O’BRIEN, Patrick (1821-1895), of 21 Bryanston Square, London and 14 Merrion Square East, Dublin

O’Brien was born in Dublin, the son of Sir Timothy O’Brien, a wealthy Dublin merchant who sat for Cashel, 1846-62. In 1844 he became a barrister and served as secretary to his father, then lord mayor of Dublin. A member of the city corporation, he attended upon the queen during her visit to Ireland in May 1845.Morning Post, 13 Jan. 1844; Standard, 9 Sept. 1844; Morning Post, 22 May 1845. Although humorous and kindly, he was also ‘hot-tempered’ and sensitive, and first came into the public eye in 1849 when he became involved in a public dispute between his father, then serving his second term as mayor, and Dr. John Gray, the proprietor of the Freeman’s Journal.Standard, 3 Sept. 1849; The Times, 27 Apr. 1895.

O’Brien later confessed that early in life he had been ‘dazzled by the genius of Sheridan, the eloquence of Fox, and the efforts of their compatriots in favour of Catholic independence and public liberty’, but declared that subsequent events had induced in him ‘a feeling of repugnance … towards that animal called a Whig’.Freeman’s Journal, 21 June 1852. Like his father, O’Brien was in favour of repeal of the Union and was returned as a ‘Catholic, an Irishman, and a Radical reformer’ for King’s County at the 1852 general election, when he was credited with displaying ‘some degree of sensibility and moderation’ in an otherwise stormy contest with a Conservative rival.Morning Post, 10 May 1852; Standard, 20 July 1852.

Having attested to his ‘thorough independence of any governments’, he joined the Independent Irish party, attending and accepting the resolutions of the tenant-right and religious equality conferences that autumn, and was present at the free trade banquet at Manchester, 2 Nov. 1852.Freeman’s Journal, 21 June 1852; Morning Post, 10 Sept., 30 Oct., 3 Nov. 1852; J.H. Whyte, The Independent Irish Party, 1850-9 (1958), 181. He duly supported Villiers’s free trade motion, 26 Nov., and voted against Disraeli’s budget, 16 Dec. As ‘a grandson of a tenant farmer’ he advocated ‘full and entire protection for the Irish tenant’ and divided in favour of William Shee’s tenant-right bill, 7 Dec. 1852.Freeman’s Journal, 21 June 1852. An advocate of ‘complete religious equality’, he supported the removal of Jewish disabilities, 24 Feb., 11 Mar. 1853. He regularly attended meetings of the Irish party in 1853, taking the party’s line against Gladstone’s budget, 2 May 1853, and for Ireland’s exemption from income tax, 6 May.Freeman’s Journal, 5 Mar., 5 Oct. 1853, 12 Mar. 1857. A relatively assiduous attender, he voted in 117 of the 257 divisions in that session.Daily News, 21 Sept. 1853. In 1856 he participated in 89 of the 198 divisions taken that session: J.P. Gassiot & J.A. Roebuck, Third letter to J.A. Roebuck: with a full analysis of the divisions in the House of Commons during the last session of parliament (1857), 89. O’Brien was also a regular speaker, making more than 200 contributions to debate between 1852 and 1868, and ‘readily favoured a delighted House’ with oratory ‘of the most florid and effusive kind’ and sometimes ‘convulsed’ the assembly ‘with genuine merriment’ in which, O’Brien was happy to observe, even William Gladstone once joined.The Times, 29 Apr. 1895. It was said at his death that he had often engaged ‘in a kind of fantastic absurdity, not always devoid of common sense’: Huddersfield Daily Chronicle, 29 Apr. 1895.

