How the Church Has Changed the World

20 How the Church Has Changed the World “Twenty paces, gentlemen, then shoot,” said the referee. The bullet struck D’Esterre in the stomach. The wound was mortal. It was the first and only time that Daniel O’Connell shed a man’s blood for the Irish people. He carried the guilt of it to his grave, bestowing a handsome yearly sum to D’Esterre’s widow; and O’Connell was never a wealthy man. Dueling, O’Connell would write, was “a violation, plain and palpable, of the divine law.” He would be challenged again and often, but showed his moral courage in refusing, and in taking upon his shoulders the contempt of his inferiors in grace and probity. A penny a month O’Connell was arguably the single greatest political organizer in the 19th century. His duel with D’Esterre made him more appalled than ever by violent action, so he determined to compel England by argument and by political strength to grant to the Irish the same rights she granted to Scotsmen and Englishmen. It was a long and arduous battle. In 1823, eight years after the duel, O’Connell founded the Catholic Association, which quickly grew to prodigious numbers. That was because O’Connell wanted every Catholic Irishman in it. The fee for

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