The Irish Race in the Past and the Present (2024)

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by Rev. Aug. J. Thebaud, S.J.

PREFACE

COUNT JOSEPH DE MAISTRE, in his "Principe Generateur des ConstitutionsPolitiques" (Par. LXI.), says: "All nations manifest a particularand distinctive character, which deserves to be attentively considered."

This thought of the great Catholic writer requires some development.

It is not by a succession of periods of progress and decay onlyThat nations manifest their life and individuality. Taking anyone of them at any period of its existence, and comparing it withothers, peculiarities immediately show themselves which give it aparticular physiognomy whereby it may be at once distinguishedfrom any other; so that, in those agglomerations of men which wecall nations or races, we see the variety everywhere observablein Nature, the variety by which God manifests the infinite activityof his creative power.

When we take two extreme types of the human species—the Ashanteeof Guinea, for instance, and any individual of one of the greatcivilized communities of Europe-the phenomenon of which we speakstrikes us at once. But it may be remarked also, in comparingnations which have lived for ages in contiguity, and held constantintercourse one with the other from the time they began theirnational life, whose only boundary-line has been a mountain-chainor the banks of a broad river. They have each striking peculiaritieswhich individualize and stamp them with a character of their own.

How different are the peoples divided by the Rhine or by thePyrenees! How unlike those which the Straits of Dover run between!And in Asia, what have the conterminous Chinese and Hindoos incommon beyond the general characteristics of the human specieswhich belong to all the children of Adam?

But what we must chiefly insist upon in the investigation we areNow undertaking is, that the life of each is manifested by aspecial physiognomy deeply imprinted in their whole history,which we here call character. What each of them is their historyshows; and there is no better means of judging of them than byreviewing the various events which compose their life.

For the various events which go to form what is called thehistory of a nation are its individual actions, the spontaneousenergy of its life; and, as a man shows what he is by his acts,so does a nation or a race by the facts of its history.

When we compare the vast despotisms of Asia, crystallized intoforms which have scarcely changed since the first settlement ofman in those immense plains, with the active and ever-movingsmaller groups of Europeans settled in the west of the Old Worldsince the dispersion of mankind, we see at a glance how thecharacters of both may be read in their respective annals. And,coming down gradually to less extreme cases, we recognize thesame phenomenon manifested even in contiguous tribes, springinglong ago, perhaps, from the same stock, but which have beenformed into distinct nations by distinct ancestors, although theyacknowledge a common origin. The antagonism in their character isimmediately brought out by what historians or annalists have tosay of them.

Are not the cruelty and rapacity of the old Scandinavian raceStill visible in their descendants? And the spirit of organizationdisplayed by them from the beginning in the seizure, survey, anddistribution of land—in the building of cities and castles—inthe wise speculations of an extensive commerce—may not all thesecharacteristics be read everywhere in the annals of the nationssprung from that original stock, grouped thousands of years agoaround the Baltic and the Northern Seas?

How different appear the pastoral and agricultural tribes whichhave, for the same length of time, inhabited the Swiss valleys andmountains! With a multitude of usages, differing all, more or less,from each other; with, perhaps, a wretched administration ofinternal affairs; with frequent complaints of individuals, andpartial conflicts among the rulers of those small communities—withall these defects, their simple and ever-uniform chronicles revealto us at once the simplicity and peaceful disposition of theircharacter; and, looking at them through the long ages of an obscurelife, we at once recognize the cause of their general happiness intheir constant want of ambition.

And if, in the course of centuries, the character of a nation haschanged—an event which seldom takes place, and when it does isdue always to radical causes—its history will immediately makeknown to us the cause of the change, and point out unmistakablyits origin and source.

