, 1864-06-18 00:00:00

Death of Mr, William Smith O'Brien,

Mr. William Smith O'Brien died on Thursday at
Bangor. His name was first ridiculous as a pri-
soner of the coalhole of the House of Commons ;
next, notorious as the leader of the Irish rebels of
1848 ; again, ridiculous when he fought and was
captured in Widow Welsh's cabbage garden, and,
finally, simply obscure and disregarded. What in-
fatuation possessed such a man—a country gentle-
man of property, a Cambridge man, a man of
unblemished personal honour—to embark in such
absurd enterprises as made the name of " Smith
O'Brien" less the hangman's affair than a subject
for unlimited jokes ! His elder brother, Lord Inohi■
quin, lives the honoured lieutenant of Clare, and a
representative peer of his country in the British
Parliament ; he, though a man of greater ability,
lived latterly away from the land which might have
been proud to own him,
" A mockery and a show."

Mr. William Smith O'Brien was born in 1803.
He was the second son of Sir Edward O'Brien,
fourth baronet, of Dromoland, in the county of
Clare, by the eldest daughter and co-heiress of Mr
William Smith, of Cahirmoyle, Limerick. His elder
brother (better known as Sir Lucius O'Brien, long
the Conservative M.P. for Clare) succeeded his
father as fifth baronet in 1837, and became 13th
Baron Inchiquin in 1855, on the death of his kins-
man, the Marquis of Thomond. One fact tolerably
well indicates the character of the subject of this
notice—that when, in 1862, Lord Inchiquin's
brothers and sisters were elevated to the rank of
baron's children, he refused to be included in the
Roy al warrant.

Mr O'Brien, after an education at Harrow, and
Trinity College; Cambridge, entered Parliament in
1826 as the Tory M.P. for Ennis, and opposed
Mr. O'Connell at the famous Clare election.
He was member for Limerick from 1835 to
1849, and this waa the important part of his sena-
torial career—the position of a Protestant Irish
county member being his Archimedean stand-point,
whence he could, as he thought, move the Irish
world to O'Connellism.

It would not be of any use, and it would be cer-
tainly of little interest, to mention the hon. gentle-
man's speeches, and the little skirmishes which were
perpetually taking place in consequence, preliminary
to that in the cabbage garden. But the month of
April, 1846, produced a terrible outburst of Celtic
indignation on the part of the member for Limerick
county, which ended in a coalhole. The cause of this
outburst was quite worthy of its close. At the end of
March the Committee of Selection made a special re-
port to.the House of Commons to the iffsct that Mr.
O'Brien having been duly summoned to attend on a
railway bill as ordered was a " defaulting member."
Mr. O'Brien alleged, in a letter dated from the Ox-
ford and Cambridge Ciub, that he declined to serve
on committees "on any private bills except
such as related to Ireland," as the opposition to the
intended Irish coercion bill required all his time
and his faculties, which—as he justly said of the
latter at least—were " In spite of a gen-
tlemanly and temperate letter from Mr. Bucknall
Estcourt, member for Oxford University, and chair-
man of the Committee of Selection, Mr. O'Brien
refused to yield. On the 29th of April Mr. Henley
reported this fact, and Mr. Estcourt moved that
the hon. gentleman was guilty of a contempt of
the House, which motion was carried by 133 to 13.
the next day Mr. O'Brien was committed to cus-
tody. If he expected to be " honoured with a
residence in the Tower," as a contemporary journal
remarks, he was mistaken. He was assigned a small
apartment called the cellar, belonging to the porters,
on the north side of the House." The next indignity
was a " burst of laughter" when the present Lord Fer-
moy read a eery defiant letter addressed to "my dear
Roche" from the House of Commons Prison,' in
which he said that, " suffering from the injustice of
the house, he expected nothing from its generosity."
The general election released Mr. O'Brien, but
his confinement had not brote-,ht him wisdom. The
Revolution of February in Pails, and the general
upheaving of the continent of Europe, seemed to
produce a kind of echo in Ireland. O'Connell had
been dead a year, or fine fun he would have made
of Mr. Smith O'Brien's ridiculous deputation to
Paris, with Meagher of the Sword, O'Gorman, and
others, who are immortalised by Mr. Thackeray.
M. Lamartine was good enough to let the treason.
mongers down easily, but he flatly told them that
the Republic "would not commit an act, would not
utter a word, would not breathe an insinuation"
against the "inviolability of nations," which grand
phrase merely meant doing England the kindness
to let her mind her own business. The British
:Go-
vernment did not seem to appreciate Mr. O'Brien 6
love for French fashions and tried him for sedition,
Mr. O'Brien having, like many another prophet in
his own country, been grievously assaulted at
Limerick. He was defended by Mr. Isaac Butt in
the Hall of Four Courts, and, as might be expected,
the jury did not agree, and the matter came to an
end, though similar luck did not befall John Mit-
chel. Nothing daunted, Mr. Smith O'Brien, having
been negatively successful at sedition, resolved to
make a direct attempt at high treason. Towards
the end of July he attempted to get up an Irish re-
bellion on a small scale ; troops Were sent off to Ire-
land, and Lord Clarendon issued proclamations. He
gathered a lot of ragamuffins together by Slievna-
mon mountains, and it was rumoured of him that
if an attempt was made to take him there would
be fighting." The fighting may have taken place,
but the proceedings
of "the Giant O'Brien," as he
was called, was mere skulking, Ho was arrested at
Thurles on August 5, and so the silly insurrection
came to an end. Mr. O'Brien was tried for high
treason and condemned to death. Her Majesty was
advised to commute the death penalty, but Mr.
O'Brien—the ruling passion strong even to death—
refused the proffered boon, which, however, the
bigotry and intolerance of the odious English Go-
vernment compelled him to accept. He was sent to
Bermuda, and refused to join Mitchel in forfeiting
his word and escaping. He was ultimately pardoned
(1856), and has been only lately favourably known
by a most sensible and judicious letter against en-
listment in Ireland for the Federal party.
Mr. O'Brien married, about 1836, the daughteri
of
Mr. Joseph Gabbett, of Lin had
a by whom he ac.
a large family. His estates, which were, before his
conviction, transferred to his family, had not come
b i
to him, his eldest sou having come into pos-
session of Cehirmoyle, giving his father an annual
income from the estate.
Thus dies a descendant of Brien Boroihme and
Murrogh O'Brien, a less personage—a man whes,,
honour was unimpeachable, but whose want of
judgment, conceit, and impetuous love of notor •
iety led him into the escapades which in any other
country would have cost him his life ; bat which,
under the sway of the British Government, which
he abhorred, only brought him into contempt, and
let him die in the obscurity which was the last
thing he would have coveted,