The Irish Race in the Past and the Present Part 59

In this sense nationality a.s.suredly belongs to Ireland. More, perhaps, than among any other people on earth, is there for the great bulk of them "community of traditions and feeling,"

binding them together into "a firm and indestructible unity;"

and who shall say that they feel no love for their past, because that past has been clouded with sorrow? Nay, this fact makes the past dearer, and tends all the more to direct their hopes and fears to the same future; a future, indeed, still dim and uncertain, and not to be named with perfect certainty, but wrapped in mists like the morning; yet the faint flush of the dawn is already there that shall pale and die away when the full orb of the sun appears.

The reader may remember what was said of the unanimity so striking in all Irishmen, wherever they may be found; that, though private disputes may be taken up among them with such ardor that their quarrels have become proverbial, when the question refers to their country or their G.o.d, in a moment they are united, suddenly transformed into steady friends, ready to shed their blood side by side for the great objects which entirely absorb their natures.

This feeling it is which forms the soul of a nation. Wherever this is to be found, there is an indestructible nationality; wherever it is absent, there is only a dead body, however strong may seem its government, however vast its armies, however high its so-called culture and refinement.

These reflections being kept in view, judicious men will agree that, among Europeans at least, there is scarcely any other nationality so strong and vigorous as the Irish. Their traditional feeling keeps their past ever present to their eyes; their ardent nature hopes ever against hope; misfortunes which would utterly break down and dishearten any other people, leave them still full of bright antic.i.p.ations, and, as they seem to weep over the cold body of a dear mother--Erin, their country-- they think only of her resurrection.

But are there not two nations among them--two nations radically opposed to each other and incapable of coalescing? Supposing a resurrection of the people, which of the two is to prevail--the numerical majority, or the so far influential minority? In either event, it is fair to suppose a new state of helotism for the one party or the other. Is this the spectacle which the regenerated nation is likely to present?

In speaking of the resurrection of Ireland, the old, ma.s.sive, compact body of the people, the venerable race, Celtic in its aspirations and tendencies, if not altogether in its origin, has always been kept in view; and that anomalous, foreign excrescence which has so steadily refused to a.s.similate with the ma.s.s, and has until our days remained "encamped" in Ireland, as the Turks are justly said to have remained "encamped" in Europe, has never entered into our reckoning.

The true Irishman has ever been catholic--the word is used in its grammatical and not in its religious sense--in fellowship.

The race, as now const.i.tuted, is a.s.suredly of mixed origin, and large drafts of foreign population have been added from time to time to the primitive stock, which has always been kind to admit, absorb, and make them finally Celtic. Strongbow's Normans were not the last who submitted to that process; as was seen, many Cromwellians became the fathers, or grandfathers at least, of as st.u.r.dy an Irish branch as ever flourished in the strong air of the country.

But a comparatively small body of men has doggedly refused to submit to this process, and continued to this day an English or Lowland Scotch colony on the Irish soil. The future of Ireland does not take them in, for the very simple reason that they are not of her, they do not belong to her, they are as much foreigners to-day as they ever were. Therefore do we admit the existence of two nations, if people are pleased to call them so, in Ireland, but of one nation only have we written. The only question in regard to this second "nation" is: What will become of them in the future? Are they, in their turn, to become helots, after having vainly striven so long to make helots of the others? G.o.d forbid! No true Irishman nourishes in his soul such feelings of retaliation or revenge.

a.s.suredly, they will be prevented from disturbing any longer the public order, and forced at length to respect the majority, or rather, the ma.s.s of their countrymen. No one can object to having such a necessary measure imposed upon them. In the many civil discords which, for more than a century and a half, have disgraced the north of Ireland, they have almost invariably been the aggressors. The government openly taking their part for a long time, they had the whole field to themselves, and what use they made of their privilege, and how they improved their opportunity, is known to all. When, at last, the public authorities could no longer pretend to ignore their hateful spirit, and began to show some signs of protecting the hitherto much-abused majority, by forbidding those odious processions to which the others always attached such importance, they gave themselves the airs of a persecuted body of men, and pretended that henceforth their lives, and those of their wives and children, were no longer safe.