Why is it, for instance, that the French nation, after having livedfor near a thousand years under a single dynasty, cannot now finda government agreeable to its modern aspirations? It is insufficientto ascribe the fact to the fickleness of the French temper. Duringten centuries no European nation has been more uniform and moreattached to its government. If to-day the case is altogetherreversed, the fact cannot be explained except by a radical changein the character of the nation. Firmly fixed by its own nationaldetermination of purpose and by the deep studies of the MiddleAges—nowhere more remarkable than in Paris, which was at thattime the centre of the activity of Catholic Europe—the Frenchmind, first thrown by Protestantism into the vortex of controversy,gradually declined to the consideration of mere philosophicalutopias, until, rejecting at last its long-received convictions,it abandoned itself to the ever-shifting delusions of opinions andtheories, which led finally to skepticism and unbelief in everybranch of knowledge, even the most necessary to the happiness ofany community of men. Other causes, no doubt, might also be assignedfor the remarkable change now under our consideration. The one wehave pointed out was the chief.

To the same causes, acting now on a larger scale throughout Europe,we ascribe the same radical changes which we see taking place inthe various nations composing it: every thing brought everywherein question; the mind of all unsettled; a real anarchy of intellectspreading wider and wider even in countries which until now hadstood firm against it. Hence constant revolutions unheard ofhitherto; nothing stable; and men expecting with awe a morefrightful and radical overturning still of every thing that makeslife valuable and dear.

Are not these tragic convulsions the black and spotted typeswherein we read the altered character of modern nations; are theynot the natural expression of their fitful and delirious life?

These considerations, which might be indefinitely prolonged, showthe truth of the phrase of Joseph de Maistre that "all nationsmanifest a particular and distinctive character, which deservesto be attentively considered."

The fact is, in this kind of study is contained the only possiblephilosophy of history for modern times.

With respect to ages that have passed away, to nations which haverun their full course, a nobler study is possible—the more sobecause inspired writers have traced the way. Thus Bossuet wrotehis celebrated "Discours." But he stopped wisely at the coming ofour Lord. As to the events anterior to that great epoch, he spokeoften like a prophet of ancient times; he seemed at times to beinitiated in the designs of God himself. And, in truth, he hadthem traced by the very Spirit of God; and, lifted by his elevatedmind to the level of those sublime thoughts, he had only to touchthem with the magic of his style.

But of subsequent times he did not speak, except to rehearsethe well-known facts of modern history, whose secret is not yetrevealed, because their development is still being worked out,and no conclusion has been reached which might furnish the keyto the whole.

There remains, therefore, but one thing to do: to considereach nation apart, and read its character in its history. Shouldthis be done for all, the only practical philosophy of modernhistory would be written. For then we should have accomplishedmorally for men what, in the physical order, zoologists accomplishfor the immense number of living beings which God has spreadover the surface of the earth. They might be classified accordingto a certain order of the ascending or descending moral scale.We could judge them rightly, conformably with the standard ofright or wrong, which is in the absolute possession of the Christianconscience. Brilliant but baneful qualities would no longerimpose on the credulity of mankind, and men would not be ledastray in their judgments by the rule of expediency or successwhich generally dictates to historians the estimate they form andinculcate on their readers of the worth of some nations, and theinsignificance or even odiousness of others.

In the impossibility under which we labor of penetrating, atthe present time, the real designs of Providence with respect tothe various races of men, so great an undertaking, embracing theprincipal, if not all, modern races, would be one of the mostuseful efforts of human genius for the spread of truth and virtueamong men.

Our purport is not of such vast import. We shall take inthese pages for the object of our study one of the smallest and,apparently, most insignificant nations of modern Europe—theIrish. For several ages they have lost even what generallyconstitutes the basis of nationality, self-government; yet they havepreserved their individuality as strongly marked as though theywere still ruled by the O'Neill dynasty.

And we may here remark that the number of a people and thesize of its territory have absolutely no bearing on the estimatewhich we ought to form of its character. Who would say thatthe Chinese are the most interesting and commendable nationon the surface of the globe? They are certainly the most ancientand most populous; their code of precise and formal morality isthe most exact and clear that philosophers could ever dictate,and succeed in giving as law to a great people. That codehas been followed during a long series of ages. Most discoveriesof modern European science were known to them long beforethey were found out among us; agriculture, that first of arts,which most economists consider as the great test whereby tojudge of the worth of a nation, is and always has been carried bythem to a perfection unknown to us. Yet, the smallest Europeannationality is, in truth, more interesting and instructive thanthe vast Celestial Empire can ever be—whose long annalsare all compassed within a few hundred pages of a frigidnarrative, void of life, and altogether void of soul.

