The journal of the American-Irish Historical Society, Vol. I, 1898

by Various

Mr. Robertson’s Address.

Mr. Robertson expressed the satisfaction with which he found himself at a union of an Irish society whose purpose was the systematic and dispassionate study of a department of the history of the race. The new movement was the more hopeful, seeing that it proceeded on democratic lines. It was said that war could not be carried on by a committee. If the military gentlemen present would forgive him, he would confess that he wished it could not be done in any other way, either (laughter); but he was sure that historical research could very well be so carried on. In so far as the Nationalist movement had of late years lost headway, it could fairly be said that it was because of an imperfect application of the spirit of democracy in its ranks. A great man was at once one of the greatest boons that could befall any cause, and one of the greatest dangers, because where the great man was all in all, the powers of the lesser men were undeveloped, and their faculty of coöperation was in a measure destroyed. The Nationalist movement had been shattered somewhat as the party of Cromwell was shattered at his death; but it would find the cure which, in the old case, had not been forthcoming (applause). Every development of democratic methods would make for reconstruction.

Above all, the present movement was full of promise, because it was essentially scientific in its aim.

Dennis Harvey Sheahan, of Providence, R. I., read the following paper on “The Need of an Organization such as the American-Irish Historical Society, and its Scope”:

The history of a country is dear to the heart of the lover of that country. By the aid of historical study we learn of the origin, growth, and development of a race of people; their customs, religions, laws, governments; their accomplishments and what they have contributed to the economy of the world. The historian points out the past to the present and future. He puts aside the veil that has gathered about the dim past, opens up to the gaze of the bright present the panorama of human achievement, and blazes the way for his successor in the rosy future.

What the clergyman learns from the theological disputations of the past, the poring monk has gathered together; what the physician now acquires with comparative ease is furnished him by the knowledge garnered from the experience of his brethren from the time when man learned that pain and aches affected his being; what the lawyer gains from precedents is a guiding light which sheds its rays upon problems of jurisprudence that the legal lore of the past generations has taken from the leaves of experience; what formulæ the scientist is able to demonstrate he owes to the observations of men who, through the ages, have chronicled the phenomena of nature; the statesman is able to meet the crises of the present by being informed as to other crises in governmental affairs.

The citizen of a republic who neglects to learn the fundamental principles upon which rest the laws of the land, who does not know how the country was developed and maintained, is as a blind man, and is not able to bring to the exercise of his suffrage the amount of intelligence that the country has a right to require from him.

This obligation comes to us in a twofold capacity. We, as citizens of this great Republic, should study the history of our country from a patriotic standpoint, while as Irishmen, or descendants of that race, it should be not only a duty but a pleasure to learn of the deeds of Irishmen in America.

Therefore, an organization such as the American-Irish Historical Society, if it had no other raison d’être, would accomplish a patriotic purpose if it served only as an incentive to the study of the deeds of Irishmen in America.

It has become almost a maxim in historical matters that the history of events cannot be accepted as facts until the generation which lived at the time said events occurred has passed away.

The passions, influences, and conditions which generate, shape, and control events lend a coloring to their recital which, deep-lined or faint as painted by the writer at the time, are toned down or made stronger by the historian of a future generation who, unmindful of passions, influences, or conditions, and with an eye single to the preservation of history by means of the truth, makes past occurrences stand out in their true light.

Deeds that have received but a passing mention from writers whose minds were biased are rescued from an unmerited insignificance and placed high in the Temple of Fame, while highly extolled acts, given an undue prominence by a partisan writer, are consigned to a merited oblivion by the historian of a later but more impartial epoch.

It is not often true of history that the stone which was rejected by the builder becomes the corner stone of the edifice.

A member of the Society of Friends who desires to familiarize himself with the history of his sect in New England would find but little of the truth in the writings which have come from such intellectual dyspeptics as Cotton Mather and his disciples. But in the unwritten history of Quaker persecutions that have become legendary, by the purity of their lives, by their nobility of character and their Christianizing influences, the pioneers of that faith stand out in bold relief in the religious history of Puritan New England, with its dark background of scourging, mutilation, banishments, and hangings.

By analogy, how can the Irish-American race expect that the history of Irishmen in New England can be presented in just proportion to the true merits of the case?

In fact, who has heard much of Irishmen in New England until the present generation? As in New England, so throughout the Colonies. The Virginia Cavalier was not less hostile to the Irish than the Massachusetts Puritan.

Should the American-Irish Historical Society go out of existence to-night, it would have already accomplished a grand mission in this: that it has brought forth from obscure records the deeds of Irishmen in America, and has laid the foundation for the erection of an historical monument to Irishmen that, with its base laid in colonial times, and still being constructed, challenges the respect and admiration of all lovers of American history.

The work of this society has been thus far practically confined to research of New England records. This research has been fruitful of good results.

Among other things we learn of the Irish as brickmakers of Rehoboth and settlers in Salem and Lynn in early colonial times.

Again, we learn that the Irish in the Granite State had become so numerous in colonial times that the General Court of Massachusetts passed a law prohibiting the “wild Irishmen of New Hampshire” from coming across the state line, lest they should drive out the people of the older colony. As long as that state shall last the glory and the fame of the Sullivans and their contemporaries of the Irish race will remain illustrious.

The history of Irishmen in Maine will be dwelt upon in the address of one of the gentlemen who is to follow on the program.

This research has extracted from the records of Rhode Island the influence of the Irish schoolmaster, McSparren, in moulding the intellectual development of that colony; it has called attention to the work of Bishop Berkely in the promotion of education there, and what is to me, personally, exceedingly pleasant information, that Brown University, my beloved Alma Mater, in its infancy was succored by the contributions of worthy people residing in Ireland.

The work of presenting to the world the achievements of Irishmen in America, in its just proportion to the achievements of men of other races in the colonization, struggle for independence, and the creation of a republic, the development of that republic from a theory into a concrete nation, and the perpetuation of that nation, is a duty not only to the men whose deeds are to be chronicled, but also a debt which we owe to ourselves, which we should cheerfully assume.

The labor involved in this from its very nature is such as can only be performed by an organization such as the American-Irish Historical Society.

The true status of the Irish in America, notwithstanding the fact that their brain and brawn have been interwoven in the woof and web of our nation’s fabric, has never been fully appreciated, by reason of the prejudices which have been associated with anything that bore an Irish name. This prejudice, in no small part, arose from misconception and misunderstanding of the Irish nature, temperament, and characteristics. There is a brand of bigotry that is sometimes designated as inborn. In the case of a bigot whose bigotry is congenital, it is well to follow the scriptural injunction to reason not with a fool lest he grow wise. But in the case of those persons who, by reason of misconception or want of acquaintance with Irishmen, cannot properly estimate our race, yet whose minds are broad enough to cherish the worth of a man when demonstrated, and whose patriotism counts every man a friend who has contributed to the glory of his country, an impartial history of the deeds of Irishmen in America would effectively serve to displace any prejudice.

