Fifty years ago we taught the people how to read; awakened within them the native desire for knowledge, and then—stopped. When the national school was built had we established the parochial library and made it the means of continuing the child's education, we would have a different Ireland to-day.
We made the youth hungry and then stepped aside. The British publisher came and occupied the place we should have held. He has been feeding them on garbage and gutter literature since. God grant that it is not too late to undo the mischief of our neglect.
What we spend
It is estimated that we spend four hundred and forty-six thousand pounds every year on English papers, books and magazines. Almost half a million of money! How many of our honest rooftrees would not that sum keep standing? How many of our pure boys and girls would it not save from the "hells" of Chicago and New York.
It is bad enough to part with the bone and muscle, but a nation loses her most precious asset when she exports her intellect. While we have gone on helping the British publisher to the carriage and the suburban villa, the young Irishman, who feels the fire of genius throbbing in his blood, sees but two alternatives before him—to starve at home or sell his brains in a foreign market.
To-day the priest holds the field, but for how long? Recent convulsions should warn us; the ground may rock again; then let us arouse ourselves to the task before us.
Awake!
Whether the priest moves or not the library is sure to come, and what in his hands would be a centre of diffusive light to the parish, under the control of semi-educated or conscienceless men may prove a dark curse.
Let the coarse and sensuous literature of England drop from our people's hands. Let us encourage native genius to dip her pen into the old holy well of Catholic truth, and build up a literature that will be racy of the soil and redolent of its Faith. Let us feed the minds of the young on the untainted productions of our own countrymen and women. Let us brace them with robust Catholic principles that are mortised into the solid bed-rock of knowledge. Then the most powerful foe the future holds will blow the trumpet in vain.
But to the priest who slumbers, heedless of the swift march of time, and the forces of evil now possessing our land, I say— Dream on, dear gentle soul, dream on! The day may come when you will awake with a thunder-clap, perhaps to find the Irish Church in chains.