But why do we select, among so many others, the Irish nation,which is so little known, of such little influence, whose historyoccupies only a few lines in the general annals of the world,and whose very ownership has rested in the hands of foreignersfor centuries?

We select it, first, because it is and always has been thoroughlyCatholic, from the day when it first embraced Christianity;and this, under the circ*mstances, we take to be the best proof,not only of supreme good sense, but, moreover, of an elevated,even a sublime character. In their martyrdom of three centuries,the Irish have displayed the greatness of soul of a Polycarp,and the simplicity of an Agnes. And the Catholicity whichthey have always professed has been, from the beginning, of athorough and uncompromising character. All modern Europeannations, it is true, have had their birth in the bosom of theChurch. She had nursed them all, educated them all, madethem all what they were, when they began to think of emancipatingthemselves from her; and the Catholic, that is, the Christianreligion, in its essence, is supernatural; the creed of theapostles, the sacramental system; the very history of Christianity,transport man directly into a region far beyond the earth.

Wherever the Christian religion has been preached, nationshave awakened to this new sense of faith in the supernatural,and it is there they have tasted of that strong food which madeand which makes them still so superior to all other races of men.But, as we shall see, in no country has this been the case sothoroughly as in Ireland. Whatever may have been the cause, theIrish were at once, and have ever since continued, thoroughlyimpregnated with supernatural ideas. For several centuries afterSt. Patrick the island was "the Isle of Saints," a place midwaybetween heaven and earth, where angels and the saints of heavencame to dwell with mere mortals. The Christian belief wasadopted by them to the letter; and, if Christianity is truth,ought it not to be so? Such a nation, then, which received sucha thorough Christian education—an education never repudiatedone iota during the ages following its reception—deserves athorough examination at our hands.

We select it, secondly, because the Irish have successfullyrefused ever since to enter into the various currents of Europeanopinion, although, by position and still more by religion, theyformed a part of Europe. They have thus retained a character oftheir own, unlike that of any other nation. To this day, theystand firm in their admirable stubbornness; and thus, when Europeshall be shaken and tottering, they will still stand firm. Inthe words of Moore, addressed to his own country:

"The nations have fallen and thou still art young;
Thy sun is just rising when others are set;
And though slavery's cloud o'er thy morning hath hung,
The full noon of freedom shall beam round thee yet."

That constant refusal of the Irish to fall in with the rapid torrentof European thought and progress, as it is called, is the strangestphenomenon in their history, and gives them at first an outlandishlook, which many have not hesitated to call barbarism. We hopethoroughly to vindicate their character from such a foul aspersion,and to show this phenomenon as the secret cause of their finalsuccess, which is now all but secured; and this feature alone oftheir national life adds to their character an interest which wefind in no other Christian nation.

We select it, thirdly, because there is no doubt that the Irishis the most ancient nationality of Western Europe; and although,as in the case of the Chinese, the advantage of going up to thevery cradle of mankind is not sufficient to impart interest tofrigid annals, when that prerogative is united to a vivid lifeand an exuberant individuality, nothing contributes more to rendera nation worthy of study than hoariness of age, and its derivationfrom a certain and definite primitive stock.

It is true that, in reading the first chapters of all the varioushistories of Ireland, the foreign reader is struck and almostshocked by the dogmatism of the writers, who invariably, and witha truly Irish assurance, begin with one of the sons of Japhet, and,following the Hebrew or Septuagint chronology, describe withoutflinching the various colonizations of Erin, not omitting thesynchronism of Assyrian, Persian, Greek, and Roman history. Asmile is at first the natural consequence of such assertions; and,indeed, there is no obligation whatever to believe that every thinghappened exactly as they relate.