As the son of one of Ireland’s leading whiskey merchants, O’Brien formed close ties with the country’s distillers, and consistently supported the removal of restrictions on the spirit trade. In June 1853 he contended that Irish distillers were disadvantaged in comparison with those of Scotland, and argued that an increase in excise duty on spirits would only increase illicit distillation.Hansard, 16 July 1860, vol. 159, c. 2011; 10 June 1853, vol. 127, c. 683; 17 June 1853, vol. 128, cc. 414-5. In March 1854 he ‘made a gallant fight’ on behalf of the Irish spirit trade by moving an amendment to the Royal Navy spirits bill to allow ‘home-made spirits’ such as whiskey to compete with rum ‘as the beverage for the Navy’, and sat on the select committee on the Sale of Beer Act in 1855.Freeman’s Journal, 6 Mar. 1854; Hansard, 3 Mar. 1854, vol. 131, cc. 308-9; PP 1854-55 (407) x. 339; PP 1854-55 (427) (427-I) x. 505, 513. He long maintained that domestic distillers suffered due to ‘an undue preference’ shown to ‘foreign spirits’, and in July 1856 opposed the reduction of wine duties, arguing ‘that the people of this country would prefer drinking [Bass] pale ale … to drinking those foreign wines, for which they had not yet cultivated a taste.’Hansard, 23 June 1853, vol. 128, cc. 675-6; 15 July 1856, vol. 143, c. 928. He later petitioned against the excise duties bill of 1858 and in April 1861 recommended that the system be thoroughly reformed.Hansard, 26 Apr. 1858, vol. 149, cc. 1744-5; 29 Apr. 1861, vol. 162, cc. 1271-3.

O’Brien was a staunch and articulate defender of the rights and reputation of Catholics within the United Kingdom, and encouraged the reform of Dublin University, where he had been a student.Hansard, 4 Apr. 1854, vol. 132, cc. 416-7. While reluctant to turn the Commons ‘into a debating society for the consideration of the religious differences of opinion’, he engaged with James Whiteside over the 1854 convents bill, wittily dismissing the ‘cloud of fine words and fantastic conceits’ by which his opponent had rendered the issue ‘inaccessible to vision’.Hansard, 28 Mar. 1854, vol. 131, cc. 1453-4. Yet, while he wished to avoid ‘matters calculated to engender sectarian and personal feelings’, he did not consider their discussion ‘as an unmixed evil’ if it provided Irish Catholic representatives with ‘an opportunity of repudiating doctrines most erroneously attributed to them’.Hansard, 27 June 1855, vol. 139, cc. 265-71.

O’Brien backed the government over the Crimean War and attacked critics of the enlistment of foreigners bill, 22 Dec. 1854, for believing that it was ‘impossible for a German to sympathise in the cause that involved the liberty of Europe, and to fight for it’.Hansard, 22 Dec. 1854, vol. 136, cc. 844-6. In October 1856 he paid tribute to the individual acts of heroism displayed by the rank and file of the British armed forces at the Crimean Banquet in Dublin, and in 1858 sat on the select committee which investigated the disbandment of the Land Transport Corps, a unit he believed had been badly treated.Morning Post, 24 Oct. 1856; PP 1857-58 (401) x. 249; Hansard, 23 Apr. 1858, vol. 149, c. 1627. He subsequently took an interest in the question of military appointments, pointing to ‘the want of an efficient system of promotion in the army’.Hansard, 22 Dec. 1854, vol. 136, cc. 844-6; 27 Mar. 1855, vol. 137, c. 1242. Wishing to see the army recruit its officers from a wider section of society, he criticised the purchase system and lamented a situation where ‘the man who could repeat arma virumque cano [I sing of arms and of a man: Virgil] with the best grace, was to be preferred to the candidate who was the most deeply versed in mathematics and mechanics’.Hansard, 26 Apr. 1858, vol. 149, c. 1738; 6 Mar. 1860, vol. 157, c. 37. He also condemned the system of appointments at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, later obtaining a return of army staff appointments made between 1855 and 1867 in order to draw attention to the ‘very natural feeling of umbrage’ existing amongst officers who were routinely excluded from positions they were ‘perfectly qualified to fill’.Hansard, 6 June 1867, vol. 187, c. 1716; 31 May 1867, vol. 187, c. 1430; Standard, 17 Apr. 1868.

Like his father, O’Brien remained faithful to the Independent Irish party until 1854. Thereafter his allegiance was regarded as ‘doubtful’, and it was later said that it was ‘utterly impossible to imagine [him] a member of a pledge-bound party’.Whyte, Independent Irish Party, 181; The Times, 27 Apr. 1895. That December he informed the House that he ‘was no Government man, but decidedly was likewise no Conservative’, and lamented that the absence of cross-benches ‘reluctantly compelled him to sit on the Tory side of the House’.Hansard, 22 Dec. 1854, vol. 136, c. 845. Contemplating the course of his political life, it was later said that he was known ‘to deplore the recklessness with which he had thrown away the chances of a great political career’, once claiming that Palmerston had once said to him ‘Pat, me bhoy, if you’d been a different sort of man I’d have hed you in the Kebinet’.Huddersfield Daily Chronicle, 29 Apr. 1895. He took no part in the Irish independent Liberals flirtation with the Conservatives, and warned them aganst making ‘an unholy alliance’ with a party he regarded as ‘imbued with notions of ascendancy’. As one ‘schooled in early life in Liberal principles’, he contended that progress towards ‘religious freedom … and the social rights from which [Catholics] were still unjustly debarred’, could only be obtained ‘by the aid and co-operation of Liberal opinions’.Whyte, Independent Irish Party, 183; Hansard, 5 Feb. 1864, vol. 173, cc. 207-8.

