The Irish Race in the Past and the Present

by Augustus J. Thébaud

There is no need here of revolution, of what the French call une jaquerie, of arming the populace for the purpose of violently ejecting the great land-owners. No Irishman has ever stood for so calamitous a remedy. The aid of the Internationalists will certainly never be called in by the true children of Erin for any purpose whatever. It seems that the great and holy Pontiff, Pius IX., made this remark to the Prince of Wales, at their last interview at the Vatican, and, according to the report, the prince fully admitted its truth as far, at least, as he, by any outward sign, could show.

The question is one of pure justice, to be settled within the limits of order and law; and surely, when all admit that the evil is so crying, that a remedy must be found, one will be found, which, while it does no real injury to any person, will bring comfort and relief to the most deserving and suffering race of men—the Irish peasantry. We will soon see how.

But the Irishman is not only physically destitute; he is also destitute mentally; and, if the first case calls for a prompt remedy, the second is no less urgent. Pauperism and ignorance were the two terrible engines so long worked by England for the degradation and final destruction of the Irish race. Our readers have seen how persistently was education, of any kind, refused to the natives. The Universities of Dublin and Drogheda in the fourteenth century, the cathedral schools, founded by the Anglo- Normans, in the same age, carefully excluded the Irish from their benefits. And, when the Reformation set in, with its long series of oppressions, no Catholic could share in the new foundations of the Tudors and the Stuarts without first abjuring his religion. Penal statute after penal statute made of all the shifts, to which the Irish were driven in order to educate their children, so many crimes, punishable by death or transportation. That, under such a state of things, they could remain Catholics without becoming idiots is one of the most remarkable instances on record of buoyancy of spirit and soundness of mind on the part of a whole nation.

From the end of the last century the policy of England changed completely in appearance. The foundation and endowment by the state of the great college of Maynooth, destined for the education of the Irish clergy, in 1795, was certainly a step on the right road, and if only primary schools for the people had, at the same time, been spread all over the island on the same principle of true liberality, the old injustice on the matter of education would have been atoned for and remedied, to a great extent.

But the Kildare Peace Society and the Church Education Society, founded in 1839, showed that the antagonism to the Catholic Church in Ireland was far from being dead; nay, was as rife as ever.

Lord Stanley's National Education System, in 1831, at first seemed of a character altogether above Protestant or infidel proselytism. But, the composition of the various boards under that system, and some of the measures adopted, gave evidence clearly and soon enough that the education proposed for the Irish was not in accordance with the true spirit of the nation, so eminently Catholic and religious as it is. Hence, the total failure—for such it is now admitted by all to have been—of that system ought to have opened the eyes of all impartial Englishmen to the necessity of starting from the principle that Ireland is Catholic, and that the Irish are true children of the Catholic Church. But this fact seems not yet recognized or acknowledged by those who rule the nation, since, at this very moment, a bill lies before Parliament against which all the bishops of Ireland have united in raising their voice. The queen's colleges all confess to be a wretched failure.

The injustice of centuries, then, is not, even in these free days, when there is such a talk about educating the masses, repaired by the English Government; and this sad fact seems to militate against the power of moral force. However, it is but right to remember that only those establishments are here spoken of which are supported by state aid, and that complete freedom of education, independent of such assistance, does actually exist in Ireland. Have not the bishops all necessary power to open schools of their own? Have they not even founded a university? Does the state dare to interfere in whatever educational establishments they think proper to set on foot? They are now, in that regard, as free as the Catholic bishops in the United States; and if the degrees granted by the faculties under their control have no value in the eyes of the state, they can easily dispense with a concurrence, which is certainly unjustly denied, but which, even if granted, would not, in the eyes of the Church, increase in the slightest the real value of the diplomas they themselves approve. They can afford to wait for the time when complete justice will be done; meanwhile they are freer than Catholic bishops at this moment are in all Catholic countries of Europe; and the freedom they enjoy is entirely owing to that moral force which, we allege, is sufficient to insure, sooner or later, all the advantages that can be desired. When the present situation of the native Irish, from an educational point of view, is compared with the oppression under which they lay a hundred years ago, one cannot but wonder how so much has been obtained, and the hope, that every thing still wanting is sure to come by the agency of the force that has already won so much, cannot be deemed vain and illusory.

Let not, however, what is here said be construed as advising Ireland to stand still while schemes of education, evidently godless, are concocted, matured, and passed into laws for their special benefit. On the contrary, they must not only continue but increase their efforts to cry them down, till they compel a blind and deaf government to open its eyes and ears to a national want and a national voice. This is what is meant by the use of moral force.

But, can the complete remedy for pauperism and the solid establishment and endowment of truly Catholic schools be expected to come from any hands but those of an Irish Legislature? Can they be hoped for as long as the destiny of Ireland rests in the hands of an Imperial Parliament whose great majority can have no real sympathy with the long-oppressed race? In a word, is home-rule necessary to bring about those two great measures, which seem absolutely indispensable for the complete resurrection of the nation?

Our readers already know that, in our opinion, an Irish Parliament would not be a sure panacea for the evils of the country, particularly those of pauperism and ignorance, even though that Parliament sat in Dublin, and was composed of Irishmen bred and born. The evils would not be struck out promptly and utterly, although many great improvements would immediately follow.