But when the large quartos and octavos which are now published fromtime to time by the students of Irish antiquarian lore are opened,read, and pondered over, at least one consequence is drawn fromthem which strikes the reader with astonishment. "There can be nodoubt," every candid mind says to itself, "that this nation haspreceded in time all those which have flourished on the earth, withthe exception, perhaps, of the Chinese, and that it remains the sameto-day." At least, many years before Christ, a race of men inhabitedIreland exactly identical with its present population (except thatit did not enjoy the light of the true religion), yet very superiorto it in point of material well-being. Not a race of cannibals, asthe credulous Diodorus Siculus, on the strength of some vaguetradition, was pleased to delineate; but a people acquainted withthe use of the precious metals, with the manufacture of fine tissues,fond of music and of song, enjoying its literature and its books;often disturbed, it is true, by feuds and contentions, but, on thewhole, living happily under the patriarchal rule of the clan system.

The ruins which are now explored, the relics of antiquity whichare often exhumed, the very implements and utensils preserved bythe careful hand of the antiquarian—every thing, so differentfrom the rude flint arrows and barbarous weapons of our NorthAmerican Indians and of the European savages of the Stone period,denotes a state of civilization, astonishing indeed, when we reflectthat real objects of art embellished the dwellings of Irishmenprobably before the foundation of Rome, and perhaps when Greecewas as yet in a state of heroic barbarism.

And this high antiquity is proved by literature as well as by art."The ancient Irish," says one of their latest historians, M.Haverty, "attributed the utmost importance to the accuracy of theirHistoric compositions for social reasons. Their whole system ofsociety—every question as to right of property—turned upon thedescent of families and the principle of clanship; so that it cannotbe supposed that mere fables would be tolerated instead of facts,where every social claim was to be decided on their authority. Aman's name is scarcely mentioned in our annals without the additionof his forefathers for several generations—a thing which rarelyoccurs in those of other countries.

"Again, when we arrive at the era of Christianity in Ireland, wefind that our ancient annals stand the test of verification byscience with a success which not only establishes their characterfor truthfulness at that period, but vindicates the records ofpreceding dates involved in it."

The most confirmed skeptic cannot refuse to believe that at theintroduction of Christianity into Ireland, in 432, the whole islandwas governed by institutions exactly similar to those of Gaul whenJulius Caesar entered it 400 years before; that this state musthave existed for a long time anterior to that date; and that thereception of the new religion, with all the circ*mstances whichattended it, introduced the nation at once into a happy and socialstate, which other European countries, at that time convulsed bybarbarian invasions, did not attain till several centuries later.

These various considerations would alone suffice to show the realimportance of the study we undertake; but a much more powerfulincentive to it exists in the very nature of the annals of thenation itself.

Ireland is a country which, during the last thousand years, hasmaintained a constant struggle against three powerful enemies,and has finally conquered them all.

The first stage of the conflict was that against the Northmen.It lasted three centuries, and ended in the almost completedisappearance of this foe.

The second act of the great drama occupied a period of four Hundredyears, during which all the resources of the Irish clans were arrayedagainst Anglo-Norman feudalism, which had finally to succumb; sothat Erin remained the only spot in Europe where feudal institutionsnever prevailed.

The last part of this fearful trilogy was a conflict of three centurieswith Protestantism; and the final victory is no longer doubtful.

Can any other modern people offer to the meditation, and, we mustsay, to the admiration of the Christian reader, a more interestingspectacle? The only European nation which can almost compete withthe constancy and never-dying energy of Ireland is the Spanish inits struggle of seven centuries with the Moors.

We have thought, therefore, that there might be some real interestand profit to be derived from the study of this eventful nationallife—an interest and a profit which will appear as we study itmore in detail.

It may be said that the threefold conflict which we have outlinedmight be condensed into the surprising fact that all efforts todrag Ireland into the current of European affairs and influencehave invariably failed. This is the key to the understanding ofher whole history.

Even originally, when it formed but a small portion of the greatCeltic race, here existed in the Irish branch a peculiarity of itsown, which stamped it with features easy to be distinguished. Thegross idolatry of the Gauls never prevailed among the Irish; theBardic system was more fully developed among them than among anyother Celtic nation. Song, festivity, humor, ruled there much moreuniversally than elsewhere. There were among them more harpers andpoets than even genealogists and antiquarians, although the branchesof study represented by these last were certainly as well cultivatedamong them as among the Celts of Gaul, Spain, or Italy.