A man of ‘considerable reading’, O’Brien believed that the system of Irish National Schools had provided Catholics with ‘a capital education’, while affording them the ‘spiritual instruction … necessary to their eternal salvation’.Huddersfield Daily Chronicle, 29 Apr. 1895; Hansard, 23 June 1856, vol. 142, cc. 1877-80. He also spoke out on other exclusively Irish issues, supporting Isaac Butt’s efforts to defend Kilmainham Royal Hospital in 1854, and three years later opposing the abolition of the Irish viceroyalty, which in the absence of self-government, at least provided the city of Dublin with a valuable source of status and income.Hansard, 24 Feb. 1854, vol. 130, cc. 1308-9; 7 July 1857, vol. 146, cc. 1092-3. In this and other matters he was at odds with English radicals who were, he contended, prepared to accept that the people of ‘Australia, of Canada, or of any other distant colony … knew their own business best’, yet denied to Ireland ‘that free action which they willingly extend to infinitely smaller communities’.Hansard, 25 Mar. 1858, vol. 149, cc. 761-4. O’Brien was favourable to an extension of the franchise and in 1855 pointed to the particular need for the secret ballot in Ireland, where, he believed, voters found it impossible to ‘escape the consequences’ of exercising the franchise ‘in accordance with the dictates of … conscience’.Adams’s Parliamentary Handbook (3rd edn., 1854), 190; Hansard, 22 May 1855, vol. 138, cc. 940-1. In 1857 he served on the select committee on the Chelsea new bridge bill, but frequently lamented the paucity of Irish members serving on parliamentary committees. At the same time, he was anxious to disassociate Ireland from inquiries into matters which he did not believe applied to his native country.PP 1857 Session 2 (250) ix. 27; Hansard, 23 Feb. 1857, vol. 144, c. 1154. Regarding the select committee on punishments for assaults on women and children, he argued that while ‘there was a system of brutality pursued by husbands towards women in England that required an amendment of the law … he could not say that Ireland had anything to do with it, for they never beat their wives in Ireland’: Hansard, 28 May 1857, vol. 145, cc. 997-8.

O’Brien supported Palmerston on Cobden’s motion on Canton, 3 Mar. 1857, and, although his commitment to act ‘with the independent opposition’ was viewed with scepticism, he was returned unopposed for King’s County at the following general election.Standard, 26 Mar. 1857; Morning Post, 13 Apr. 1857. His promises to support Moore’s Independent party were, however, promptly forgotten and he backed Palmerston’s ministry over the conspiracy to murder bill, 19 Feb. 1858.Whyte, Independent Irish Party, 164. He was highly critical of Lord Derby’s government and quizzed its ministers over questions of parliamentary reform, tenant-right and Irish national education, going ‘in at them’, in Trelawny’s words, ‘like an Irish mameluke – a regular enfant terrible’.T.A. Jenkins (ed.), The Parliamentary Diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 1858-1865 (1990), 28; Hansard, 12 Mar. 1858, vol. 149, cc. 80-2. The next month he denounced Disraeli’s plan to equalise British and Irish spirit duties, warning that ‘Ireland could not expect much at the hands of the new Ministry if this was the mode in which they meant to inaugurate their policy towards her’.Jenkins, Parliamentary Diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 35; Hansard, 19 Apr. 1858, vol. 149, cc. 1305-6.