The province of Ulster being closed to them as a field of operations, they transferred to Upper Canada the exhibition of their blood-thirsty hatred, and on several occasions the Catholic population of the country had to protect their churches, musket in hand. Even in the United States they have rendered themselves odious to the people by foisting their spirit of strife on a land where they cannot but be strangers, and by staining some of the streets of New York with blood, in order to gratify their senseless animosity.

It is surely time that an end be put to such absurd and dangerous antics, not abroad only, but at home. In the new order of things now dawning upon Ireland, there can no longer be room for them; and the very name of Orangeman must disappear forever from the vocabulary of the new nation, to the joy of all peaceful and law-abiding citizens.

That is all the persecution they need expect. Not only will there be room for them still in the country of their birth, but of course they will have their due share in all the privileges of citizenship. Political distinctions between themselves and the old race will be unknown; social distinctions will be a question for themselves to settle. Should they show the slightest desire of combining with the majority of their countrymen, these latter will be generous enough to forget the past, and perhaps the others may imitate their predecessors, the Danes, the Normans, and even some of their Cromwellian kin, and become, at last, Hibernis hiberniores.

What is said of political and social distinctions will hold good also for religious tenets. Let them, if they choose, continue to stand by their Presbyterian dogmas, provided they do not quarrel with the majority for professing what they love to believe; but that belief must come to an external and public profession. They will often hear the bells of Catholic churches; as they pa.s.s outside, if they do not enter, the strains of the glorious music and n.o.ble anthems, resounding within, will fall on their ears; they will see the statue of the Blessed Virgin borne through the streets on the 15th of August, amid showers of snowy blossoms, falling from the innocent hands of children; all this they must endure, if it be so hard to endure it; but this is not persecution. Even to their eyes, if their heart be not frozen by a cold belief, the sight will bear some attractions. And if they come to think, that what is oldest in Christianity is the best, and that, after all, Catholicity has something in it which makes life sweet and pleasant, it can scarcely be held a crime in the universal Church to open her arms and receive back to her bosom those wandering and so long obstinate children.

When will all this come to pa.s.s? Who can tell? But stranger things than these have already taken place in Ireland, and we are confident that future historians of the race will have to record greater wonders still, and facts more stubborn and difficult of explanation.

At all events, should the inflexible Puritanism of the Scotch colony stand proof against the allurements of a motherly and tender-hearted Church, they must at least become subject to the iron laws of population and absorption. When the public statutes are no longer drawn up for their special benefit, when no new swarms of brethren come to swell their ranks, when they are abandoned to the merciless laws of loss and gain in numbers, then will people soon see on which side is true morality, and by which the ordinances of G.o.d are really respected; then will many vapid accusations against the holy Catholic Church of themselves disappear, and the eyes of men will open to the great fact that Ireland must be and remain one in race, feeling, and, above all, in religion. The foreign element will have dwindled to insignificance, if it shall not have utterly disappeared. Indeed, it may be safely predicted that the day will arrive when the announcement of the natural demise of the last Puritan in Ireland will appear in the daily newspapers as a curious piece of intelligence, not devoid of a certain interest.

Though moral force, as the agent of the regeneration of Ireland, has been our theme all through, we would not have our readers infer that Irishmen should adopt the do-nothing policy, and leave to G.o.d alone the work of raising them up. The moral force spoken of is that of human beings endowed with activity and determination; steady and persevering in the pursuit of well- organized plans of their own conception.

Let Irishmen lift up their eyes and behold what they might do, did they only appreciate their strength and husband it. Dire calamities, which G.o.d designed from the first to convert into blessings, have scattered them over the world, and brought out that power of expansion which was always in their nature, but lay dormant and cramped under the pressure of terrible circ.u.mstances. They again show themselves as that old race which three thousand years ago spread itself all over Europe and Asia.

