Young Ireland
From April 1828 to 1831 William Smith O’Brien was Conservative MP for Ennis. He became MP for Limerick County in 1835, holding his seat in the House of Commons until 1849. Being found guilty of High Treason he forfeited his seat in the House of Commons.
History
Although a Protestant country-gentleman, he supported Catholic Emancipation while remaining a supporter of British-Irish union. In 1843, in protest against the imprisonment of Daniel O'Connell, he joined O'Connell's anti-union Repeal Association. Within the association he identified with the circle around Charles Gavan Duffy and his paper The Nation which O'Connell in hostile reference to Giuseppe Mazzini's anti-clerical and insurrectionary Young Italy dubbed Young Ireland.
After O'Connell and his son John forced a division with resolutions renouncing a resort to revolutionary force regardless of circumstances, O'Brien withdrew with the Young Irelanders into a new Irish Confederation, although he was to continue to preach reconciliation until O'Connell's death in May 1847.
The objectives of the Confederation were "independence of the Irish nation" with "no means to attain that end abjured, save such as were inconsistent with honour, morality and reason".
