SNIPPET: Daniel O'CONNELL (1775-1847) - the Liberator - dominated Irish politics during the first half of the 19th century. One of the first Catholics to enter the legal profession in 1798, he became one of the most successful barristers and the most prominent politician/hero in Ireland, winning emancipation for the Catholics thereby giving dignity and self-respect back to the Irish people after centuries of repression. His campaign to repeal the union between Ireland and England failed, but stimulated the founding of the Young Ireland movement. The following is from his speech on the floor of the Commons, 1837: "If we were seven millions of mere, dull, uneducated, degraded serfs, a mere mass of helotism, to our seven millions little regard should be paid. Once, indeed, we were sunk by the Penal Code. But a marvellous change has taken place. Men often talk of the great improvement which has taken place in Ireland, and in doing so they refer merely to its external aspect. Its moral one has undergone a still greater alteration. Not only has the plough climbed to the top of the mountain and cultivation pierced the morass, but the mind of Ireland has been reclaimed. You educate our people, and with the education of our people, the continuance of unnatural and unjust institutions is incompatible. But if education has done much, agitation has done more. Public opinion, which before did not exist, has been created in Ireland. The minds of men of all classes have been inlaid with the great principles on which the rights of the majority depended. This salutary influence has ascend ed to the higher classes, spread among the middle, and descended among the lower. The humblest peasant has been nobly affected by it. Even in the most abject destitution he has begun to acquire a sentiment of self-respect. 'He venerates himself a man.' I remember the time when, if you struck an Irish peasant, he cowered beneath the blow. Strike him now, and the spirit of offended manhood starts up in a breast covered with rags... No sir, we are not what we were. We have caught the intonations of your rhymes. Englishmen, we are too like you to give you leave to keep us down. Nay, in some points we have surpassed you. We are an undecaying and imperishable people."