What lover of the human race, animated by that noble sentiment of Terence, “I am a man, and I think nothing human foreign to me,” can fail to appreciate the sturdy virtues of the Irish people in America, their patient industry, their obedience to constituted authority, their domestic constancy, their desire to provide homes for their families and education for their children?

What patriotic American can fail to be moved by emotions of gratitude when he learns among other facts that the Irish in Ireland assisted with food and provisions the struggling settlers of Boston in a time of dire distress; that Irishmen of Philadelphia contributed large sums of money to the famished Revolutionary heroes at Valley Forge; that George Washington considered himself honored in being elected a member of an Irish society; that nine of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were men of Irish blood; that on the field of war, and in the council chamber of the nation, as well as in the administration of national, state, and municipal affairs, from the time of our earliest history to the present time, men of that race have given their lives and property to the nation’s cause? The work of this society thus far in this direction gives promise of either destroying the prejudices that have hitherto existed against the Irish people, or removing the venom from the fangs of bigotry.

To my mind the most urgent need of a society of this nature is the means it affords of preserving Irish history in America. It would be a great misfortune if the history of the Irish people in America, at present fragmentary at best, yet gathered together under favorable conditions and after the most careful and painstaking labor, could not find some secure lodgment.

What more suitable abiding place than the cabinet of the American-Irish Historical Society, from whence it could find its way into the private and public libraries, not only of our own country, but of the civilized world?

This society in the short time it has been in existence has accomplished so much in its chosen field as already to have demonstrated quite clearly its scope. From the publications issued by its members, notably the work of our Secretary-General in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, General Linehan in New Hampshire, Senator Walsh in Georgia, Hon. Joseph T. Lawless in Virginia, and others, our society has already contributed a fund of rich historical value to the history of this country. It would suffice to cite this labor to show the scope.

The thought has occurred to me that it might be well, however, to suggest a specialization of this work and to provide avenues for its dissemination. The society should pursue the line of procedure already mapped out by extending its membership to every state in the country. Membership should be selected from men of scholarly attainments devoted to historical research. This membership should be so catholic as to include men of all religious denominations and nationalities.

Apropos of this I beg leave to call attention to the great work done and being done by German scholars in the study of Celtic, to illustrate the probable value of assistance that might be rendered to us by men of other nationalities. The society should coöperate with the movements in the other states, looking to the establishment of record commissions, and in states where such movements have not been set on foot, to labor to create such movements. In addition to this the products of the research of the society should be edited, and when preserved in book form copies of these should be distributed to other historical societies and placed in public and private libraries. Volumes could be printed from time to time, a number of which could be placed on the market for sale, thereby defraying the expenses of publishing the same.

With such an inviting field of labor spread out before us, this society not only supplies a long-felt want, but also a means of inspiration. Each member can contribute to the common fund of historical data, and the sum total of these contributions will go to make up a work of great value.

The need of such an organization as the American-Irish Historical Society being demonstrated, and its scope clearly defined, all that remains to be done to perpetuate its success is to continue in the work already so auspiciously undertaken.

The following letter was read from President Andrews of Brown University:

President’s Room, Brown University,

Providence, R. I., Nov. 10, 1897.

My Dear Mr. Murray:—Your American-Irish Historical Society meeting is sure to be a most interesting one, and but for the condition of my health and the numerous engagements for this month to which I am already pledged, I should certainly attend. As it is, I can only send you this testimonial of my interest in your organization and in the important phase of our American history which it is designed to investigate and expound.

The society can, and no doubt will, perform a most valuable work. The researches concerning the men whom I call the Irish Pilgrim fathers—the earliest representatives of the Irish race in New England—which you, yourself, sir, have so well begun, ought to be carried to the utmost attainable completion.

In early southern history Irishmen were a factor of the utmost importance. The Irish settlers and settlements in North Carolina and early Kentucky furnish an attractive subject for historical study, which, I believe, has never yet been adequately dealt with.

The American-Irish Historical Society will certainly prompt some of the numerous and brilliant youth of Irish descent, now coming forth from American colleges in such numbers, to turn their studies in the direction named.

Yours with sincere esteem,

E. Benj. Andrews.

The Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, who were in session in New York on the previous evening, sent the following:

New York, Nov. 15, 1897.

To the American-Irish Historical Society.

Gentlemen:—The Friendly Sons of St. Patrick of New York, an association of Irishmen and Irish-Americans coeval with the founding of this government, sends to you its heartiest fraternal greeting through your representative, Mr. Lawler. We fully appreciate the great value of the work you have undertaken—a work that involves the preservation of the record and achievements of men of Irish blood in the building and preservation of the American Republic.

The record of our race on this continent is glorious with patriotism and self-sacrifice; it is a record of honest toil, of love of freedom and religion, of devotion to God and country.

In preserving an authentic account of these achievements, the American-Irish Historical Society is performing a work of justice to the Irish race and an invaluable service to American history.

With every wish for your success, we remain fraternally yours,

Morgan J. O’Brien,

President, Friendly Sons St. Patrick, by John J. Rooney.

Hon. P. A. Collins and Gen. J. R. O’Beirne dissented, courteously but firmly, from the proposition that justice is to be won from England by patience and a campaign of education. Recalling Parnell’s first visit to Boston, General Collins told with impressiveness how Wendell Phillips attended the great meeting, in order, as he said, “to look upon the man who had made John Bull listen.” We must make John Bull listen, was the theme of General Collins’s eloquent address. Though he had come unprepared to speak, he was in excellent form and showed no diminution of his old-time vigor and clearness of expression.

General O’Beirne, whose erect, soldierly figure and noble countenance “showed him no carpet-knight so trim, but in close fight a warrior grim,” spoke with burning words of the cause that is defeated but not lost, and never can be lost while Irishmen preserve their racial character. History for seven hundred years has shown their undying fortitude, and he predicted that it would record the same through all the years to come, whether Freedom come soon or late.

Admiral Belknap, U. S. N., Rev. Edward McSweeney, of Bangor, Me., and other gentlemen made brief impromptu remarks, and the meeting adjourned after passing a vote of thanks to Mr. Robertson for his entertaining discourse.

New Members Admitted.