They now bear in their hands an emblem which they had not then-- the cross of Christ! And the cross is the sign of universality in time and s.p.a.ce. To that sign, since the triumph of the Saviour on the day of his resurrection, is given the rule of the world till the end of time. Now that our globe is known at last, the cross must be planted all over its surface, and in this great work the Irish race is clearly destined to bear a conspicuous part.

In the fulfilment of that divine vocation they are dispersed, and whatever is dispersed is deprived of a great part of its strength. How can the disjecta membra, scattered far and wide by Typhon, become again Osiris? Under the guidance of G.o.d, by that great instrument of modern times, the power of a.s.sociation and organization, aided by a steady, energetic will.

Ezekiel has admirably described the process in his thirty- seventh chapter. The Lord must first speak: "Ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. . . . Behold, I will send spirit into you, and ye shall live; and I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to grow over you, and will cover you with skin; and I will give you spirit, and ye shall live."

All this seems to be the work of G.o.d alone, yet, in the very words of the prophet, the dry bones have their part to perform:

"As I prophesied, there was a noise, a commotion, and the bones came together, each one to his joint."

There is the whole process; it supposes a noise, a commotion, a rising, an a.s.sembling together, and a fitting each one into his own joint. They possess an activity of their own, which they must use. And the phenomenon is to take place in the midst of "a vast plain "--two great continents--over the surface of which the "bones" are found on every side, appearing "exceeding dry."

With what a power will that army be invested when it rises up and stands upon its feet! We may form some faint idea of it, when in our large cities any thing occurs to excite the interest and warm up the feeling of that apparently inert Celtic ma.s.s.

The largest halls constructed cannot contain the mult.i.tudes who have only read the announcement of a meeting, a lecture, or a charitable undertaking. Such scenes are witnessed every day along the banks of the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, and the Delaware Rivers; by the sh.o.r.es of Chesapeake Bay; in all the great centres of population dotting the Atlantic coast; in the heart of the continent along the winding course of the Mississippi and Missouri; and already, even in the far West, on the spreading sh.o.r.es of the Pacific Ocean. The same is occurring all over the inhabited portion of Australia and the adjacent islands. What power, then, would be theirs did those "bones"

know how to come together each in his own joint!

How is it that we hear of no concerted action among them for their country's sake? Is each man so busy, and lost in his own little sphere of interest and speculation, that he cannot spare a moment's thought for the claims of his native country? Who can say this? Moreover, the best means of promoting their own private interests would be to raise before the eyes of all the status of the country with which they are naturally identified.

The truth is, each one waits for another to set the example, the ma.s.s being ever ready to follow a lead and show its good-will.

a.s.sociation is needed.

When they turn their eyes to the incessant struggle going on in the mother-country, when they read in their own newspapers the discussions of the Irish press, of the questions debated on the soil most dear to them, and the agitation of the momentous interests pending and awaiting a final decision among their former countrymen, no doubt their feelings are strongly moved; the hopes and fears of their youth, before they left their native sh.o.r.es, are revived with renewed force, and their love for their green island is as ardent as ever.

But is this all? Is it enough that the heart of each one is stirred within him? Is it not for them to see that the influence of their new name, new position, and bettered circ.u.mstances, be brought to bear, however far away they may be, upon the great home questions of land-tenure, education, the elective franchise, a native Parliament, commerce, manufactures, and all matters touching on the general welfare of Ireland? If, having become adopted citizens of a new country, they can no longer act as citizens of Erin, they may and ought at least to interest them selves in these matters as far as true loyalty to their adopted country may allow them; and this they can best do by a.s.sociation.

The bonds of a wise organization would give firmness and compactness to the whole moral force of the dispersed nationality. By a.s.sociation, the scattered "dry bones" would be speedily changed into a solid array of living warriors standing upon their feet, and the startling spectacle would astonish the whole world, and win for the race the involuntary respect of all who should witness or hear of it. Nothing would be easier than to set such a thing on foot, for, although so far apart in appearance, the ma- jority of Irish families, from the very fact of emigration, have half of their members at home and half abroad, joined together by an active correspondence and a constant transmission of funds. The managers of the movement would only have to organize for a general object, what already is organized in fact, and direct to the common good what is now done privately.

