BLACKNEY, Walter (1775-1842), of Ballyellin, Carlow and 8 Manchester Buildings, London, Mdx.

A member of a Catholic gentry family which had been seated in county Carlow from the seventeenth century, Blackney leased 800 acres of land from Lord Kenmare at Ballyellin.2Sir H. Blackall, ‘The Blackneys of Ballyellen’, Irish Genealogist, iii (1957), 44-5. He assisted with the preparation of Catholic petitions in Carlow in 1811, and participated in local reform politics, chairing a county meeting in January 1829. Although not widely-known, he was returned for the county as a reformer and supporter of Daniel O’Connell at the 1831 general election.3Belfast Monthly Magazine, vii (1811), 323; HP Commons 1820-1832, iii. 677; iv. 284; Freeman’s Journal, 20 Apr. 1831. He was an uncle, through his first marriage, to Thomas Wyse MP, and enjoyed the confidence of the local bishop, Dr. James Warren Doyle, an opponent of Irish tithes, being regarded as his representative in parliament.4Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1834), 91; W.J. Fitzpatrick, The Life, Times, and Correspondence of the Right Rev. Dr. Doyle, Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin (1861), ii. 412, 448; HP Commons 1820-1832, iii. 679. Blackney was a pall bearer at Doyle’s funeral: Caledonian Mercury, 26 June 1834. Pledged to repeal at the 1832 general election, he jointly headed the poll with a Liberal, Thomas Wallace. This was a rare example of ‘ticket-voting’ (the repeal and non-repeal candidate forming an explicit anti-Conservative coalition), the unusual arrangement having been sanctioned by the National Political Union.5Morning Chronicle, 28 Dec. 1832; A. Macintyre, The Liberator. Daniel O’Connell and the Irish Party 1830-1847 (1965), 94-5.

As a local election organizer, Blackney gave greater priority to the registration of Liberal voters than to the formation of a county club, and, despite attending O’Connell’s National Council in January 1833, does not appear to have been an enthusiastic repealer.6Freeman’s Journal, 5 Jan. 1833; Morning Chronicle, 21 Jan. 1833. He was not present at a meeting called to discuss the timing of a repeal motion in June 1833, (having taken leave of absence from parliament owing to a family illness), and does not appear to have referred to the topic in public.7The Times, 12 June 1833; CJ, lxxxviii. 415. He spoke on only a handful of occasions in the reformed House and, while not ‘inferior in his power of expressing himself clearly and audibly’, his longest speech was described by one observer as ‘somewhat desultory and incoherent’.8Parliamentary Reviewer, i. 326.

Shortly after his return Blackney made representation to the marquis of Anglesey, the Irish viceroy, regarding the policing of county Carlow. He had long been critical of the tactics of the local yeomanry, and in March 1833 presented petitions against the Irish coercion bill. He also challenged statements made by Lord Duncannon, a former Conservative member and heir to the earl of Bessborough, on the condition of Carlow, denying that it was in a ‘disturbed state’.9Freeman’s Journal, 15 Jan. 1833; HP Commons 1820-1832, iii. 679; iv. 284-5; Hansard, 8 Mar. 1833, vol. 16, c. 394. Amidst ‘such clamour and interruption’ as to render him ‘frequently inaudible to those on the same bench’, he questioned the veracity of Irish police reports on the state of the country, arguing that ‘it was too much for the patience of an Irishman to believe’ that the House would ‘legislate upon such flimsy materials’, and blamed the negligence of Carlow’s magistrates for the spread of ‘Whitefootism’ into the county.10Parliamentary Reviewer, i. 326; Hansard, 6 Mar. 1833, vol. 16, cc. 297-8; 11 Mar. 1833, vol. 16, cc. 512-4. He considered the Irish coercion bill to be ‘unconstitutional’ and ‘calculated to excite, more than allay bad passions’, and duly voted against its second reading.11Freeman’s Journal, 25 Nov. 1833. He supported the first reading of the Irish church temporalities bill, 11 Mar. 1833, but could not sit or vote again until a petition against the election return, which he and Wallace had declared that they would not contest, 12 Mar., (leaving the electors to defend it in their place), was dismissed, 20 May 1833.12Freeman’s Journal, 26 Mar. 1833; CJ, lxxxviii. 114-7, 161, 241, 414.

