This isn't quite true; whilst the franchise was obviously unfair in Ireland the middle class were enfranchised.
No, they were not. The middle class in Britain proper was enfranchised due to the forty shilling qualification in place there. But in Ireland, the qualification was five times higher than that - this ten pound qualification was established in 1829 as part of Catholic Emancipation precisely to prevent the middle-class, with its high Catholic proportion, from gaining a dominant voice in Irish politics. Also, bear in mind than ten pounds in the early nineteenth century was worth much more than it is today.
The Irish electorate was so small, and O'Connell's base of support was so large, that some of his "monster rallies" were larger than the entire Irish electorate.
It's not exactly as if O'Connell could have come out and said "we want Home Rule because we hate the English and we hate Britain" because that would have been an easy way to get himself into trouble.
He did not say that because he did not believe that. He was quite strongly tied to the British radical tradition - he advocated universal male suffrage for both Dublin and Westminster (unbelievably democratic by the standards of the 1830s and 1840s), and he was a member of British Radical circles to the extent that he was an important part of the Great Reform Act drama. In Parliament in Westminster he discussed a dramatic program of legal reform and codification, he was involved in the New Poor Law discussion, he emphatically supported the abolition of slavery, and he fought for reforming the administration of other British colonies (like India, Newfoundland, and the Canadas). For someone who hated Britain, he sure went out of his way to try to improve it. He also talked of common institutions between Ireland and Britain - chiefly the executive branch, but he was also discussing the possibility a federal parliament to discuss common issues.
How did you even conclude that O'Connell hated the English and hated Britain? That goes against both his rhetoric and his actions, and it goes against his view of himself as the "Advocate for Humanity".
And as for Gladstone, from what I can see it's clear to me that he only supported the Home Rule movement because he believed that it was the best way to ensure continued Liberal dominance; after all, most of the Irish Parlimentarians were ideological Liberals anyway and it would explain why he tried to remove them from Parliament in the First Bill as it would have made it easier for the Liberals to win crushing victories after the Liberals were wiped out from the island without being beholden to an outside group.
Hardly. He did so for a number of reasons. First, Home Rule was already becoming an important issue within the Liberal Party long before 1884. Parnell was building connections with what he called "English democracy" because he saw their sympathies to Irish concerns, and indeed these efforts were working. Really, if Gladstone had firmly opposed Home Rule, that might have caused a split within the Liberals.
Second, Gladstone had a long-running goal of establishing a permanent settlement with Ireland - in effect, to establish a real union with Ireland rather than one of force. That's why he pushed disestablishing the Church of Ireland in 1869 despite being an intense Anglican, that's why he pushed land reform in the 1870s, and that's why he dramatically expanded the Irish electorate in 1885. His Home Rule bills which aimed at giving Ireland autonomy similar to that of a Canadian province (and yes, he directly modelled Home Rule on the British North America Act's provincial provisions) were just part of that longstanding goal - it did not come out of nowhere.
He wanted to exclude the Irish MPs from Parliament, putting aside his belief that legislative separation would bring about a moral union, because Irish MPs were constantly obstructing business and making things about Irish issues. He felt that time was being wasted and that Parliament should instead focus on other things. So naturally excluding the Irish MPs would make that more possible.
@Indicus the O'Connell quote about West Britain is very important for my point here. Whilst I am sceptical about whether O'Connell truly meant it, it is clear that he was not a cultural nationalist.
It's much more complicated than that - for instance, he lamented not de-Anglicizing his name to "O'Conal" - but it's true he wasn't as much of a cultural nationalist as later Irish nationalists would be. Putting that aside:
My point is that I believe that people turned towards Home Rule simply due to the fact that, time and time again, the British government simply failed to govern Ireland well enough at the key moments, which again comes back to my point about the UK often having the wrong PM at the wrong time. If the grievances that Irish people were having were being resolved by the British government in a timely fashion (as it was perfectly capable of doing) then there would be no need for Home Rule. Generally, it was the elites and the middle class rather than the common people who had an ideological commitment to Home Rule; from your quote even O'Connell himself wasn't that committed to the cause. If the common people could see how the British government were taking tangible steps to improve their lot, they would have no reason and no cause to turn to the radical options of devolution and revolution, and it would be through this method that they would identify as West Britons. That is why any rebellion in 1848 after a decent British response to the famine would have been a catastrophic failure; the people would look at the rebels and ask "Why?".
Well, first of all, I've been delaying this issue, but honestly I think a good British response to the Famine is deeply improbable (unless you massively reduce the scale of crop failure or something like that). If pro-Corn Law types were responsible for famine relief, Peel's importation of American grain would have been impossible (which would make things worse earlier), and you'd still see the flow of Irish crops into Britain continue on. If anti-Corn Law types were responsible for famine relief, their associated beliefs would cause much the same catastrophe that John Russell's administration caused. Without British politics seeing a truly massive shakeup bringing formerly fringe figures into power, Britain's response would be perpetually bad.
The issue was not that the UK had the wrong PM at the wrong time. The issue, quite simply, was that Ireland was a colony of Britain, run by a fundamentally colonial administration centred in Dublin Castle. To colonial administrations It is this which made good government in Ireland close to impossible. Bad governance in Ireland was not a bug, it was a feature.
(And before you argue that Ireland was technically integrated into the metropole, so was Algeria with France.)
Now, on to O'Connell's beliefs on Irish governance. Now, for most of the 1830s, his group held the balance of power in Parliament. As such, he was worried that if he pushed Repeal too hard, it would cause the Whig-Radical-Repealer coalition to collapse and it would bring the Conservatives to power, and he was extremely worried that this would be catastrophic for Ireland. As such, he sought to give the government an escape route - give this long list of concessions, treat Ireland less like a colony and more like Scotland, and the Irish will settle down. However, he thought it was impossible for the United Kingdom to treat Ireland as anything other than a colony, and it was a firm and intractable belief of his that only restoring Grattan's Parliament would make good governance possible (and honestly, looking at the history of Ireland, he was pretty much correct). In effect, he gave the government a goal he viewed as impossible in order to give to Ireland some small level of reasonable governance. So O'Connell views were much more nuanced than what your description implies.
If Britain didn't totally mess up the response to the Famine, the Irish people would still have a long list of grievances. Irish administration would continue to be fundamentally colonial. Ireland would continue to have overly restrictive election qualifications. Furthermore, new grievances with Irish governance would continue to emerge - without some sort of devolved or federal scheme, these grievances would have to be settled across the shore. Constantly having to do this would fundamentally spur nationalism. In regards to the Famine, even if the British government had a slightly reasonable response, questions would still be raised about such things as the continued flow of Irish grain to Britain. The British government doing the minimum thing a state should do would not suddenly make Ireland okay with having no legislature of their own, as you suggest.