A word has already been said on the possible management of such an organization: that the movement should begin at home, in the island; that its supervision should be left to the true leaders of the nation; and that all the workings, details, and executive part, may be safely intrusted to the active members of the a.s.sociation.

The cla.s.s here designated as leaders of the nation is already known to the reader. The old n.o.bility having been destroyed, there is no other body which truly represent the Irish people to-day save the clergy. This is, no doubt, a misfortune, but none the less a fact. It offers the anomaly of clergymen meddling to a certain extent in politics; but, in Ireland, this is unavoidable.

How does the whole body of the European Catholic clergy understand its position in all those Catholic congresses and unions, which are now, thank G.o.d! starting up in all Christian countries? How do the laymen, on their side, appreciate the share they have to take in those various movements? How do they act under the lead of their spiritual advisers? Are any odious distinctions ever known in those a.s.sociations? Can any misunderstanding arise among men animated with a true love for religion? And why should not the same be true of Ireland, among a people so full of love for country? This is what is meant when the terms leaders and followers, clergy and laity, are here used.

Another consideration will show still more forcibly the importance of the great measure here proposed. One circ.u.mstance must have struck those who read the detailed reports of the Catholic congresses mentioned above--the sudden appearance of a large array of laymen, ill.u.s.trious by their birth, wealth, political power, or literary attainments; but, for the most part, not so well known for their deep attachment to the cause of the Church. A new channel of activity was suddenly opened up to them; they threw themselves into it, and became the bold champions of a cause to which, undoubtedly, they had been individually attached, but of which they now became the public men. And there is little doubt that many young men, lukewarm before, and perhaps with nothing more than the remembrance of the Christian education they had once received, suddenly revived in spirit and made a solemn profession of a cause which, perhaps, they would not have had the courage openly to advocate, did not the number and names of the first originators of the movement encourage them to join in it heart and soul.

Now, it is said, perhaps too truly, that the warm religious feeling which has been all along claimed as the most striking characteristic of the Irish race, is no longer shared alike by all cla.s.ses of Irish Catholics; that, too often, when individuals among them rise in the social scale, and reach a step in the social ladder from which they imagine that they can look down upon the despised ma.s.s below, they no longer feel that deep reverence for their religion which had characterized their youth, and, after all, are not very different from the ma.s.s of non-Catholics among whom they prefer to move. This cla.s.s of men has been well described by Moore in his own person, in various pa.s.sages of his "Irish Gentleman in search of a Religion."

The fact is, indeed, too true; but what is the chief cause of it? One of the most active means of bringing about such a result we take to be the complete isolation in which young men of the cla.s.s referred to find themselves in their own sphere of life.

There is, in fact, no motive for displaying their attachment to their religion, and no respectable means of doing so. They do not feel their souls moved by sufficient proselytic ardor to induce them, of their own accord, to originate any thing of that kind, and the generality of them have, probably, not received from Nature the talents requisite to make them leaders in any cause whatever. No one around them moves in that direction; hence their apathy and consequent lukewarmness in the practice and outward profession of their faith.

But change all the surroundings; present them an influential body to which it is an honor to belong--a body marching openly under the banner of the true Church of Christ and of their country, bound together as of old--and then will it be seen whether or not they indeed are the degenerate sons of martyred ancestors they now appear to be.

It is indeed very remarkable that, of all countries, Ireland seems to make the least show in those Catholic unions and congresses now so widely spread throughout Europe. The reason for this, perhaps, is, that there seemed less cause for their existence in Ireland than elsewhere. But, as, in Ireland, their object would not only embrace the interests of religion, but likewise those of the country itself, it seems natural to think that there they are particularly wanted.

Let the leaders of the nation, then, bestir themselves. Long ages of oppression unfortunately have rendered them somewhat timid and seemingly afraid of jeopardizing the important interests confided to their care. Let them lift up their eyes and see that the time for timidity has pa.s.sed away: the enemy is reckless and open in his attacks; their resistance must be equally undisguised and fearless. The people themselves understand this and occasionally display a boldness which shows that the old heroism still lives in them; but they want leaders, and, if the right ones are not fast to take hold of them, they may fall into the hands of wrong-headed guides. Let the true guides look out and see how broad are the lines which divide the good from the evil, and that victory is sure to the stout of heart, when backed by the serried ma.s.ses of a united people.

