"Every thing is free, and there is liberty for all. The very fences, you see, sir, unlike our stone walls at home, give liberty to the winds and storms to blow through them. The mountains are free to the huntsman; the very snow is free to blow and form itself into those beautiful banks, and little mountains, and castles, and stacks, and curtains, and drapery that we see on every side of us as we glide along."
The priest listened with astonishment.
"Was there ever seen any thing so purty," continued the peasant, "as those ridges and mounds of snow? I have seen the grandest buildings in Ireland,—Marlborough Street Church, in Dublin, the stone carving and ceiling in Cashel of the Kings, the stucco work on the old Parliament House in College Green,—but I think I see work in these fantastic snow banks that beats them all hollow. And—glory be to God!—all this beauty, so dazzling, so chaste, was created by a storm, when all nature was in a rage, and men shut themselves up in houses from its violence! I am glad now," said he, "our landlord turned us out. I now forgive him for being the cause of our coming to this country of the brave and the free."
"Was it a landlord who has been the occasion of so much enjoyment to you, Murty?" said Father O'Shane, drawing him out.
"Yes, sir. It vexes me to think of it, much more to speak of it," said the simple youth, with a tear full created in his eye. "We, and our forefathers before us, had the farm of Lapardawn for more than three hundred years. A new landlord coming in possession of the estate, we got notice to quit, in the middle of winter. My father refused to yield the hearth of his forefathers without a struggle, and locked himself and family up. My mother was just after her confinement, and becoming short of provisions and even of water, she begged of the police who kept guard to hand her in a drink. They refused. She then begged, for God's sake, to have a messenger go for the priest. For two days, the police refused to let any body out of the house, unless we surrendered. My father, who had cut a hole in the roof of the house to catch at rain water for my dying mother, made his escape through it. A neighbor, who handed me a drink of water through a broken pane in a window, had his hand cut off by a stroke from the police sergeant's sabre. My poor mother died before the priest arrived. My oldest brother, seeing his mother dead, and that we had nothing now to guard, surrendered. We were all lodged in jail that night, and all our means were sold at auction. It was lucky for us we were put into jail; for, one week from that day, the landlord that was the cause of all our misery and of my mother's death was shot dead on the road from our farm to the town of Ennis. If we were out of jail, we would all have been accused of the cruel landlord's murder, and hanged; but we were, after one year in prison for the crime of defending our homestead, liberated, and came out in a body to America. And now I am glad of it, for two signs of tyranny I find wanting here—landlords and game laws. The absence of one allows me to trace the steps of the wild quadruped; and of the other, to trace my title to the soil which I shall possess, down to the middle of the earth and up to the sky, unfrowned on, or unawed by the landlord's tyranny or the 'peeler's' cruelty. This is partly why I like to see these mountains of snow," said he, "for I think that neither landlords nor 'peelers' could exist here. They would become buried under these snow banks, for it is by night that they are generally patrolling the highways, and plotting against the peace of innocent families; and such a storm as the late one could not but be fatal to the villains."
These and the like sentiments are those which generally pervade the bosom of the Irish emigrant after landing on this enfranchised land. Wonder not, then, you natives of this God-provided country, that the foreigner is likely to become more republican than yourselves, and that his is a keener sense of enjoyment than yours, from the evils of his antecedent life. Do not, therefore, become jealous of his purer and more ardent love for this republic, the inheritance of the oppressed; but, instead of envying his growing influence in this country of his choice and adoption, receive him with open arms, and make him a participator with yourselves in the good things which you and your fathers have enjoyed for ages, and your claims to which are grounded on no better title than that of the emigrant; and which title is founded on the adventitious discovery of this continent by a Catholic and a foreigner, and on oppressions undergone by your fathers in their native lands. Wonder not, then, that the Irish Catholic is the best lover of this country, and that he feels himself at home here; for his sufferings in the cause of liberty and of conscience have been such as to give him the strongest title deed to the liberties and privileges, if not to the enjoyments and comforts, of this favored land. Every prejudice is unreasonable, but none more irrational than that which would throw obstacles in the way of the gallant emigrant towards procuring a home and a sanctuary in this land of refuge and freedom.
The land is wild and uncultivated, with its womb groaning under the burden of plenty and fertility that have been dormant for ages upon ages, and that must remain so for ages to come, unless the thrifty hand of husbandry assist them into birth; and where are we to find, or when will the "nativists" be able to procure, as busy hands and stalwart arms, sufficiently numerous to bring into cultivation the millions of acres within the extent of our country, if the emigrant and foreigner are to be discouraged, and the mad clamor of the "nativists" is to prevail? It was not all native blood that was spilled in the establishment of the republic. It was not native genius alone that created the constitution, laws, and institutions of our country. It was not "natives," of course, that first discovered, settled, or established the several states that form the grand Union. It was by emigrants, by "furriners," that all these things were done. What, therefore, can be more ungrateful, if not more unjust, in the "nativists," than to attempt to rob the poor emigrant of the rewards of his labor and merit, in order that they may enjoy all the fruit of the latter's toil? This is the height of ingratitude and injustice; a far more glaring instance of both than that of the reputed forefathers of these "nativists" when they robbed the old Britons of their homes and of those liberties which they were hired to defend. What models of honesty, justice, and truth you are, most distinguished "nativists"! The foreigner built your house, after having first procured the site or the lot; they furnish the house with all useful, and necessary, and ornamental furniture; and these very emigrants are yet necessary to keep the house in order; and you come and threaten to turn them out, telling them you can now dispense with their services, and that they are "furriners"! And, what is more inconsistent and unjust still, by this policy of yours, if it could prevail, you would be doing the most effectual thing to annihilate yourselves, both physically, politically, morally, and socially. For, if you turned off all the "furriners," not only would you sink in wealth and resources,—your ships unmanned, your factories unworked, your canals and railroads undug, and your battles unfought,—but your very blood would corrupt, and turn into water! Your physical stature would soon be reduced to the standard of the Aztecs; and, what is worse, following the natural channel of your Anglo-Saxon instincts, you would become a godless race of Liliputians! Yes, followers of Mormon Smith, Joe Miller, Theodore Parker, and spiritual raps. O nativists, to what an abyss your mental intoxication was hurrying you, in your blind zeal against the emigrant and the foreigner!