The following new members were admitted: His Excellency Elisha Dyer, Governor of Rhode Island; Hon. Joseph T. Lawless, Secretary of State, Virginia; Hon. Elisha W. Bucklin, ex-State Auditor, Pawtucket, R. I.; Hon. Wauhope Lynn, New York City; Recorder Goff, New York City; Hon. W. F. Reddy, Richmond, Va.; Col. James Armstrong, Charleston, S. C.; Col. C. C. Sanders, Gainesville, Ga.; Mr. Edward Fitzpatrick, staff of the Courier-Journal, Louisville, Ky.; Hon. John F. Finerty, editor the Citizen, Chicago, Ill.; Mr. M. J. Dowling, secretary National Republican League, Renville, Minn.; Mr. Michael Walsh, LL.D., Ph.D., editor Sunday Democrat, New York City; Mr. James D. Power, Washington, D. C.; Capt. John Flannery, Savannah, Ga.; Hon. Matthew O’Doherty, Louisville, Ky.; Mr. Edward L. Hearn, South Framingham, Mass.; Capt. John J. Coffey, Neponset, Mass.; Mr. Stephen J. Casey, Providence, R. I.; Mr. John B. Kehoe, Portland, Me.; Mr. Anthony J. Philpott, Boston, Mass.; Mr. William Lyman, New York City; Dr. Daniel I. O’Keefe, Jamaica Plain, Mass.; Dr. Thomas J. Dillon, Roxbury, Mass.; Dr. James E. Keating, Portland, Me.; the Rev. J. Phelan, Rock Valley, Ia.; Capt. Thomas J. Hogan, Portland, Me.; Mr. Thomas J. Lane, East Boston, Mass.; Mr. John Ahern, Concord, N. H.; Dr. Edward J. McDonough, Portland, Me.; Mr. Hugh J. Lee, Pawtucket, R. I.

Mr. Thomas B. Lawler, of Worcester, presented the following New York gentlemen as candidates for the society, and they were all admitted:

Hon. Joseph F. Daly, Hon. Morgan J. O’Brien, Hon. Frederick Smyth, Hon. E. F. O’Dwyer, Hon. Thomas S. Brennan, Col. William L. Brown, Dr. Charles J. Perry, Dr. Constantine Macguire, Maj. John Byrne, F. C. Travers, M. A. O’Byrne, John Crane, J. M. Fitzpatrick, D. P. Murphy, Jr., Robert E. Danvers, Stephen J. Geoghegan, James P. Campbell, Daniel O’Day, John J. Rooney, Laurence Winters, William Cranitch, James G. Johnson, William F. Clare, Edward J. McGuire, Daniel F. Colahan, Edward D. Farrell, William M. Penney.

On Feb. 1, 1898, the following invitation was issued to the members:

Dear Sir:—You are hereby notified that the annual meeting of the American-Irish Historical Society will be held at the Hotel San Remo, New York City, Thursday evening, Feb. 17, 1898.

The San Remo is owned by a member of our society (Mr. Michael Brennan) and is located at Central Park West, Seventy-fourth and Seventy-fifth Streets. It is easy of access and excellently adapted to a gathering such as we have in view.

There will be a business session of the society at 7 P.M., at which the annual election of officers will take place. At 8 o’clock the society and guests will proceed to dinner.

Gen. James R. O’Beirne, Vice-President of our society for New York State, will preside.

The delegation from the New England states will include the Hon. John C. Linehan, State Insurance Commissioner of New Hampshire; the Hon. Thomas J. Gargan, Boston, ex-President of the Charitable Irish Society (founded 1737); James Jeffrey Roche, LL.D., editor of the Boston Pilot, and other prominent gentlemen.

At the business session an amendment to Article XII of the Constitution will be offered. This article at present provides that the executive council of the society shall consist of ten members (in addition to the general officers). The proposed amendment, if passed, would change the language to read “not less than ten, nor more than twenty.”

During the post-prandial exercises Mr. Joseph Smith, secretary of the Police Commission, Lowell, Mass., will read a paper on “American History as it is Falsified.”

Fraternally,

Edward A. Moseley,

President-General.

Thomas Hamilton Murray,

Secretary-General.

The annual meeting of the American-Irish Historical Society was held on Thursday evening, 17th inst., at the Hotel San Remo, New York City. A large and representative gathering was present. Six states,—New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey,—sent delegations. Fifteen states were represented by letters expressing congratulations and good wishes.

President-General Moseley, of Washington, D. C., was unable to be present owing to a press of duties as secretary of the Interstate Commerce Commission, but his annual address was read to the society by Gen. James R. O’Beirne, Vice-President for New York. It was an eloquent production.

The society made its headquarters for the occasion at the San Remo, a magnificent house, owned by a member of the organization, Mr. Michael Brennan. It is situated at Central Park West and Seventy-Fifth Street, and is one of the finest hotels in the world. The banquet hall where the annual dinner of the society took place is located on the tenth floor and was lighted by over a thousand incandescent electric lamps. The scene was one of great brilliancy.

T. E. A. WEADOCK
Michigan

IGNATIUS DONNELLY
Minnesota

JAMES E. LOWERY
Colorado

JAMES CUNNINGHAM
Maine

VICE-PRESIDENTS

Among the early arrivals were: Hon. John C. Linehan, Concord, N. H.; Hon. Thomas J. Gargan, Boston, Mass.; Mr. James Jeffrey Roche, editor of The Pilot; Mr. T. B. Fitzpatrick, of Brown, Durrell & Co., Boston; Mr. Joseph P. Flatley, Boston; Mr. Joseph F. Swords, Hartford, Conn.; Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, grandnephew of the Irish patriot, Robert Emmet; Mr. Thomas B. Lawler, Worcester, Mass.; Hon. John D. Crimmins, New York; Mr. Frank C. Travers, New York; Capt. E. O’Meagher Condon, Washington, D. C.; Mr. Stephen J. Geoghegan, New York; Thomas Dunn English, Newark; and many others.

The business meeting and annual election took place at 7.30 P.M., and was held in the grand ballroom of the San Remo, which was comfortably filled.

General O’Beirne called the assemblage to order. Secretary-General Murray read the records of the previous meeting held by the society in Boston, and the same were approved.

It was announced that since that meeting three members of the society had died. They were: Hon. Owen A. Galvin, Boston; Hon. Charles B. Gafney, Rochester, N. H.; and Hon. John Cochran, New York City.

Committees were appointed to take suitable action on the deceased members.

The committee on audit, appointed to examine the books of the Treasurer-General, consisted of Judge Wauhope Lynn, New York; Mr. T. B. Lawler, Worcester, Mass.; and Mr. Michael Brennan, New York. The committee reported the books as displaying excellent system and arrangement, and the accounts of receipts and expenditures as being in an eminently satisfactory condition. The report was unanimously approved and adopted.

The society then proceeded to the election of new members, and some thirty were admitted from New York, Virginia, Texas, and other states. Among these new members is the Rev. Dr. McComb, a Presbyterian minister of New York City.

