No Daniel O'Connell Or He Gets Killed In A Duel Before Making An Impact.

In Ireland, He is known as the great liberator, the founder of mass participation politics( which later led to the huge political success of Irish-Americans in US politics ), His statue stands proudly errect our eponymous main street in Dublin for birds to do their business on, He was the mainforce behind catholic emancipation in Ireland within the Union with Britain, he also had a great reputation as our biggest fornicator ( it was said you could not hit a child in a workhouse with a stone thrown from the outside without hitting one of his offspring, he was also noted for having a brilliant legal mind, being a superlative speaker and according to evidence being very corrupt, indeed our indigenous mafia political party AKA Fianna Fail would be an ideal modern home for him. He also famously killed another man in a duel, though a pacifist in general, actually stating that the freedom of Ireland wasn't worth a drop of human blood.
So if he had concentrated on his legal practice or been killed in a duel, or as nearly happened got thrown out of political life for corruption or died of venereal disease before making a substantial impact, how would the world and Ireland have changed?
 
I must admit I didn't know his life was so "colourful!" :D

If he doesn't get into politics or is disgraced then perhaps the Repeal and subsequent Home Rule Movements never achieve the same popular support, Emancipation would happen but without O'Connell forcing the issue in the Clare by-election it is delayed. In place of O'Connell's movement the Fenians could well have been more powerful.

You raise an interesting possibility over O'Connell's womanising, suppose he suffers the same fate that Parnell did, if Parnell still becomes the champion of Home Rule then with the memory of O'Connell's disgrace does he decide to keep it zipped up possibly resulting in some form of HR in the 19th Century?
 
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