Ireland, always more or less disturbed, was excited nearly to the point of rebellion in 1843, owing to an agitation for the Repeal of the Union which had been originated by Daniel O’Connell, one of the most remarkable men of that epoch. O’Connell belonged to a good but impoverished family in Kerry, and was brought up as a lawyer. But Nature had designed him for little else than a political agitator, and the demand for Roman Catholic Emancipation, which began to acquire force in the early part of the present century, drew him into the whirlpool of public life. Whatever his faults and errors, he was unquestionably a devoted son of the Church to which he and his family belonged; and the Romanists of this realm suffered at that time from many unjust disabilities. In a few years he became the leader of the movement; and when the Act of 1829 was passed, O’Connell was regarded by the great mass of the Irish people as a hero who could always lead them to victory. When a very young man, he was opposed to the union of the English and Irish Legislatures, and in 1841 he renewed an earlier agitation in favour of repealing that arrangement. As long as the Whigs were in power, or nearly so, O’Connell kept the national excitement within reasonable bounds; for he hoped to extort a good deal from a party which depended on extraneous support, and he was prepared to take less than his full demand, in the belief that an instalment in one year would prepare the way for complete payment in another. But, when it became evident that Sir Robert Peel would soon be Prime Minister, it was considered that nothing could be obtained except by means of an agitation carried to the extreme verge of legality, and apparently, if not really, threatening to pass beyond it.