The proposed amendment to Article XII of the Constitution was adopted. It provided for an increase of ten in the make-up of the council of the society. The new members elected to the council under this provision comprise: Hon. Morgan J. O’Brien, a Justice of the New York Supreme Court; Hon. John D. Crimmins; Mr. Joseph F. Swords, Hartford, Conn.; Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, New York; Mr. Stephen J. Geoghegan, Mr. Francis Higgins, Hon. James S. Coleman, and F. C. Travers, New York City.

In addition to the foregoing, the annual election resulted as follows: President-General, Edward A. Moseley, Washington, D. C.; Secretary-General, Thomas Hamilton Murray, Pawtucket, R. I.; Treasurer-General, Hon. John C. Linehan, Concord, N. H.; Librarian and Archivist, Thomas B. Lawler, Worcester, Mass. These are all reëlections.

After the transactions of some routine matters the business meeting adjourned.

A short time later the line was formed and marched to the banquet hall, which was handsomely decorated. In the rear of the presiding officer’s chair was a glory of flags in which the star-spangled banner and the Irish tricolor predominated. American and Irish flags of small size were also distributed adown the tables, mingled with flowers and potted plants. Overhead the effulgence of a thousand electric lights served to add further brilliancy to the scene.

In a bower composed of huge palms and smaller plants was stationed an orchestra which discoursed sweet music during the repast. The company around the board represented, without exaggeration, several million dollars. Catholics and Protestants were there, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. It was a remarkable gathering in many ways, and was indicative of the strength and representative character already attained by the society.

General O’Beirne presided, and seated on his right and left were Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, Hon. Thomas Dunn English, Hon. John D. Crimmins, Hon. Thomas J. Gargan, James Jeffrey Roche, Joseph Smith, Judge Wauhope Lynn, Hon. John C. Linehan, F. C. Travers, V. P. Travers, John Crane, and T. B. Lawler.

Also present were noted: Commissioner Coleman, New York; Capt. E. T. McCrystal, of the Sixty-Ninth Regiment, New York; Dr. T. F. Harrington and Dr. George Leahey, Lowell, Mass.; Commissioner McSweeney, New York; W. F. Foley, Houston, Texas; John J. Rooney; and about one hundred others.

The menu card was especially designed for the occasion and elicited much favorable comment. During the evening a copy of the first Yearbook of the society was presented to each member present.

A feature of the evening was the rendition by the orchestra of “Ben Bolt,” out of compliment to the author, Dr. Thomas Dunn English, who was present. He is now about eighty years of age, and tears glistened in the old man’s eyes at this thoughtful tribute. The post-prandial exercises were opened by General O’Beirne who, after a stirring address on the objects of the society, read the annual address of the President-General, which was frequently applauded. He then successively introduced the speakers of the evening, who were Dr. Emmet, Dr. English, Mr. Gargan, Colonel Linehan, Captain Condon, Judge Lynn, and a number of others.

A great feature of this part of the program was an able paper by Mr. Joseph Smith, on “American History as it is Falsified.” He said:

Some Ways in which History is Falsified.

When the American-Irish Historical Society was organized a year ago in Boston, it declared its purpose to be the investigation into, and the recording of, the influence of the Irish element in the up-building of the American nation. We said then that the work and contributions of the Irish race on this soil had received scant recognition from the writers of American history; and we announced that whether that omission sprang from carelessness, ignorance, indifference, or design was not so important as the imperative necessity of remedying such a state of affairs in the interest of historical accuracy and racial fair play. For the past year our society has been in its formative stages; in the coming years I have ample faith that numbers, funds, earnestness, and enthusiasm will enable us to do our work effectively.

American history is being rewritten; the legendary and sentimental method of writing it is growing in disfavor; a scientific age demands the truth, and under its insistence new data are coming to light and old myths are passing away. It is beginning to dawn on American minds that this republic is the child of Europe and not of England; that old man of buckram—the Anglo-Saxon—is having a hard time with that new man of straw—the Scotch-Irishman; and when science gets the latter on the dissecting table there won’t be much left of him but rags and papier-maché.

To-night I will try to direct your attention to “Some Ways in which American History is Falsified”; and by falsification I do not mean so much the deliberate perversion of facts as I do the false effects produced by evasion, distortion, wrong point of view, and the physical and mental limitations and defects of writers, which in their results are quite as mischievous as those produced by perversion and design.

I will for my purposes group my object lessons under four heads, illustrating each with a writer passing current as an historian.

1. Mental Invalidism. The disease of certain literary doctrinaires whose natural defects have been aggravated by education and fixed by training. Prof. John W. Burgess, of Columbia University, is a fine type of this arrogant school of dogmatism.

2. Legend and Sentiment. The exploitation of legends, inherited ideas, race and family myths, made current and passing into literature by the efforts of those whose faith in folklore as historical data is profound, and to whom facts and documentary evidence are unimportant. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, an amateur historian, is the high priest of this cult; he is the custodian and incense swinger of the deified Puritan, the marvel and fountain of the graces of the modern age.

3. Imagination. The school of writers who add to the gayety of nations, who make history from their own inner consciousness, and who record it as they imagine it ought to be, not as it is. Under this head comes that humorless horde of scribblers, the Scotch-Irish littérateurs, and the intellectual giant of Tennessee, Judge Temple, author of Covenanter, Cavalier, Puritan.

4. Carelessness and Credulity. Writers who accept any evidence stated with solemnity and the air of authority, but who subject it to no tests to ascertain its verity and genuineness. Under this head I take exceptions to the statements made by Prof. John Fiske in a recent work, a writer hitherto regarded as safe and reliable.

I will now devote a few minutes to a work entitled Political Science and Constitutional Law, written by Prof. John W. Burgess, of Columbia University, and designed to be a text-book for that and other educational institutions.

Mr. Burgess is a rampant type of what a coldly critical and remorselessly correct writer, John M. Robertson, of London, calls a Celtophobe—a Celt hater. The learned Professor asserts dogmatically that the Celt never has, never can, and never will amount to anything nationally or politically; and that all law, order, and scientific government have sprung from and are due to what he calls the Teutonic races. Professor Burgess is a product of German training and education, and his views have received the cordial endorsement of such a calm and dispassionate authority as the London Times. The careful writer in stating his theory will fortify it with facts and figures and marshal his authorities before proceeding to erect a fabric on it; but Professor Burgess isn’t that kind of a man. He states his theory with an air of profound conviction and authority and goes ahead. His theory, like a good many other fabrics “made in Germany,” looks well, is calculated to deceive the unwary and unthinking, but under very ordinary scrutiny proves to be very commonplace, shoddy.