But it is chiefly after the introduction of Christianity amongthem, when it appeared finally decreed that they should belongmorally and socially to Europe, it is chiefly then that theirpurpose, however unconscious they may have been of its tendency,seems more defined of opening up for themselves a path of theirown. And in this they followed only the promptings of Nature.

The only people in Europe which remained untouched by what iscalled Roman civilization—never having seen a Roman soldier ontheir shores; never having been blessed by the construction ofRoman baths and amphitheatres; never having listened to thedeclamations of Roman rhetoricians and sophists, nor received thedecrees of Roman praetors, nor been subject to the exactions ofthe Roman fisc—they never saw among them, in halls and basilicaserected under the direction of Roman architects, Roman judges,governors, proconsuls, enforcing the decrees of the Caesarsagainst the introduction or propagation of the Christian religion.Hence it entered in to them without opposition and bloodshed.

But the new religion, far from depriving them of their characteristics,consecrated and made them lasting. They had their primitive traditionsand tastes, their patriarchal government and manners, their ideas oftrue freedom and honor, reaching back almost to the cradle of mankind.They resolved to hold these against all comers, and they have beenfaithful to their resolve down to our own times. Fourteen hundred yearsof history since Patrick preached to them proves it clearly enough.

First, then, although the Germanic tribes of the first invasion,as it is called, did not reach their shore, for the reason thatthe Germans, as little as the Celts, never possessed a navy—althoughneither Frank, nor Vandal, nor Hun, renewed among them the horrorswitnessed in Gaul, Spain, Italy, and Africa—they could not remainsafe from the Scandinavian pirates, whose vessels scoured all thenorthern seas before they could enter the Mediterranean throughthe Straits of Gibraltar.

The Northmen, the Danes, came and tried to establish themselvesamong them and inculcate their northern manners, system, andmunicipal life. They succeeded in England, Holland, the north ofFrance, and the south of Italy; in a word, wherever the wind haddriven their hide-bound boats. The Irish was the only nation ofWestern Europe which beat them back, and refused to receive theboon of their higher civilization.

As soon as the glories of the reign of Charlemagne had gone downin a sunset of splendor, the Northmen entered unopposed all thegreat rivers of France and Spain. They speedily conquered England.On all sides they ravaged the country and destroyed the population,whose only defence consisted in prayers to Heaven, with here andthere an heroic bishop or count. In Ireland alone the Danes foundto their cost that the Irish spear was thrust with a steady andfirm hand; and after two hundred years of struggle not only hadthey not arrived at the survey and division of the soil, as whereverelse they had set foot, but, after Clontarf, the few cities theystill occupied were compelled to pay tribute to the Irish Ard-Righ.Hence all attempts to substitute the Scandinavian social systemfor that of the Irish septs and clans were forever frustrated.City life and maritime enterprises, together with commerce and trade,were as scornfully rejected as the worship of Thor and Odin.

Soon after this first victory of Ireland over Northern Europe, theAnglo-Norman invasion originated a second struggle of longerduration and mightier import. The English Strongbow replaced theDanes with Norman freebooters, who occupied the precise spotswhich the new owners had reconquered from the Northmen, and neveran inch more. Then a great spectacle was offered to the world,which has too much escaped the observation of historians, andto which we intend to draw the attention of our readers.

The primitive, simple, patriarchal system of clanship wasConfronted by the stern, young, ferocious feudal system, whichwas then beginning to prevail all over Europe. The question was,Would Ireland consent to become European as Europe was thenorganizing herself? The struggle, as we shall see, between theIrish and the English in the twelfth century and later on, wasmerely a contest between the sept system and feudalism, involving,it is true, the possession of land. And, at the end of a contestlasting four hundred years, feudalism was so thoroughly defeatedthat the English of the Pale adopted the Irish manners, customs,and even language, and formed only new septs among the old ones.

Hence Ireland escaped all the commotions produced in Europe bythe consequences of the feudal system:

I. Serfdom, which was generally substituted for slavery, neverexisted in Ireland, slavery having disappeared before the entryof the Anglo-Normans.

