Mr. Gargan then introduced Mr. John Mackinnon Robertson, of London, author of many striking books and pamphlets, but most widely and favorably known to members of the Society and Irish-Americans generally by his masterly work, The Saxon and the Celt. Mr. Robertson is a tall, handsome man of forty, with dark hair, moustache and beard, and a well-modulated voice, which without effort reached the furthest part of the room. He gesticulates very seldom, and uses none of the tricks of the practiced orator; but he held his audience in rapt attention throughout his whole discourse, evoking applause and laughter at frequent intervals. He is a firm believer in the ultimate and not far distant triumph of Home Rule; and his advice to the American friends of the cause had the merit of novelty at least.
Mr. Robertson’s Address.
Mr. Robertson expressed the satisfaction with which he found himself at a union of an Irish society whose purpose was the systematic and dispassionate study of a department of the history of the race. The new movement was the more hopeful, seeing that it proceeded on democratic lines. It was said that war could not be carried on by a committee. If the military gentlemen present would forgive him, he would confess that he wished it could not be done in any other way, either (laughter); but he was sure that historical research could very well be so carried on. In so far as the Nationalist movement had of late years lost headway, it could fairly be said that it was because of an imperfect application of the spirit of democracy in its ranks. A great man was at once one of the greatest boons that could befall any cause, and one of the greatest dangers, because where the great man was all in all, the powers of the lesser men were undeveloped, and their faculty of coöperation was in a measure destroyed. The Nationalist movement had been shattered somewhat as the party of Cromwell was shattered at his death; but it would find the cure which, in the old case, had not been forthcoming (applause). Every development of democratic methods would make for reconstruction.
Above all, the present movement was full of promise, because it was essentially scientific in its aim.
Dennis Harvey Sheahan, of Providence, R. I., read the following paper on “The Need of an Organization such as the American-Irish Historical Society, and its Scope”:
The history of a country is dear to the heart of the lover of that country. By the aid of historical study we learn of the origin, growth, and development of a race of people; their customs, religions, laws, governments; their accomplishments and what they have contributed to the economy of the world. The historian points out the past to the present and future. He puts aside the veil that has gathered about the dim past, opens up to the gaze of the bright present the panorama of human achievement, and blazes the way for his successor in the rosy future.
What the clergyman learns from the theological disputations of the past, the poring monk has gathered together; what the physician now acquires with comparative ease is furnished him by the knowledge garnered from the experience of his brethren from the time when man learned that pain and aches affected his being; what the lawyer gains from precedents is a guiding light which sheds its rays upon problems of jurisprudence that the legal lore of the past generations has taken from the leaves of experience; what formulæ the scientist is able to demonstrate he owes to the observations of men who, through the ages, have chronicled the phenomena of nature; the statesman is able to meet the crises of the present by being informed as to other crises in governmental affairs.
The citizen of a republic who neglects to learn the fundamental principles upon which rest the laws of the land, who does not know how the country was developed and maintained, is as a blind man, and is not able to bring to the exercise of his suffrage the amount of intelligence that the country has a right to require from him.
This obligation comes to us in a twofold capacity. We, as citizens of this great Republic, should study the history of our country from a patriotic standpoint, while as Irishmen, or descendants of that race, it should be not only a duty but a pleasure to learn of the deeds of Irishmen in America.
Therefore, an organization such as the American-Irish Historical Society, if it had no other raison d’être, would accomplish a patriotic purpose if it served only as an incentive to the study of the deeds of Irishmen in America.