Let me show you a few of the gems from his treasury:

“Only the Teutonic races have produced national states.... The National State is thus the most modern and most complete solution of the whole problem of political organization which the world has as yet produced; and the fact that it is the creation of the Teutonic political genius stamps the Teutonic races as the political nations par excellence, and authorizes them in the economy of the world to assume the leadership in the establishment and administration of states.”

This brilliant outburst winds up a series of equally impressive statements. Just what the Professor means by National States and political nations I do not know, nor am I sure he knows himself. At any rate, he appears to lay down a doctrine very delightful to these governments which bully nations and steal territories, if not quite so agreeable to those bullied and plundered.

Now listen to his views on the unfortunate Celt; they have the old familiar ring of anti-Irish hysteria, for which familiarity has bred Irish contempt.

“Personal attachment in small bodies to a chosen Chief is the peculiar political trait of the Celtic nations.... The effect of such a political character has always been the organization of the Celtic nations into numberless petty military States, in each of which individual rights have been ignored; between all of which civil war has been the permanent status; and against which foreign force has been continually successful.... Violence and Corruption have always marked the politics of Celtic nations.”

Let us stop for a moment to analyze this tremendous blast from Columbia University, remembering that Germany and England are Professor Burgess’s ideal Teutonic nations.

From the time of the Roman retrocession from England until the landing of William the Norman at Hastings, that unfortunate land was in the hands of one of the dullest, most unimaginative, worst-governed, and worst-governing races history mentions—the Saxons—for six hundred years; it had become a congeries of warring, military chieftainship, in which civilization was almost obliterated, learning had disappeared, religion was at its lowest ebb, life and property had no safety, the people were enslaved, and the coast harried by foreign and victorious foes. The advent of a strong conqueror—a mixed Celt and Norseman—changed all this, hammered England into a strong military kingdom, connected her with the civilization that has made the world what it is—the Latin—and did in six years what the pure Teutonic race had signally failed to do in as many centuries.

Prior to the historic event known as the Reformation, Germany had as much peace as her neighbors—which wasn’t much—and all she had she owed to her intercourse with the Latin South, to her touch with the civilization and religion of Rome. After that event Germany was torn into factions, military chiefs sprang up, petty military states were made, violence and corruption were the rule, civilization retrogressed, the people were degraded and the land devastated. Germany was without unity; her mercenaries were for sale to the highest bidder; she was terrible only to her children, the prey of foreign forces, with civil war a permanent status. The advent of Napoleon was a blessing; he hammered a lot of petty principalities out of existence and formed two or three monarchies out of the bewildering many. The fall of Napoleon saw Germany a confederation, much after the fashion of pre-Reformation days, with Austria on top. Again came wars and dissensions, and finally the strong conqueror who united Germany against a common foe and made her what she is to-day. Germany, I take it, is the highest political expression of the Teutonic race, according to the dictum of Professor Burgess. What is it?

A military despotism of the most mediæval type, governed by an autocrat of doubtful sanity, whose person is more sacred apparently than that of the Deity; a land whence the people fly to seek safety, peace, liberty; a government that is a constant threat to the peace and civilization of the earth and that embodies all the reactionary principles a free people hate.

One does not expect the German professor, his disciple, or the mole in the earth to see what is going on in the sunlight.

If we turn to Ireland we see nothing but violence, corruption, and plunder in the methods of the Teutonic race ruling there; and we observe improvement in Irish affairs only with the decrease of English influences and the increase of Irishmen in Irish affairs.

It is a favorite axiom of the Teutonic writer of the Burgess type, wherever English and German rule is a failure, that the people ruled are unfit for government. Did it ever occur to them that the shoe is on the other foot—they are unfit to govern?

The unfitness of the English to govern Ireland is historic; it was exhibited in America, as some may recall; it is notorious in India and round the earth. The best-governed possessions of England are the lands where Englishmen are least in evidence. Germany in Africa is producing the usual harvest of Teutonic “genius”—depopulation and devastation.

But Mr. Burgess has a theory, and he does not propose to hamper it with facts. He asserts that the government—the political organization—of Spain, Italy, and Portugal are the results of Teutonic genius. This will probably be news to the world; but if the debility, decay, and general rottenness of those kingdoms are the result of Teutonic genius, the sooner they try the genius of the negro and the Chinaman the better for them. He covers whatever political good may exist in Greece, Bulgaria, and Roumania by attributing it to the impecunious German princes now adorning the rickety thrones in those lands. The idea is original, but not impressive. Why not attribute the political condition of Scandinavia to the presence on its throne for ninety years of Bernadotte, the French (Celtic) military adventurer, and his wife, the daughter of the Irish merchant Cleary, and their children? The logic is as good, or as bad, in one case as the other.

But why go on with this tissue of professional rubbish?

Nations are made what they are by climate, environment, peace, war, and economic and industrial conditions. Groups of men learn as does the individual, in the school of experience. Nations have no genius for anything; the botch work we call government to-day at its best is hardly a manifestation of genius. Nations may have temperaments, the product of experience, but only the individual has character.

Professor Burgess is merely a mental invalid, an hysterical Celtophobe. He either forgets the existence of Rome and Greece, or he fails to understand the value of civilization and human experience; he is a kind of literary phonograph, repeating the slanders and absurdities which a school of race egotists have raised to a cult. He is a decidedly unsafe man to educate a coming generation of Americans, for the writer of solemn and dogmatic nonsense is unfit to train the American youth. Certainly no self-respecting man of Irish-Celtic blood should permit his children to attend a university where they are taught that the perpetrators of ages of outrage and wrong are divinely selected beings, chosen “to assume leadership in the establishment and administration of States.”

If we desire that sort of rubbish taught, it is just as easy to secure professors at Bloomingdale as it is at Columbia.

The legendary and sentimental makers of history seem to thrive best in New England; and a fine type of the cult is the so-called “scholar in politics,” Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, of Massachusetts and Nahant. There is in China a religion whose principal tenet is the worship of ancestors, the placation of ancestral manes. This religion is called Tavism; and possibly the purest type of Tavist, outside of China, is the junior senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. Lodge is firmly convinced that the Puritan represents the perfect type of man; that the history of the world began in 1620; that the Puritan derived most of his excellence from being of English blood; and that, while Puritans were Dutch, French, Scotch, and even Irish, the lack of English blood somehow made them incomplete. While the ordinary English Puritan was a wonderful personage, the one who landed in Massachusetts was a genuine marvel, but when he settled around Boston and Nahant, he began to ooze genius and take on wings and halo. To this legend is added, sometimes by direct statement and sometimes by implication, the intelligence that all the great and good things that make this republic different from and superior to other lands are due to the miraculous powers of the Puritan. He is the creator of human freedom, the father of religion, liberty, and tolerance, the founder and originator of free schools, and the reputed author of so many ideas totally at variance with his narrow creed that were he to rise from his bed of clay in New England into the sunlight of to-day, he wouldn’t know himself.

