Daniel O’Connell personified the perpetual importance of an independent Bar

Daniel O’Connell demonstrated how a skilled barrister could transform an oppressive legal system into an instrument of political change.

Daniel O'Connell's performance in The King v. John Magee exemplifies the best traditions of forensic advocacy at The Bar of Ireland. Picture: Universal History Archive/Getty Images

On July 27, 1813, in the Court of King’s Bench in Dublin, Daniel O'Connell rose to defend John Magee, publisher of the Dublin Evening Post, against a charge of criminal libel. 

His speech that day demonstrated how a skilled barrister could transform an oppressive legal system into an instrument of political change. The case of  The King v. John Magee  remains one of the most memorable examples of O'Connell’s extraordinary ability to use his legal expertise in the service of justice and reform.

The charge against Magee arose from his publication of a review criticising the departing Lord Lieutenant, the Duke of Richmond. The article condemned Richmond’s errors in governing Ireland and compared him to the worst of his predecessors, who were described as “the profligate unprincipled Westmorland, the cold-hearted and cruel Camden, the artful and treacherous Cornwallis”.

More significantly, it challenged the fundamental principle of British rule in Ireland — “a principle of exclusion, which debars the majority of the people from the enjoyment of those privileges that are possessed by the minority”.

This was no ordinary libel case. As O’Connell understood, it was unavoidably a political case, and it demanded a political speech. The prosecution was designed to suppress dissent and maintain the exclusion of Ireland’s Catholic majority from political participation. Attorney General William Saurin made this clear in his opening, describing Magee as a “ruffian” whose purpose was “to excite [in the minds of the population] hatred against those whom the laws have appointed to rule over them, and prepare them for revolution”.

O'Connell faced formidable obstacles. The law of criminal libel was so broad that, as he later observed, “every letter I ever published could be declared a libel” and the libel law could “produce a conviction with a proper judge and jury for The Lord’s Prayer with due legal inuendoes”. 

More damaging still was the composition of the jury — hand-picked to ensure conviction.

With characteristic boldness, O’Connell confronted this unfairness head-on, telling the jurors: “Gentlemen, he [the Attorney General] thinks he knows his men; he knows you; many of you signed the no-popery petition... you would not have been summoned on this jury if you had entertained liberal sentiments”.

Rather than being cowed by these disadvantages, O'Connell turned them into weapons. He began by meeting Saurin's personal attacks, describing the Attorney General’s speech as a “farrago of helpless absurdity”. 

When Saurin had stooped to calling Magee a ruffian and comparing him to “the keeper of a house of ill fame”, O'Connell lamented how far Saurin fell below the standards of the great Irish barristers such as Curran and Ponsonby: “Devoid of taste and of genius, how can he have had memory enough to preserve this original vulgarity — he is, indeed, an object of compassion; and, from my inmost soul, I bestow on him my forgiveness and my bounteous pity”.

O'Connell was even able to use Saurin’s own words against him. When the Attorney General accused Magee of Jacobinism, O'Connell recalled Saurin’s defence of himself against the same charge in 1800, when Saurin, then anti-union, had declared that “agitation is ... the price necessarily paid for liberty”. O’Connell’s response was devastating: “We have paid the price, gentlemen, and the honest man refuses to give us the goods”.

What made O’Connell’s defence truly remarkable was how he transformed a hopeless legal case into a powerful platform for political reform. His bold claim: “the Catholic cause is on its majestic march — its progress is rapid and obvious... We will, we must, be soon emancipated” is electrifying even now. What must it have sounded like in his voice, in that court, in that trial, in those times?

His confidence in his legal position was equally striking. When Saurin threatened to crush the Catholic Board, O'Connell declared: “I am, if not a lawyer, at least a barrister. On this subject, I ought to know something; and I do not hesitate to contradict the Attorney General ... the Catholic Board is perfectly a legal assembly — that it not only does not violate the law, but that it is entitled to the protection of the law” 

Perhaps the most significant moment came not during the trial itself, but at the sentencing hearing on November 27, 1813. When Saurin attempted to use Magee’s publication of O’Connell’s defence speech as grounds for increasing Magee’s sentence, O’Connell delivered what may be his most important statement on the role of the legal profession.

In the face of personal threats of contempt and possible imprisonment following his denunciation of the Attorney General, O'Connell stood firm, delivering an impassioned defence of the importance of an independent Bar: “It is the first interest of the public that the Bar shall be left free... the public are deeply interested in our independence; their properties, their lives, their honours, are entrusted to us; and if we, in whom such a guardianship is confided, be degraded, how can we afford protection to others?”.

This was not merely professional self-interest, but a profound understanding of the Bar’s constitutional role. In a system designed to exclude the majority from political participation, an independent legal profession became the last protection of individual rights. O'Connell grasped the fact that, without fearless advocates willing to challenge authority, the law would become merely an instrument of oppression.

That is why, as the Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, put it when addressing the O’Connell 250 Symposium in Trinity College Dublin on Tuesday last, The Bar of Ireland has always been rightly proud of the fact that O’Connell was such a distinguished member of the Bar.

Two hundred years later, the existence of a fearless independent Bar, practising advocacy and giving legal advice to the highest professional standards, remains an essential guarantee of the rule of law and the protection of individual rights. 

The many, often insidious, efforts that exist, whether prompted by powerful commercial, bureaucratic or political interests, to degrade or diminish the Bar are always, above all else, an attack on the rights of citizens and on the rule of law.

O'Connell's performance in The King v. John Magee exemplifies the best traditions of forensic advocacy at The Bar of Ireland. 

Faced with a corrupt system, a biased tribunal, and impossible odds, he refused to bow his head or moderate his principles. Instead, he turned the forms and processes of an unjust and oppressive system against itself, using a political prosecution against dissenting speech as the means to condemn the oppressor and amplify the dissent.

In an age when legal systems worldwide face challenges to their integrity and especially to the independence of barristers and advocates, O’Connell’s example reminds us that the law’s highest purpose is not merely to maintain order, but to secure justice.

His defence of John Magee shows the difference a single barrister, armed with skill, courage, and unwavering principle, can make.

Seán Guerin SC. Picture: Conor McCabe Photography.

Seán Guerin SC is Chair of the Council of The Bar of Ireland