Richard More O'Ferrall DL, JP, PC (10 April 1797 – 27 October 1880) was an Irish politician, a high level British government official and a Governor of Malta.
Born to a noble Irish Catholic family at Balyna, he was the eldest son and heir of Ambrose More O'Ferrall, Lord of Laois and Prince of Annally.
On 12 September 1851 More O'Ferrall resigned as governor, refusing to serve under Lord John Russell, whose Ecclesiastical Titles Act was designed to prevent a restoration of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England.
[1] At the 1830 general election he came forward for an unexpected opening in county Kildare with the backing of the local Independent Club, citing his support for reform and retrenchment and opposition to the Irish Subletting Act and the ‘odious and vexatious monopoly’ of the East India Company.
‘You will have an efficient Irish colleague in Richard O’Ferrall, he is pretty sure of success’, Robert Cassidy informed Sir Thomas Wyse, 12 Aug. After a two-day contest he was returned in second place.
His comments were condemned by O’Connell, but he spoke again in similar terms, 11 Dec. 1830, when he complained that Ireland had not received the attention from governments that she had ‘a right to expect’ and had been passed over for additional representatives.
He ‘spoke like a sensible and fluent English country gentleman’, recorded Sir Denis Le Marchant, 1st Baronet†, adding to James Abercromby that he made, "A considerable impression, especially as amidst his expression of very determined feelings he alluded to O’Connell in by no means a laudatory manner and assured government that the influential classes of society in Ireland were guided by very different principles and quite independent of his control.
The subject once started, people in the lobbies and rooms were all talking of it, and I saw some who did not treat it as a slip, and what must somehow or other be corrected.6 On 22 Feb. 1831 More O’Ferrall wrote to advise James Emerson of Belfast that he would support the extension of Littleton’s truck bill to Ireland, but that ‘some Irish Members think it would be injurious and prevent the employment of weavers’ and that ‘those interested’ should send petitions to Parliament.7 He sympathized with Catholic hostility to the Kildare Place Society, which used the Scriptures ‘contrary to the feelings or even the prejudices of the people’, 14 Mar.
A threatened opposition came to nothing and he was returned unopposed.8 On 27 June 1831 he presented two petitions for draining Irish bogs and obtained leave to introduce an embankments bill for removing obstacles from rivers.
He divided for the second reading of the Scottish bill, 23 Sept., and Lord Ebrington's confidence motion, 10 Oct. On 14 July he denounced the ‘system of proselytism’ carried on by the Kildare Place Society, with which he had ceased to co-operate after finding that ‘unless the poor were protected by a gentleman of their own persuasion, their religious principles were interfered with’; he presented petitions against giving it further grants, 5 Sept.
He voted against disqualification of the Dublin election committee, 29 July, and the issue of a writ, 8 Aug., and with ministers on the controversy, 23 Aug. On 5 Aug. he defended the conduct of Maynooth College, which was inspected twice a year, and called for a ‘liberal system of education’ to be adopted throughout Ireland.
That day he presented and endorsed petitions against the additional drawback on Irish malt, which enabled Scottish distillers to ‘sell their whisky in Ireland at a price 20 per cent lower’.
He welcomed the new plan of Irish education, 6 Mar., and attacked the tactics of its opponents, observing that it had been ‘well received by all the Catholics’ and ‘a great portion of the Protestants, and that ought to be sufficient’, 28 June.
That day he unsuccessfully pressed Smith Stanley, the Irish secretary, for correspondence relating to the dispatch of troops to Kildare at the time of anti-tithe meetings, which was ‘very likely’ to aggravate the ‘excitement and irritation ... already too prevalent in Ireland’.
He voted for a tax on absentee landlords to provide permanent provision for the Irish poor, 19 June, and spoke in similar terms, 10 July.
Denouncing the ‘inoperable’ tithes bill the next day, he observed that ‘we are placed in a difficult situation between the government on the one hand and our constituents on the other’, and urged the House to ‘remember the Stamp Act’, with its ‘precisely similar proceedings’, by which ‘America was lost to England’.
He declined the Grey ministry's offer of a lordship of the treasury in June 1834, but on Lord Melbourne's return to power in April 1835 took office.9 He retired from county Kildare in 1847 and in October of that year was appointed Governor of Malta.
On 12 September 1851 More O'Ferrall resigned as Governor, in protest, refusing to serve under Lord John Russell, whose Ecclesiastical Titles Act was designed to prevent a restoration of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England.