Blackney was absent from Hume’s motion on the corn laws, 8 Mar. 1834, but opposed Lord Althorp’s motion for church rates to be replaced by a central grant raised from land tax, 21 Apr. He voted for O’Connell’s repeal motion, 29 Apr., and divided in favour of a select committee inquiry into the pensions list, 5 May. He does not appear to have sat on any select committees or introduced any bills, but chiefly concerned himself with the tithe question, believing ‘in his soul, that no measure’ brought in by the government ‘would ever pacify the people of Ireland’ other than their ‘entire abolition’.13Hansard, 6 Mar. 1833, vol. 16, c. 300. In May 1834, he supported O’Connellite efforts to have the proposed tithe bill temporarily postponed, arguing that it would only ‘transfer the odium from the clergy to the landlords’, and that to carry it into effect the authorities ‘would require an insurrection act’, thus converting large numbers of the people into repealers. Speaking as a magistrate, he warned ministers that in that event they ‘must be prepared for such scenes as had not, perhaps, been experienced for centuries’.14Hansard, 2 May 1834, vol. 23, c. 464; Morning Post, 5 May 1834.

Blackney appears to have been a rumbustious character, his detractors alluding to his ‘blustering manner’.15The Times, 6 Nov. 1834, quoting Carlow Sentinel. In March 1832 he had been involved in ‘a most curious and indeed ludicrous affair’ when, racing against Michael Sadler to be first to enter his name in the Commons petition book, Blackney (then aged 56) ‘in regular jockey style’ jostled against Sadler (aged 52) ‘and threw him on the ground with great force’. Returning from the petitions office to find ‘poor Sadler sprawling on the ground, with his face cut and his eye blackened’, Blackney immediately expressed regret and offered to present Sadler’s petition for him as his competitor was subsequently ‘confined to his bed’.16The Times, 3 Mar. 1832. In November 1834 Blackney took action for libel against a fellow Carlow magistrate with whom he had quarreled over policing arrangements, arguing that by publicly proclaiming him to be deficient ‘both in gentlemanly feeling and in courage’, his antagonist had deliberately tried to provoke a duel.17The Times, 6, 15 Nov. 1834.

Blackney’s performance in parliament does not appear to have impressed the Liberator. Prior to the 1835 general election, O’Connell informed Nicholas Aylward Vigors, the repeal member for Carlow Town, that both county members ‘know they will not answer’, and ought to be replaced. Blackney duly retired to make way for Maurice O’Connell, and dutifully proposed him at the general election.18D. O’Connell to N.A. Vigors, 26 Nov. 1834, O’Connell Correspondence, ed. M.R. O’Connell, v. 210; The Times, 17 Jan. 1835. He did, however, remain active in Carlow politics, proposing Vigors at the county by-election in June 1835 and, having chaired a dinner for O’Connell in January 1837, helped with Vigors’s subsequent re-election, his residence becoming the Liberals’ campaign headquarters.19The Times, 19 June 1835, 20 Feb. 1837; Freeman’s Journal, 21 Jan., 15 Feb. 1837. As a magistrate, he was assiduous in maintaining order during a series of violent elections in his native county.20The Times, 27 Oct. 1835; Freeman’s Journal, 20 Feb. 1837, 2 Dec. 1840. He remained faithful to the Liberal cause, publicly expressing his confidence in the Whig administration in April 1839, and joined O’Connell on the hustings in Carlow to propose John Ashton Yates at the stormy general election of 1841.21Freeman’s Journal, 15 Apr. 1839; The Times, 15 July 1841.

Blackney died suddenly of an apparent heart attack at his residence in September 1842, after visiting friends near Kilkenny.22Dublin Evening Post, 17 Sep. 1842; Morning Post, 19 Sept. 1842; HP Commons 1820-1832, iv. 286. The inquest reached a verdict that ‘he died by the visitation of God’: Gent. Mag. (1843), i. 91. He was succeeded by his only surviving son, Hugh, a Carlow magistrate and the last of the family to reside at Ballyellin.23Hugh Blackney was briefly active in local Catholic politics, and subsequently became a commissioner of the township of Bray, co. Dublin: Freeman’s Journal, 27 Feb. 1851, 13 Oct. 1868.