In July 1858 O’Brien unsuccessfully tried to postpone the Dublin police bill, accusing the government of ‘acting on the old Orange principles’ by introducing ‘a military instead of a civil system of police’ to the city.Hansard, 8 July 1858, vol. 151, c. 1132; Morning Post, 9 July 1858. Nevertheless, as a militia officer, he expressed his satisfaction with the manner in which British forces had suppressed the Indian mutiny and sat on the committee of the Indian mutiny relief fund.Hansard, 10 Dec. 1857, vol. 148, cc. 508-9; Morning Post, 28 Sept. 1857. He believed that India was ‘quite removed from the category of party politics’, and would benefit from strictly impartial legislation based on ‘the principle of thorough religious freedom’.Hansard, 26 Apr. 1858, vol. 149, cc. 1717-8; 26 June 1858, vol. 151, c. 360. He was, however, attacked by opponents over his position on the government of India bill, being accused of having ‘defended confiscation and slaughter in India’ for failing to oppose the measure in its entirety.Standard, 14 May 1859.

O’Brien continued to feel strongly about the land question.Hansard, 24 Feb. 1865, vol. 177, cc. 689-90. Exasperated by the apparent lack of interest in the issue shown by the government, he pressed the matter in June 1858, and argued that parliament should ‘go the root of Irish distress’ by discussing the relations between landlord and tenant.Hansard, 9 June 1858, vol. 150, cc. 1819-20; 25 June 1858, vol. 151, c. 421; 12 June 1863, vol. 171, c. 842. In January 1859 he joined other Irish Liberals in condemning a call by Irish landlords for coercive measures to deal with agrarian unrest.The Times, 27 Jan. 1859.

O’Brien was narrowly returned again at King’s County after a four-way contest in 1859.Freeman’s Journal, 7 May 1859. Back in the Commons he demonstrated that he was well-versed in the affairs of the European powers, being the author of several works on the subject.See his Notes of Interviews with the Ministers of France in Reference to the Policy of Louis Napoleon (1852), The French and English in Rome (1853), and Journal of a Residence in the Danubian Principalities (1854): F. Boase, Modern English Biography, ii. 1199-200. Although he generally supported Palmerston’s foreign policy, he had no sympathy for Garibaldi and argued that ‘it was the duty of every Irish Roman Catholic Liberal to state his opinions upon the Italian question’. He firmly believed in the Papacy’s territorial independence, and supported Cardinal Cullen in maintaining that the temporal power of Rome was necessary to prevent the Pope from becoming the minion of France, Austria, or Spain.Hansard, 25 May 1860, vol. 158, cc. 1781-2; 21 June 1864, vol. 176, c. 91; 8 May 1863, vol. 170, c. 1459; 11 Apr. 1862, vol. 166, c. 964; Dundee Courier, 23 Nov. 1859; Morning Post, 30 Nov., 17 Dec. 1859. He subsequently railed ‘against the usurpations of Victor Emmanuel’, and argued that all Catholics owed the Pope ‘a deep debt of gratitude’ for strongly condemning the Russian government’s treatment of its Polish subjects.Freeman’s Journal, 20 July 1865; Hansard, 19 Nov. 1867, vol. 190, cc. 85-6.

Upon succeeding to his father’s baronetcy in 1862, O’Brien came into possession of land in Cork and Queen’s county. He was ‘a general favourite’ at the Reform Club, where he was ‘full of quaint stories of Irish life’.The Times, 27 Apr. 1895. He ‘knew much of society in London’ and regularly attended the speaker’s dinners, royal levees, and banquets at the Mansion House.Morning Post, 5 Dec. 1862; The Times, 14 Mar., 11 July 1864, 11, 14 May, 4 June 1866, 1 June 1868. Although he differed from the government over the Galway subsidy, which he had regarded as ‘a great boon to Ireland’,Hansard, 5 Apr. 1859, vol. 153, c. 1404. On 20 January 1863 he publicly supported the claims of the Galway Mail Steampacket Company for its restoration: The Times, 22 Jan. 1863. he backed Palmerston in the critical vote over Schleswig-Holstein in July 1864, which confirmed to some that he was ‘Whig to the backbone and spinal marrow’.Standard, 12 July 1864; Morning Post, 14 July 1864. Re-elected for King’s County in 1865 after bitterly fought contest, he still insisted that he was ‘independent of any government’ but was widely regarded as a ministerialist after his appointment to the Irish drainage board.Freeman’s Journal, 20 July 1865; The Times, 26 July 1865; PP 1865 (82) I. 587 [4]. At the same time, his attitude towards English radicalism softened as he observed the growth of ‘a new school of politicians, strongly Protestant in their religious opinions’, but free from ‘the slightest taint of bigotry’, who favoured ‘an enlightened policy pursued towards Ireland.’Hansard, 27 Apr. 1868, vol. 191, c. 1372. He also remained optimistic that Irish Presbyterians ‘were an essentially liberal body’, and would one day ‘be united in one liberal bond’ with Irish Catholics.Hansard, 11 May 1866, vol. 183, cc. 833-4. Accordingly, that September he assisted John Dillon’s efforts to seek closer cooperation between Irish and British Liberals, signing an invitation to John Bright to attend a banquet in his honour at Dublin. He voted for the second reading of the Liberal reform bill, 27 Apr. 1866, and attended meetings of the Liberal party at William Gladstone’s residence, 26 Feb., 21 Mar. 1867.The Times, 6 Sept. 1866, 22 Mar. 1867; Morning Post, 27 Feb. 1867. On the Conservative’s reform bill, he voted for amendments to enfranchise compound ratepayers, 12 Apr., and lodgers, 13 May 1867, and supported several Liberal amendments to the Irish reform bill, 18 June 1868.