The principle of a.s.sociation and the machinery of organization must be applied to all subjects connected with the resurrection of the country. What has been done so effectually for the cause of temperance must be done likewise for education, for the purchase or tenure of land, for the development of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, for the true representation of the nation, for free munic.i.p.al government, for the securing of a truly Irish yeomanry and gentry, for a thousand objects on which the future welfare of the nation depends. All cla.s.ses of society, persons of every age and of either s.e.x, yes, women and children, ought to be induced to take an interest in what concerns all alike. Every possible occasion should be taken advantage of to insure the attainment of the ultimate object. When such a work is really entered upon in earnest, the results will be astonishing.

This is the complete development of moral force, and, until all these means have had fair trial, no one can say that moral force has been fully tried and has failed.

Such a system would, we firmly believe, result in the ultimate restoration of Ireland's rights and would surely culminate in her final resurrection at no distant date. That the Irish would enter with spirit into those various a.s.sociations has been sufficiently demonstrated by previous examples, particularly under O'Connell; and it is impossible to see how surer, greater, and speedier results could be obtained by any amount of physical force of which Ireland is capable. What array of physical force can the Irish muster to compete at all with their powerful rivals, situated as they are with the chains of centuries still binding them down, for, though the shackles may be actually removed, their effect is still there. The very statement of the terms, Ireland versus England, is enough to show the hopelessness of such a combat. It is a very easy thing to magnify the old heroism of the Irish, and cast opprobrium on the present bearers of the name, as did several newspaper writers recently, for not displaying the "pluck" of their ancestors who fought against Elizabeth, Cromwell, and William of Orange. It is forgotten that circ.u.mstances have altered considerably since those days when the Irish possessed a regular army led by experienced generals: restore those circ.u.mstances, and the Irish of to-day might outdo their ancestors; at all events, there is no reason for supposing that they would be inferior. However, there is such a thing as impossibility, and any attempt of such a nature, with such surroundings, must be deemed by all sensible men not merely rashness, but folly.

In concluding these pages, the author begs to be allowed a word as to their general character, in reply to a dogmatic and comprehensive criticism which it is easy to foresee will be pa.s.sed on them. It will undoubtedly be a.s.serted that an undue prominence has been given to the religious side of the Irish question, while its many political aspects have been left in the background. This charge will be laid at the door of the clerical and religious character of the writer, and may give rise to the notion that the view here taken of the subject is not the right one, but a radical failure.

The answer to this objection is, in brief, that no one can treat seriously and properly of the Irish race without taking a religious view of it. Whoever adopts a different method of treating the matter would, in our opinion, go completely astray; would take in only a few side-views; would, in fact, pretend to have made a serious study of it, which he offered to the public as such, while ignoring the chief and almost only feature.

The Irish is a religious race, and nothing else. It seems that such was its character thousands of years ago, even when pagan.

At the time when Hanno was sent by the Carthaginian senate beyond the Pillars of Hercules to explore the western coast of Africa, toward the south--of which voyage the short narrative is still left us--Himilco, brother to Hanno, was similarly commissioned to form settlements on the European coast, toward the north. The account of this latter expedition, which was extant in the time of Pliny the Elder, is unfortunately lost; but, in the poem of R. Festus Avienus, ent.i.tled "Ora Maritima,"

there are copious extracts from it, in which, at least, the sense of the original is preserved. Avienus, after speaking of the "Insulae OEstrimnides," which Heeren thinks must be the Scilly Islands, goes on to say:

"Ast hinc duobus in Sacram (sic insulam Dixere prisci) solibus cursus rati est.

Haec inter undas multam caespitem jacet, Eamque late gens Hibernorum colit."

The pa.s.sage runs almost into literal English as follows: