The New York Times declared in an article last June, that there is no essential difference between the two divisions of the Irish in America and of the Irish in Ireland. The voyage across the Atlantic works no transformation in Pat, and he is still as much an Irishman after his plunge into an alien civilisation and taking out his papers as when he stood on the old sod in Meath or Tipperary. "He cares no more for the American eagle than for an owl; but a sprig of shamrock stirs him to ecstasy. The name of Washington has no meaning for his ear; but that of St. Patrick is a living and potent reality." That statement, however, must be taken with qualification. There are to-day 90,000 acres of land in Minnesota as thoroughly Irish as if they were planted in the centre of Connaught. There are Pats and Pats. Many of the most wealthy and prosperous merchants, bankers, and landowners whom we met in the West were not merely of Irish extraction, but born Irishmen, and the extraordinary spectacle of Irish millionaires who knew how to keep their money, and to add to it, too, may be seen in San Francisco and elsewhere in the West. Many, less fortunate, have high positions either in the army, or as politicians, or in the estimation of all that is great and good in America—such as Mr. O'Conor—men who have held aloof from politics, and who could not be tempted, even by the Presidentship, to enter the arena of party strife. One convicted rebel of 1840 now occupies a leading place at the American bar. I heard him denounce the Land Bill in terms he might have used in denouncing the atrocities of the Saxon in his hot days when O'Connell was king. The influence which has been acquired in many parts of the Union by the Irish immigration and by the descendants of immigrants has naturally excited at various times the opposition and indignation of the American born, and it has always been more or less opposed by the Teutons of different nationalities who occupy such a powerful position in all the great States of the West. But "the Native Party" is now either dead or sleeping. A very distinguished officer and politician said to me that he had at one time been a most eager and ardent adherent of the policy of the Native American Party, but that when he saw how earnestly and devotedly the Irish had come forward in defence of the Union, how brilliantly they had fought, and how recklessly they had sacrificed their lives, in 1861, he felt constrained to abandon his principles, and to admit their free right to all the privileges of American citizenship. I could not, however, but recollect that General Richard Taylor, in his most amusing, able, and graphic work on that same war, from the Confederate side of the question, bore the strongest testimony to the services of the Irish in the army which fought under the banner of the Slave States. In New York and in San Francisco the Irish element has exercised almost supreme control in municipal matters, and it may be said, without offence I hope, that, whether it be owing to the opposition they have encountered or to a radical deficiency which may be Irish rather than Celtic, their management has not conduced to the comfort of the cities or to the pecuniary purity of the Executive. In San Francisco there is a strong anti-Irish press and much anti-Irish feeling. The 'Argonaut' repudiates the thraldom of the Irish associations and factions in the Far West as strenuously as the 'Times' and 'Tribune' do in the East. But notwithstanding all that may be written and done, it is impossible to resist the influence of numbers under a system of suffrage so large as that which exists in the greater number of the American States. It was curious to read in a Californian paper an appeal to England to suppress Irish agitation. "We confidently believe," says the Argonaut, "that the wisdom of its public men, the healthful condition of its public opinion, and the strength of its military power will be sufficient to crush out the Land League movement, which is but incipient rebellion. That England will deal justly, firmly, and successfully with this effort of united ecclesiasticism and Communism is the earnest wish of every intelligent and independent mind that believes in free government, the guarantees of property, the rights, and the personal liberty of man." However, there are American parties, if not statesmen, whose wishes are by no means directed to such a consummation, and we must take note of the fact.
CHAPTER VIII.
SOME GENERAL REFLECTIONS.
Education—Free Schools—Influence of Money in Politics—Corruption in Public Life—Crime on the Western Borders—The Great Rebellion—Anniversaries—Great courtesy to strangers—Manners and Customs.
"Westward the course of Empire takes its way;
The four first acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day,
Time's noblest offspring is the last."
The "tar-water Bishop of Cloyne" would have been exceedingly astonished could he have seen the first line of his prophecy or averment made to do duty as a motto to Mr. Bancroft's History of the United States; but surely if the prophecy be not realised, it will be the fault of the agencies engaged in working it out—never in the history of mankind, as we know it, have such advantages been enjoyed by any nation as have been, and are, the appanage of the Americans of European origin in the New World. They have leaped into the possession of their heritage full armed, like Minerva from the brain of Jove. For them have all the champions of human rights died or conquered, and the protagonists of human struggles for liberty and light fought. For them Science has trimmed her lamp—for them martyrs have died—for them Europe and Asia have been in toil and travail for countless generations, and they have been guided across the sea to a grand continent where it would seem as if Nature had been engaged for myriads of ages to provide for their happiness and grandeur—all climes and all products are theirs—the bounteous plain, the ore-filled mountain, the treasures of the deep, the heaven-made ways by lake and river, and it would be a despair for all mankind if they misuse their glorious inheritance, and if all the nations of the world see that the pillar of fire in the west was but an ignis fatuus dancing before their aching eyes in a Serbonian bog of creeds and 'isms, of factions and faiths, all struggling towards the gate of the Temple of Mammon. "Philosophers," in all the doubts and fears which the condition of the Republic inspires at times, cling with confidence to the palladium which is, they think, to be found in the system of education based on the free schools of the States. If there were not a distinction between knowledge and morality, they would be justified; but the Evil One tempted us to eat of the fruit of the tree which brought sin into the world, and if Americans are to be trusted as authorities, the result of the largest and most liberal system of education ever devised is not as happy in practice as it ought to be according to theory.