This is the school of historical incubation of which Mr. Lodge is the high priest. Mr. Lodge has many admirable qualities; but his mental vision is defective, strabismal, and his ancestral credulity amazing. I am satisfied that Mr. Lodge would not knowingly do an unjust, intolerable, or dishonorable thing; but he is so en-webbed in tradition and so steeped in myth and legend that his rôle of historian is a decided misfit. How else can we account for the absurd theories he has exploited and the conception of historic events he has fathered in literature?

Anybody who has even read his history of the Thirteen Colonies will learn that the success achieved in building them up was due to the Puritans; and one is convinced that had some wandering vagabond from Massachusetts been cast away on the coast of Spanish-America, the Latin Republics south of us would now be the model governments of the earth and probably be called “Anglo-Saxon” nations. Everything that makes for success he attributes to the Puritan; and he does it with such a solemn, awe-stricken lack of humor that the irreverent are moved to Homeric mirth.

Now, as a matter of fact, the Puritan was a hard and fast bigot, who hated and persecuted everybody who differed from him religiously, and tolerated nobody; he was as priest-ridden as a Scotch Presbyterian, and he set up a system of Church and State that amounted almost to a theocracy. The climate and soil of New England made him a hard worker; his environment and neighbors, a stout fighter; but if his laws and records tell us any story, they say his morals and practices were no better than they ought to have been.

New England in colonial days produced some shrewd and levelheaded men, but if she ever produced a great one, I have failed to catch his name. When the hour of her struggle came the same phenomenon was exhibited in New England as elsewhere in the Colonies; her natural leaders, the people of education and wealth, followed the fortunes of the oppressor, and the common people took up the cause of freedom. New England in the Revolution did her whole duty, but the other Colonies did not shirk, and furnished not only men and money, but the theater of war.

Mr. Lodge is now furnishing “The Story of the Revolution” for Scribner’s Magazine, and already we can see his peculiar defects of historical vision in what he has written. Here is a hint of his ideas: “He [Washington] entered on the war with an army composed wholly of New England men. He ended the Revolution with an army, after seven years’ fighting, largely made up from the same New England people.” He does not say so in so many words, but he leads us to infer that the army between those two periods was made up of New England men. This sort of writing is as absurd as it would be to say New England did nothing. Has Mr. Lodge never heard of the 40,000 men on the Revolutionary rolls of New York? Has it ever occurred to him that Pennsylvania, Virginia, and other Colonies furnished some men, money, and leaders? Have his historical researches ever led him far enough to learn that Yorktown might have been a waste of blood but for the armies and navies of France? Does he know that the soldiers of America’s ally were the regiments of a brigade immortalized on every battlefield of Europe,—the Irish Brigade?

It is very doubtful. I sometimes wonder if Mr. Lodge knew what an Irishman was before he went into politics.

In his account of Bunker Hill he hasn’t a word to say of Sullivan, whose capture of Fort William and Mary with its supplies of precious gunpowder made Bunker Hill possible; yet he has much to say of the lack of powder during the siege of Boston.

He says the American soldiers engaged at Bunker Hill were “of almost pure English blood, with a slight mingling of Scotch-Irish from Londonderry.” I note among the dead killed there the following “Scotch-Irish” names: Broderick, Collins, Dalton, Dillon, Doyle, French, Haggett, McGrath; and Washington, desirous of recognizing this “Scotch” element in his army made St. Patrick the countersign on a certain evening during the siege. I recall that it was this same class of Irishmen with the Scotch prefix, from the New Hampshire town of Londonderry, called after an Irish town of that name, and which was originally planted by English and Irish, who insisted upon double rations of whiskey to celebrate St. Patrick’s day before Ticonderoga.

Mr. Lodge should learn to call a spade a spade, an Irishman an Irishman, for we will. The desire of a certain class of people to call themselves “Scotch-Irish” may be passed by with a smile; ignorance and weakness deserve pity rather than censure; but we must insist that the dead of our race shall be neither miscalled nor misrepresented, and that their laurels shall not be filched nor their glory stolen by those who have neither pride nor scruples.

Whatever Irish came from New Hampshire—and the hills were full of them—it would be a grave mistake to imagine that Massachusetts, so English and so Puritan, did not have her share. The Puritan Alva—Cromwell—and his villainous understrappers sent many a thousand Irish victims to Massachusetts Bay as bondmen and women; and voluntary immigration brought thousands of others. The town records show this; and whole districts in western Massachusetts were settled by them; and yet we are asked to believe that when men cease to be Catholic Irishmen they become Scotch-Irishmen. I can find no other excuse for the absurd title. Here are a few of the “Scotch-Irish” names on the rolls of the minute men of the day:

Joseph Burke,

Richard Burke,

Daniel Carey,

Joseph Carey,

Peter Carey,

Patrick Carroll,

Joseph Carroll,

Cornelius Cockran,

Daniel Connors,

William Connors,

James Dempsey,

Philip Donahue,

Joseph Donnell,

John Donnelly,

Andrew Dunnigan,

John Farley,

Michael Farley,

John Flood,

William Flood,

John Foley,

Matthew Gilligen,

Richard Gilpatrick,

James Gleason,

Daniel Griffin,

Joseph Griffin,

John Hacket,

Joseph Hacket,

John Haley,

John Kelly,

Patrick Kelly,

Peter Kelly,

Richard Kelly,

Stephen Kelly,

Daniel Lary,

Michael McDonnell,

Henry McGonegal,

John McGrah,

Daniel McGuire,

Patrick McKeen,

John McMullen,

John Mullin,

John Madden,

Daniel Mahon,

James Mallone,

John Mahoney,

John Murphy,

Patrick Newjent,

Patrick O’Brien,

Richard O’Brien,

Daniel Shay,

John Shea,

John Walsh,

Joseph Walsh.

It is well to note that the English parliament of that day was looking keenly at the causes that cost England her mighty empire on this continent; and apparently they underrated the influence of Mr. Lodge’s Puritan in that struggle, and bitterly blamed the plain Irish without any Scotchery.

Mr. Lodge means well; but folklore and history are two distinct affairs.

