The Irish Race in the Past and the Present

by Augustus J. Thébaud

The image, striking and poetical as it is, for a Christian is too material. We speak more correctly when we say that Mind — the Divine Mind—is the great invincible and invisible Force of which all material forces are but the created agents, and by which all inferior minds must stand or fall, conquer or fail. A man must be blind with that incurable blindness—of will—who cannot see it acting in and on the universe, and even controlling the lower designs of puny intellects. The reverent eye which sees the vastness of the plan, the multitude of its agents, aiding and seconding it consciously and unconsciously, recognizes it, and the supreme object of its workings, Love, infinite Love.

And we distinguish with grateful surprise all those circumstances visibly appearing in the great fact which has just been so imperfectly sketched, and which will come home to us still more forcibly when the workings of its lesser details come to be examined. Here, for instance, at the moment of writing these lines (March, 1872) we learn from the morning newspapers of the recent arrival of the Japanese embassy at San Francisco; that its members had been dispatched to this country to study European, or, as we call them, Japhetic institutions, for the purpose of copying and adapting them to their own wants. The embassy, detained at Salt Lake City by the snow-blockade on the Pacific Railroad, refused to go back, temporarily, to California, and made up their mind to wait in Utah, until it is possible for them to proceed.

Pacific Railroad, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Japanese embassy, adoption of European manners by the Mikado and daimios— who can fail to gather from these words and details the conception of means to an end, and that end the one we now begin to study?

The first circumstance coming under our review and indicative of a loving design on the part of Providence, a circumstance not marked sufficiently at the time, is the preservation by the English themselves of the poor remnants of the Irish race, which the first working of the plan had so frightfully decimated and left in danger of being utterly wiped out. Had they disappeared, would Japhetism have become a blessing to the Asiatic nations? The Catholic, looking abroad and casting his mind's eye over the vast European field, to all seeming so rich in every production, yet in reality so sterile morally, peering with awe and horror into the Japhetic caldron—for such it is—seething and bubbling to the brim, full of the most deadly poisons and noxious substances, ready at any moment to overflow in infected waves and sweep over the unfortunate countries which look to it so anxiously for blessings, a torrent of black destruction, spreading around naught but desolation and barrenness—the Catholic eye, seeing all this, can find but one answer to our query. The Asiatic races cannot hope to be benefited by the introduction of European manners among them, unless the same great movement carries in its train the holy Catholic Church: and as that introduction must be brought about by English- speaking leaders, the only English-speaking Catholics of numerical significance must be the instruments of the adorable designs of Providence.

That this assertion may not appear too sweeping, it is only enough to instance the example of India, which England has held long enough to convert, at least in part, had she so desired and been moved by the Spirit of God, yet to-day India stands in a worse relation toward Protestantism than when Protestantism in the name of Christianity, but in the person of a British trader, settled down in its midst. What good has Hindostan derived?

But, at this very moment, the whole Irish race is at the mercy of the English Government and people. Only let the same kind of vessels continue to be dispatched filled with Irish emigrants, and the whole race must disappear within a short period, or become so reduced in numbers that its operations as a race, on a large scale, will be unproductive of sufficient results.

And it is well to mark that at the time of this outpouring of the race, as long before, and almost constantly since, there were Englishmen rejoicing at the glorious result which death by plague and famine was about to produce. It were easy to quote many a barbarous passage from the London Times, expressive of the most satanic joy, not only at the departure of the Irish from the "United Kingdom," but at the prospect of their ultimate, or rather proximate disappearance out of the world altogether.

Yet it was the same English Government and people which, feeling, let us hope, some compassion at the sight of this new woe of the "Niobe of nations," determined to try and save her children, as, if they must cast them out, at least it should he alive and full of health on a foreign shore.

Laws, therefore, were passed, regulating the quantity and quality of provisions, particularly of drinkable water, the number of the crew and working-men, the ventilation of the vessel, the number of passengers to be received, etc.

Still, these first attempts at humanity seem to have been rather faint-hearted, as the following passage from Mr. Maguire's "Irish in America," showing how they were carried out, and how inadequate was the remedy applied in 1848, will explain: