The Irish Race in the Past and the Present

by Augustus J. Thébaud

Is such a picture a dream, and its realization an impossibility? It is our belief that, to make it a reality, only requires steadiness of purpose, perseverance, energy, and association. Fifty years ago it would certainly have seemed a dream; but matters have advanced within the last half-century, and every thing is now prepared for such a hoped-for consummation.

II. Together with physical comfort, the culture produced by a sound and thorough education is the second thing absolutely necessary for the resurrection of the nation. Education has, at all times, been of the utmost importance; in our age it is more so than ever. It may be said that, in the opinion of mankind, it tends more and more to replace blood. The privileges that once belonged to rank and birth are now everywhere freely accorded to a truly-educated man. And here, wealth, which is almost worshipped by many, cannot altogether take the place of education. Consequently, a great effort should be made in Ireland to raise the standard of the intellectual scale of society. Owing to former tyranny and oppression, the rising must begin at the lowest grade. But the first impulse has already been given by the Church of God, and that impulse must continue and increase with a constantly-accelerated force.

Unfortunately, a false direction has been given it by the state. The means which will surely defeat this action of the state have been seen. Nevertheless, it works mischievously for the general result; and the money paid by the nation has been and still is squandered for a most unholy purpose, when, if properly applied, it would be so fruitful of good.

Should the government persevere in its project, one course only lies open before all true Irishmen; and that is, to ignore the action of the government, and follow a plan of their own. They have only to do what the Catholics in France would most willingly do if the state allowed them; what Catholics in the United States have been doing for some time, and will have to do for some time longer—not murmur too loudly at the taxes paid by them for educational purposes and used so lavishly by the state without any profit to them; but with steady purpose raise funds which the state cannot touch, devoted to an object with which the state cannot interfere, namely, the solid Christian education of their children under the eyes and chief control of the Church, with competent and truly religious masters.

Let them reflect that until recently education in Christian countries was always imparted by the Church of Christ, and that its secularization is but a work of yesterday; that the effect of that secularization is manifest enough in the mental anarchy which grows more prevalent in Europe every day; that the nation which comes back to the old system, and places again the care of youth in the hands of religious teachers, is sure to obtain a far sounder and more effective education than those who take for teachers of their children men void of faith and remarkable only for a false and superficial polish, which sooner or later will be reckoned by all at its true value, and meet only with well- merited neglect and contempt.

No one will deny that moral training, the first and most important part of education, is far surer and safer in the care of religious teachers than in that of mere laymen, whose morality is often doubtful, and whose reputation is not of the best. With regard to scientific teaching, the mind of the religious is not, to say the least, lowered by the holy obligations which he has contracted: and it is an awkward fact for those who in a breath uphold secular education and abuse the religious, that in former ages the men who excelled in arts and sciences, the geniuses whose works will live as long as the earth, were either themselves monks or the pupils of monks. A list of them would fill many pages, and their names are not unknown to the world.

For the mass of the people, the common level of primary education with which so many are now satisfied may at least be as satisfactory in its results when imparted by religious, male and female, as when under the direction of young men and women who have received every possible diploma which is at the disposal of school commissioners or boards of gentlemen invested with an office, worthy of the gravest attention, but to which they can devote but very little time.

But the subject may be said to have passed beyond discussion. The true and authorized leaders of the Irish in such matters, the Catholic bishops, have already taken the matter into their own hands; and in a very short time have covered the island with their schools, with every prospect of a university. It rests with the government to give or refuse its aid in imparting a true national education to a nation which is Catholic; but, with or without this aid, the Irish will have the means of educating their children rightly; and the culture they receive will favorably compare with that imparted by rival establishments fostered by the state, whose pupils will not know a word even of their own national history, since, in the authorized books, Ireland has no existence other than that of an unworthy subject of the great British Empire.

It was necessary to give prominence to what is here considered as the most effective means of bringing about the great result which engages our attention in this chapter. There are secondary objects which might be treated, but which, in the final working of the divine will, may be insignificant. For, to repeat what has been said before, the restoration of the nation which is now progressing so steadily almost unaided by any action of man, however much he may indulge in agitation, is the work of God, and before long will so manifest itself to all. Meanwhile it is enough to assert in general terms that Ireland is entitled to all those things which render a people happy and contented. That wished-for state is not far off; let them continue to be active in its pursuit. A previous chapter has already touched upon the great means to be employed in bringing this about: association, whose centre should be Ireland, and whose branches should spread wherever Irishmen have established themselves; whose guides should be the clergy, but its chief workers, intelligent and energetic laymen. On this point it is desirable particularly to be rightly understood; it is not our purpose to say that in such a work laymen ought not to cooperate, or even to lead; with the memory of O'Connell before us, such a thing would be impossible; on the contrary, the external working of the whole scheme should be placed in the hands of good, active, and intelligent laymen. They are the proper instruments for carrying on such a work actively and efficaciously; they form, at least numerically, the principal part of the moral power of the nation, and that power should be developed on a larger scale than it has ever yet been. But the first impulse should be given by the moral leaders, rulers of the Church. Let the nation work under the guidance, the leadership of the men who alone stood by them when all else had been lost, who, in fact, by preserving their religion, preserved to them their nationality; let them work under their eyes and with their sanction, and assuredly their labor will not be labor in vain.

What will the final result be of such a cooperation of workers? The formation or rather consolidation of a truly Christian and Catholic people; a most remarkable phenomenon in this wonderful nineteenth century! It would seem that they have thus far been deprived of a government of their own only to win a government at last which shall be, what is so sadly wanted in these days, Christian and Catholic. Modern governments have broken loose from Christianity; they have declared themselves independent of all moral restraint; they have pronounced themselves supreme, each in its own way; and, to be consistent, they have become godless. Donoso Cortes has shown this admirably in his work on "Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism." The sad spectacle which in our age meets the eye of the Christian, is universal; there is no longer a Catholic nation; Christendom has ceased to exist. This is held by the statesmen of to-day to be a vast improvement on the old social system. Medieval barbarism, as they term it, has, according to them, met with just condemnation; and to return to it now, would be to drag an advanced age centuries backward, a horror which no sane man could contemplate.