The imaginative school of history finds its best exemplar in a gentleman from Tennessee, the home of the Cardiff giant, the Giascutus, and the Scotch-Irishman. He is known as Judge Temple, and has written a volume called Covenanter, Cavalier, Puritan,—a work which has shaken the earth and spoiled the apple crop. The Judge is original; he honors the Scotch-Irishman as he does all ghost dancers, but he has discovered that all the might of the republic sprang from the Covenanter. I know what a Covenanter used to be, but I can’t solve this covenanter of Judge Temple. I can explain him as he appears in this literary offspring of this intellectual Cardiff giant. If an Irishman a few years ago did anything extraordinary, wonderful, or notorious, he would have been a Scotch-Irishman; in the Temple history he is a Covenanter; if he breaks a bank, or a man’s head, or the Decalogue, he is merely an Irishman. Apply that rule to all men and you have history as it is hatched out in Tennessee. The Covenanter germ was born in Scotland and spread over America, creating miracles. As the natives of North Britain are not remarkable for national modesty and self-effacement, I am puzzled to learn how this conversion of the world to freedom and civilization has escaped the shrinking writers of Scotland. If Judge Temple is not restrained by an injunction at an early date, Professor Burgess and Senator Lodge will be compelled sorrowfully to march on Washington, there to deposit in the National Museum the Teutonic Genius and the Puritan Marvel; or they might be turned over to some of the Yellow Sundays which specialize the exploitation of freaks.

Meantime we should keep our eye on Judge Temple, the young Lochinvar of history, who has come out of the South.

In Old Virginia and her Neighbors, Vol. II, p. 391, Prof. John Fiske says: “Until recent years little has been written of the coming of the so-called Scotch-Irish to America, and yet it is an event of scarcely less importance than the exodus of English Puritans to New England and that of English Cavaliers to Virginia. It is impossible to understand the drift which American history, social and political, has taken since the time of Andrew Jackson, without studying the early life of the Scotch-Irish population of the Alleghany region, the pioneers of the American backwoods. I do not mean to be understood as saying that the whole of that population at the time of the Revolution was Scotch-Irish, for there was a considerable German element in it, besides an infusion of English moving inward from the coast. But the Scotch-Irish element was more numerous and far more important than all the rest.

“Who were the people called by this rather awkward compound name Scotch-Irish? The answer carries us back to the year 1611, when James First began peopling Ulster with Colonists from Scotland and the North of England. The plan was to put into Ireland a Protestant population that might ultimately outnumber the Catholics and become the controlling element in the country. The settlers were picked men and women of the most excellent sort. By the middle of the seventeenth century there were 300,000 of them in Ulster.

“That province had been the most neglected part of the island, a wilderness of bogs and fens; they transformed it into a garden. They also established manufactures of woolen and linens which have since been famous throughout the world. By the beginning of the eighteenth century their numbers had risen to nearly a million. Their social condition was not that of peasants; they were intelligent yeomanry and artisans. In a document, signed in 1718 by a miscellaneous group of 319 men, only thirteen made their mark, while 306 wrote their names in full. Nothing like that could have happened at that time in any other part of the British empire, hardly even in New England.

“When these people began coming to America, those families that had been longest in Ireland had dwelt there but for three generations, and confusion of mind seems to lurk in any nomenclature which couples them with the true Irish. The antipathy between the Scotch-Irish as a group and the true Irish as a group is, perhaps, unsurpassed for bitterness and intensity. On the other hand, since love laughs at feuds and schisms, intermarriages between the Colonists of Ulster and the native Irish were by no means unusual, and instances occur of Murphys and McManuses of the Presbyterian faith. It was common in Ulster to allude to Presbyterians as ‘Scotch,’ to Roman Catholics as ‘Irish,’ and to members of the English Church as ‘Protestants,’ without much reference to pedigree. From this point of view the term ‘Scotch’ may be defensible, provided we do not let it conceal the fact that the people to whom it applied are for the most part Lowland-Scotch Presbyterians, very slightly hibernicized in blood.”

Again, “By 1719 this hope was torn away, and from that year until the passage of the Toleration Act for Ireland in 1782, the people of Ulster kept flocking to America. Of all the migrations to America previous to the days of steamships this was far the largest in volume. One week of 1727 landed six ship loads at Philadelphia. In the two years 1773 and 1774 more than 30,000 came. In 1770 one-third of the population of Pennsylvania was Scotch-Irish. Altogether between 1730 and 1770, I think it probable that at least half a million of souls were transferred from Ulster to the American Colonies, making not less than one-sixth of our population at the time of the Revolution.”

The merest examination of this will show that the writer is on uncertain ground; he is begging the question; his own training and education convince him that there is a false ring to the term “Scotch-Irish”; the statements he makes, or quotes, show the earmarks of that organized humbug the Scotch-Irish Society; and he is reluctant to face the question squarely, and, by reversing the conventional concealments, evasions, and falsifications which have marked the writing of American history in the interest of the English element, acknowledge the splendid work done by the Irish in America.

Let us examine his statements in detail.

Relative to Ulster settlement he says: “The settlers were picked men and women of the most excellent sort. By the middle of the seventeenth century there were 300,000 of them in Ulster. The province was a wilderness of bogs and fens; they transformed it into a garden. They also established manufactures of woolens and linens; ... they were intelligent yeomanry and artisans.”

These extracts are the amusing myths of the Scotch-Irish Society. We have an emigration from Scotland by, say 1650, of 300,000, with no account of the English, French, Walloon, and German emigrants who were introduced, and nothing said about the original settlers of Ulster, the Irish. In 1659 Sir W. Petty, a government official in Ulster, estimated the population as follows: Irish, 63,350; English, Scotch, and other aliens, 40,571; a total of 103,921. It is very possible that Sir W. Petty’s estimate was correct; that he would find it very difficult to arrive at a correct estimate of the Irish; and much more easy to get at the numbers of those who were naturally the English supporters. It is well to recall that at the date of this estimate Ireland had gone through the horrors of twelve years of Civil War, marked by cruelty of the most ferocious kind; that the Cromwellians had added deportation and slavery in the Americas to their other crimes and abominations; that Cromwell had settled his own soldiers on confiscated lands; and that he was not particularly partial to the Scotch, whom he had fought and defeated, and whose immigration he was not likely to encourage at a time when they were parleying with the exiled Charles and plotting the downfall of the Commonwealth.

Professor Fiske’s 300,000 seem to vanish in smoke.

The character of the population introduced into a country where the natives are treated as outlaws and wild beasts by the government, is not hard to guess. It is not at all likely that it is going to consist of model farmers, expert artisans, pious, educated, peaceful men and women; that kind of people usually remain at home. The adventurer, the ne’er-do-well, the poor, the desperate, the homeless; those are the kind willing to face the hazards of war and fortune in a land where the natives are hard fighters and haters of the government, even though exhausted by war.

The Rev. Andrew Stewart, Presbyterian pastor of Donaghadee from 1645 to 1671, who was born and raised in Ulster, leaves this record of Professor Fiske’s selected yeomanry and artisans:

“From Scotland came many, and from England not a few; yet all of them generally the scum of both nations, who for debt, or breaking, or fleeing from justice, or seeking shelter, came hither, hoping to be without fear of man’s justice in a land where there was nothing, or but little as yet, of the fear of God.”