As the central Government extended its sway over the Territories there was a uniform system, when assigning land for public objects to railway companies, of retaining for the School Fund a portion of the land in each Territory, as it was settled and admitted as such, under the control of the central Government. In the States Constitutions creating Sovereign States, there are provisions inserted, varying very little in language and not at all in spirit, which render it compulsory on the Legislature of each State to maintain public schools free to all the children of the people residing within its borders. Another principle, of universal application, provided that all schools under public control should be free from sectarian or denominational teaching, in the schools or in the books used for educational purposes. With such safeguards for the extension of education, it is depressing to find that, in certain districts at all events, crime and immorality prevail in the United States as extensively as in the benighted kingdoms of the Continent of Europe. But the most serious consideration in connection with the system of common schools in America, is the fact that serious doubts are intruding themselves respecting the success of it. In a recent official report it was stated that whereas the children who ought to go to school numbered about fourteen and a half millions, the average attendance was not more than five millions. But, assuming that all the children went to school, there are people who declare that the education given under the National system is by no means satisfactory. Mr. R. G. White affirms that the system is a failure; and high authorities assert that "any comparison between the results obtained in the public schools of New York, Cincinnati, and Boston, with those of such public grammar schools of England, as Bedford, Manchester, and the City of London, is simply ridiculous." The teachers are continually shifting, and when the teachers, as they do in this land of liberty, go away, the schools are deserted, the constant services of a staff cannot be retained unless there is very considerable increase in the rate of payment now made to the male and female teachers. None of these in any State have, I think, more than about 9l. per month. Mr. White says that "the mass of the pupils of the public schools are unable to read intelligently, to spell correctly, to write legibly, to describe the geography of their own country, or do anything that reasonably well educated children do with ease; and they cannot write a simple letter, they cannot do readily a simple sum in practical arithmetic, they cannot tell the meaning of any but the commonest of words they read and spell so ill. They can give rules glibly, they can recite from memory, they have some dry knowledge of the various ologies and osophies, they can, some of them, read a little French or German with very bad accent; but, as to all real education, they are as helpless and as barren as if they had never crossed the threshold of a schoolhouse." It is from American writers that these accusations against the common school system are to be gleaned. Some statisticians say that crime and pauperism are increasing far more rapidly than population. The charge on the State for punishing criminals and keeping paupers last year was $20,000,000, or £4,000,000; but it is too much to attribute crime and pauperism to the defects of the schools. It might with more reason be argued that the teaching of the people in the schools tends to develop the looseness and eccentricity of thought, where there is no religious teaching, which are exemplified in the uprising of extraordinary sects and strange philosophies; for America is the land of spiritualists, mesmerism, soothsaying, and mystical congregations. Mr. Hepworth Dixon may not be a perfectly unimpeachable authority on the subject of the number of spiritualists in America; but there can be no question they are to be counted by millions. It is averred that believers in spirits generally believe in "special affinities which imply a spiritual relation of the sexes higher and holier than that of marriage." It is not wonderful then that there should be also a very large number of divorces, especially in the New England States. Mr. Nutting says that "in the history of nations there has never but thrice occurred such a breaking up of the family tie as is now taking place, especially in Rhode Island and Connecticut, among the people of New England blood." Mormonism, although of American origin and early growth, has been mainly successful by the constant importation of ignorant peasants from Europe.
There is a want of reverence on the part of children towards their parents which is very striking. Americans who have admitted and deplored this have sought to account for it by the school system, wherein the State usurps the place of the parent, and teaches the young idea to mock at any authority but that of the schoolmaster. It would be lamentable to have to admit that free education is associated with the weakening of parental influence. Theoretically, there is nothing in the American system to prevent the teaching of religious and moral duties by parents at home; but it would seem as if very little of that kind of instruction was given by the busy fathers and anxious mothers of the Republic, and that when the day's work is done at school, and some time given to the preparation of the studies for the day to follow, there is no further teaching.