At the risk of losing popularity in his constituency, O’Brien publicly denounced the ‘unhappy and disgraceful Fenian conspiracy’, arguing that it risked frustrating the country’s chances of prosperity, and praised ‘the spirit of Christian fearlessness’ with which senior Catholic clergymen had prevented the insurrection from taking ‘deeper root in the country’.Hansard, 8 Feb. 1866, vol. 181, cc. 257-8; 20 Feb. 1867, vol. 185, cc. 694-5. He argued that ‘an enlightened policy, vigorously carried into action’ would remove popular sympathy for Fenianism and bring Ireland closer to the condition of Canada, where ‘religious equality, an educational system which met with universal approval, and a land system which secured to the cultivator a fair return for his capital and labour’, had removed any danger of popular revolt.Hansard, 26 July 1867, vol. 189, c. 187-90; 23 May 1867, vol. 187, cc. 980-1.

In 1867 O’Brien assisted with a bill to compel railway companies to provide an efficient means of communication between the guards and passengers of railway trains.PP 1867 (39) v. 463; PP 1867-68 (66) iv. 367. By then, however, he regarded the church question as of primary importance to Ireland because, he believed, ‘nearly all Irish grievances’ could be traced to religious differences.Hansard, 27 Apr. 1868, vol. 191, c. 1371; Morning Post, 17 Sept. 1868. At a public meeting that December he contended that the Irish Church was ‘a bar to social union’, and had effected ‘a complete separation of classes’, and argued that Irish Catholics now regarded the question as ‘a purely secular grievance’ which, by perpetuating religious inequality, had increased ‘social inequalities’.A supporter of the Society for the Liberation of Religion from State Patronage and Control, he signed a declaration expressing dissatisfaction with ‘the present ecclesiastical settlement of Ireland’ issued by leading members of the Irish Catholic laity: The Times, 12, 14 Dec. 1867.

In December 1867 O’Brien joined a deputation to the treasury to request the institution of a department of science and art in Dublin, and the following April joined the platform at a public meeting of the National Reform Union, chaired by Earl Russell, which endorsed Gladstone’s resolutions in reference to the Irish Church.The Times, 17 Dec. 1867; Morning Post, 17 Apr. 1868. Returned again for King’s County in 1868 on a platform of religious equality and conciliation, he became a supporter of Isaac Butt, and was returned for the same constituency as a home ruler in 1874, voting for Butt’s motion on the issue that July. He was re-elected in 1880 and backed William Shaw as leader of the Home Rule party.The Times, 17 Sept. 1868, 6 July 1874. He viewed the subsequent rise of the more radical nationalism of Charles Stewart Parnell ‘with dismay’, and ‘absolutely refused to co-operate’ with his followers.Morning Post, 29 Apr. 1895; P.F. Meehan, The Members of Parliament for Laois and Offaly (Queen’s and King’s Counties), 1801-1918 (1983), 130. Regarded as a relic of ‘the old, friendly, Whig type’, he retired in 1885, it being said that there ‘was no more popular Irish member’. He died at 20 Brunswick Terrace, Brighton, in April 1895 and was succeeded as 3^rd baronet by his nephew, Timothy O’Brien (1861-1948), of Lohort Castle, Cork, a well-known cricketer.The Times, 27 Apr. 1895; Morning Post, 29 Apr. 1895; J. Shanahan, ‘O’Brien, Sir Timothy Carew’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, vii. 84-5.