Such were the selected yeomanry; selected evidently by the king’s writ, by the beggarly planters who received the stolen lands from a beggarly king, and by the London guides whose gold went into the king’s pocket.

The reverend gentleman gives us a further hint of the people who came thus running from the sheriff and the heavy hand of the law. He says: “In a few years there flocked such a multitude of people from Scotland that the Counties of Down, Antrim, Londonderry, etc., were in a good measure planted; yet most of the people made up a body—and it is strange—of different names, nations, dialects, tempers, and breeding, all void of Godliness, who seemed rather to flee God in this enterprise, than to follow their mercy; albeit at first it must be remembered that they cared little for any church.”

People of many nations and dialects coming out of Scotland needs an explanation. Mr. Motley, in his history of the Dutch Republic, throws a great light on this subject. He says in effect that the religious wars of Protestant and Catholic, and the persecutions growing out of them of the ever-increasing sectaries, drove shoals of artisans from Germany, Holland, and France to England. Elizabeth of England had troubles of her own; and while she quarreled with the Pope and disputed his headship, she was jealously insistent of her own leadership of her state church and had no use for the pugnacious sectaries from across the Channel. In time, owing to the English jealousy of foreigners and rival manufacturers and the Queen’s abhorrence of rebels against divinely selected kings, Elizabeth shut down on the refugees and refused them asylum. In those days it was a much graver offense to insult the majesty of earth than heaven. Scotland, then in the throes of religious squabbles and the game of church plundering and under the practical guidance of the amiable John Knox, gave them a welcome as kindred spirits. When other days came, when Mary’s head had rolled from the block at Fotheringay, when her wretched son was enthroned, the foreign element found Scotland a poor land to live in. The settlement of Ulster gave them their chance, and they flocked there with Scotchmen and Englishmen, to settle down and intermarry and become—as all before them had become at that Irish crucible—Irish.

The forms of religious dissent driven out of Europe to Great Britain, like Presbyterianism, had a common basis of agreement in their common Calvinism, and the foreigners naturally drifted into that form of ecclesiastical organization. Few went into the Anglican State Church, and many of that faith drifted away from it to Catholicity and Presbyterianism; and it was a special subject of reproach later that the state-beneficed clergy caused such a state of affairs by their indifference and greed.

But it remains for American historians to find the terms race and religion synonymous, and to advise an astonished world that when an Irishman, Frenchman, Englishman, Dutchman, or Walloon, adopts Presbyterianism as his religious faith, he is at once transformed into that hyphenated hybrid, a Scotch-Irishman.

This is one of the marvels of this inventive age.

Before Professor Fiske—for whose talent and industry I have a very great respect—gives us his promised views on the Scotch-Irishman in his forthcoming work, The Dutch and Quaker Settlements in America, let me propound a question or two to him.

If, as is pretended, a certain number of Lowland Scotchmen of the Presbyterian religion accomplished so much in Ulster and America, why have not the great majority of the same people accomplished as much in their own land and elsewhere, when all the conditions were in their favor? And again, if so much was accomplished by an Irish environment and an Irish racial admixture, and so little achieved by the pure Scot under more favorable circumstances, is it not a reasonable deduction that the Irish element was the responsible factor in the achievement? If not, why not?

GEN. A. G. MALLOY
Texas

TIMOTHY P. SULLIVAN
New Hampshire

VICE-PRESIDENTS

ANDREW ATHY
Worcester, Mass.

CAPT. JOHN DRUM, U. S. A.

That invader and invaded should hate each other bitterly is not of any particular importance as bearing on nationality; it is the experience of all lands and races. Presbyterian Murphys and McManuses are no argument for Scotch Murphys and McManuses; it may indicate intermarriage and change of religious faith; it can’t indicate a change of blood. The transformation of bogs and fens into gardens is merely a fairy story; the bogs and fens are in Ulster to-day. The fertile valleys of Ulster, ready to be entered on, were the bait to catch settlers, for the defeated and disheartened native Irish had been driven to the barren hills and bogs. Men as a rule don’t risk life and fortune for the privilege of transforming bogs into gardens in a hostile country; and, moreover, Motley says England and Scotland in that age had the rudest system of agriculture in Europe. The higher system of agriculture, as well as the woolen and linen industries, came with the skilled exiles from Holland and France; and even as great a plunderer as Wentworth was wise enough to foster them. And I might ask, why didn’t these marvelous Scots make their own country famous for woolen and linen industries, when they made their own laws and could snap their fingers at English jealousy?

Finally, if these people were Scotch “slightly hibernicized,” why did they on their arrival in America organize “Irish societies”? Why did they name towns and rivers with Irish names? Why did they celebrate St. Patrick’s day rather than St. Andrew’s?

It will pay Professor Fiske to examine into the Irish emigration of the eighteenth century and learn, as less erudite people have done, that as much of this stream flowed from Limerick, Cork, Waterford, Dublin, and English Bristol as from Ulster; and that Leinster and Munster poured in nearly as many Irish to Colonial America as did the northern provinces. What he is unwittingly doing is settling up the abhorrent dividing lines of religion and marking off our race into “Irish-Irish” and “Scotch-Irish” upon the lines of Catholicity and Protestantism. I as one of the Protestant Irish most strenuously object; the name Irish was good enough for my fathers; their son is proud to wear it as they did; and we must all insist that the Irish, without prefixes, without hyphens, without any qualification, all children of a common and well-loved motherland, shall be given their full measure of credit for the splendid work done by the race in America.

If Professor Fiske is true to himself and the principles and canons of his calling, he will find the truth and tell it, and waste no valuable time chasing myths and will-o’-the-wisps.

As an indication of the great interest of the occasion it may be remarked that the exercises were not brought to a close until 2.30 o’clock the next morning. Before adjourning, resolutions of condolence on the loss of the U. S. S. Maine were adopted by a standing vote, and the Secretary-General was instructed to transmit a copy of the resolutions to the President of the United States and to the Secretary of the Navy.

On Friday afternoon the members of the society were given a reception by Hon. John D. Crimmins, at his home, 40 East 68th Street. It was a most charming occasion. About forty gentlemen attended, including Dr. Emmet and his son; General O’Beirne and Captain McCrystal, of New York; and P. J. Flatley, of Boston; Thomas Hamilton Murray, of Rhode Island; J. F. Swords, of Hartford; O’Meagher Condon, of Washington, D. C.; Joseph Smith, of Lowell, Mass.; James Jeffrey Roche, Thomas B. Lawler, Michael Brennan, and many others.

The company first inspected Mr. Crimmins’s fine library and were shown many books and manuscripts, some of them of great rarity and value. A lunch was then served, after which the visitors were shown the magnificent collection of paintings for which Mr. Crimmins is so well known among lovers of art.