The Irish Race in the Past and the Present

by Augustus J. Thébaud

Suppose that on this continent the numerous bands of workingmen, so actively engaged everywhere in developing the resources of the country, should aim at extending their solicitude beyond their immediate and material welfare to the reformation and reorganization of mankind on a new basis; and suppose that, with this aim in view, they should combine with those of Europe, and enter into an unholy compact with them, what hope or refuge would remain in the whole world for harmony, peace, justice, and happiness? And when the great upheaval, so generally expected in Europe, and which sooner or later must take place, shall come to pass, where could those men fly, who cannot but look upon those satanic schemes with horror? Where on this earth would be found a spot consecrated to the acknowledgment of the only social principles which can secure the real good of mankind, by rendering safe the stability of society?

It is our firm belief that the vast number of true children of the Church, occupied honestly and actively in the many factories of the North, will, when the contest commences, even before it commences, when the question of connecting the "unions" of this country in a band of brotherhood with those of Europe shall be gravely mooted, make their voices loudly and unmistakably heard on the right side.

Enough has now been said on the locality chosen by preference as the dwelling- place of the Irish immigrants at the period under consideration. Let us now see those armies of new-comers at work. They have been called a missionary people; let us see how they understand their "mission."

In this new country every thing had to be done for the establishment of religion, education, help for the poor, the aged, the infirm, on a lasting and sufficiently broad basis. And, strange to remark, it was found that the previous persecutions they had undergone fitted them admirably for their work, not only by giving them a strong faith, the true foundation of Christian energy, but in a manner more curious, if not more effective. It fitted them to give money freely and abundantly, poor as they were! One may smile incredulously at the conceit; but it has become a most powerful and incontestable fact.

Suppose the Irish never to have been persecuted in their own country: suppose that they had found there a benevolent government to supply them with churches, schools, hospitals— homes for the poor—every thing that they, as Catholics, could desire. Suppose them to have been in a similar position with the Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Italians, of those days, how bitterly would they have felt the inconvenience of building all these things up for themselves in their new homes with the labor of their own hands, by their own individual efforts, unaided by the government! Their ardor would have been damped, their energy cramped, their inclination to give would have fallen far below the necessities of the time: for money was sorely needed—no niggard offerings, but immense sums.

But happily—happily in the result, not in the fact—not only had the British Government never done any thing of the kind for them in their old home; not only, on the contrary, had it been particularly careful to rob them of all the buildings and estates left by their ancestors for those great objects; but, until very recently, the passing of the Emancipation Act of 1829, it had studiously and most persistently hindered them from doing voluntarily for themselves what it refused to do for them. There were numerous penal statutes enacted, in the course of two centuries, to prevent them from building churches, opening schools, erecting asylums and hospitals of their own, nay, from possessing consecrated graveyards for their dead. Thus did fanatic hatred pursue them even to the grave, and, as far as it could, beyond the gates of death. Every one had to surrender the mortal remains of his relatives to the Protestant minister for burial; as though what the government called its religion would snatch from them whatever it could lay hands on—the body at least since the soul had escaped and passed beyond its reach.

But in their new country they found every thing altered. Not only was prohibition of this kind utterly unknown, but there existed there the greatest amount of liberty ever enjoyed by man for acting in concert with a religious, educational, or charitable object in view. No law devised by the old Greek republics, by the Roman fisc, by modern European intermeddling was ever attempted in the country which with justice boasted of being the "asylum of the oppressed." Thus as the liberty so long denied to the Irish was at last opened up, as no barrier existed to cramp and confine the natural generosity of their hearts, no sooner did they find that they might contribute as they chose to those great and holy objects, than they rushed at the chances offered them with what looked like recklessness.

We hope that the reader may understand, from this, our meaning in saying that persecution had admirably fitted them for the mighty work that lay before them. It was the first time for centuries that they were allowed to give for such sacred purposes.

Another thing which disposed than toward it was, the lingering fondness for the old customs of clanship, still harbored in their inmost soul, never entirely dead and ready to revive whenever an opportunity presented itself. There can be no doubt of this; the great adjuration of the clansman to his chieftain— "Spend me, but defend me"—tended wonderfully to consecrate in their eyes the act of giving and giving constantly, as though their purse could never be exhausted. The chieftain has been replaced by the bishop, the priest, the educator; the nobility has gone, but these have come; and unconsciously perhaps, but none the less really, does this feeling lie at the bottom of their hearts, which are ever ready to burst out with the old expression, though in other form: "Spend me, eat me out, but help my soul, and save my children."

This feeling has always run in the blood of the race. St. Paul long ago detected it in the Galatians, a branch of the Celtic tribes, when he wrote to them: "You received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. . . . I bear you witness that, if it could be done, you would have plucked out your own eyes, and given them to me."—Epistle to the Galatians, iv. 15.