Mr. Lodge says that he found the work large and laborious. We can confirm that statement; for we also have taken the six volumes of Appleton’s and have gone conscientiously through the 14,000 and odd names therein recorded, to see if that otherwise valuable publication had really given the Irish race such an astonishingly poor record as Mr. Lodge’s tables show. We find that it has not. We find that Mr. Lodge and his authority differ so astoundingly, on almost every point, that his deductions are absolutely worthless because his statements are so utterly untrue.
In the matter of quantity, Appleton’s gives to the Irish race a list nearly one hundred per cent greater than Mr. Lodge professes to have found in its pages. On the score of quality, taking Mr. Lodge’s own test of merit, Appleton’s gives about 300 per cent more to the race than Mr. Lodge accords it.
Mr. Lodge classifies race by the paternal side alone, which is probably fair enough for practical purposes, and says:
“In a large number of cases, especially where the extraction is not English, the race stock is given in the dictionary. In a still larger number of instances the name and the place of birth furnish unmistakable evidence as to race. That error should be avoided in this classification is not to be expected, but I am perfectly satisfied that the race distribution is in the main correct. Such errors as exist tend, I think, here as elsewhere in these statistics, to balance one another, and the net result is, I believe, so substantially accurate as to have very real value, and to throw a great deal of light on what we owe in the way of ability to each of the various races who settled the United States.”
He counts as original settlers all who came to this country before the date of the adoption of the Constitution, A. D. 1789; those who came after that date are classified as “immigrants.” Taking the Encyclopedia as his authority, he examines the birth or race extraction of 14,243 persons therein named as having achieved sufficient distinction to deserve mention. As a result he finds that over 10,000 of the number should be credited to the “English” race.
It is not worth while to inquire into the accuracy of that estimate, since Mr. Lodge’s treatment of another race sufficiently disproves his claims to accuracy on any score.
In Tables “D” and “H,” covering respectively the original settlers and the immigrants, he gives the number of men of the Irish race who have achieved the distinction of a place in Appleton’s. Nowhere, apparently, is any allowance made either for the distinguished descendants of the original Irish settlers, distinguished or obscure themselves, nor for the distinguished children of undistinguished immigrants since 1789.
Charles Carroll of Carrollton is, we suppose, credited to the Irish of pre-Constitution days, and Thomas Addis Emmet to the “immigrant” class, but where does Mr. Lodge place the distinguished descendants of both? Where does he place the distinguished sons of obscure fathers, such men as Andrew Jackson and Robert Fulton? Certainly not among the race to which, according to Appleton, they belong, for they have no recognition in his “double star” table, to be described hereafter. Do they go to swell the ranks of the 10,000 English or those of the mixed and mythical “Scotch-Irish”?
What does he do with Philip Sheridan, who being neither an “immigrant” nor descended from pre-Constitution ancestors, is in a worse case than his namesake, Philip Nolan, being a “man without a race?” We cannot believe that Mr. Lodge ever intended committing such a palpable absurdity, because if carried to its logical conclusion, it would apply equally to distinguished men of all races. Mr. Lodge himself, for all that Appleton’s tells us to the contrary, never had a pre-Constitution ancestor, and has, therefore, no right to class himself among the 10,000 “English,” as he presumably does.
Mr. Lodge has a delightfully simple method of determining the relative values of great men. It is by noting how much of pictorial glory is awarded to each in the Encyclopedia. Persons whose biographical sketches are not illustrated with a portrait are not counted in at all.