II. The universal oppression of the lower classes, which causedthe simultaneous rising of the communes all over Europe, neverhaving existed in Ireland, we shall not be surprised to find nomention in Irish history of that wide-spread institution of theeleventh and following centuries.

III. An immense advantage which Ireland derived from her isolation,on which she always insisted, was her being altogether freed fromthe fearful mediaeval heresies which convulsed France particularlyfor a long period, and which invariably came from the East.

For Erin remained so completely shut off from the rest of Europe,that, in spite of its ardent Catholicism, the Crusades were neverpreached to its inhabitants; and, if some individual Irishmanjoined the ranks of the warriors led to Palestine by Richard Coeurde Lion, the nation was in no way affected by the good or badresults which everywhere ensued from the marching of the Christianarmies against the Moslem.

The sects which sprang from Manicheism were certainly an evilconsequence of the holy wars; and it would be a great error tothink that those heresies were short-lived and affected only fora brief space of time the social and moral state of Europe. It maybe said that their fearfully disorganizing influence lasts to thisday. If modern secret societies do not, in point of fact, derivetheir existence directly from the Bulgarism and Manicheism of theMiddle Ages, there is no doubt that those dark errors, which Imposedon all their adepts a stern secrecy, paved the way for the conspiraciesof our times. Hence Ireland, not having felt the effect of the formerheresies, is in our days almost free from the universal contagion nowdecomposing the social fabric on all sides.

But it is chiefly in modern times that the successful resistanceoffered by Ireland to many wide-spread European evils, and itsstrong attachment to its old customs, will evoke our wonder.

Clanship reigned still over more than four-fifths of the islandwhen the Portuguese were conquering a great part of India, andthe Spaniards making Central and South America a province oftheir almost universal monarchy.

The poets, harpers, antiquarians, genealogists, and students ofBrehon law, still held full sway over almost the whole island,when the revival of pagan learning was, we may say, convulsingItaly, giving a new direction to the ideas of Germany, andpenetrating France, Holland, and Switzerland. Happy were theIrish to escape that brilliant but fatal invasion of mythologyand Grecian art and literature! Had they not received enough ofGreek and Latin lore at the hands of their first apostles andmissionaries, and through the instrumentality of the numerousamanuenses and miniaturists in their monasteries and convents?Those holy men had brought them what Christian Rome had purifiedof the old pagan dross, and sanctified by the new Divine Spirit.

Virgin Ireland having thus remained undefiled, and never havingeven been agitated by all those earlier causes of succeedingrevolutions, Protestantism, the final explosion of them all, couldmake no impression on her—a fact which remains to this day thebrightest proof of her strength and vigor.

But, before speaking of this last conflict, we must meet an objectionwhich will naturally present itself.

To steadily refuse to enter into the current of European thought,and object to submit in any way to its influence, is, pretend many,really to reject the claims of civilization, and persist in refusingto enter upon the path of progress. The North American savage hasalways been most persistent in this stubborn opposition to civilizedlife, and no one has as yet considered this a praiseworthy attribute.The more barbarous a tribe, the more firmly it adheres to itstraditions, the more pertinaciously it follows the customs of itsancestors. They are immovable, and cannot be brought to adoptusages new to them, even when they see the immense advantagesthey would reap from their adoption. Hence the greater number ofwriters, chiefly English, who have treated of Irish affairs,unhesitatingly call them barbarians, precisely on account of theirstubbornness in rejecting the advances of the Anglo-Norman invaders.Sir John Davies, the attorney-general of James I., could scarcelywrite a page on the subject without reverting to this idea.

We answer that the Irish, even before their conversion toChristianity, but chiefly after, were not barbarians; they neveropposed true progress; and they became, in fact, in the sixth,seventh, and eighth centuries, the moral and scientific educatorsof the greater part of Europe. What they refused to adopt theywere right in rejecting. But, as there are still many men who,without ever having studied the question, do not hesitate, evenin our days, to throw barbarism in their teeth, and attribute toit the pitiable condition which the Irish to-day present to theworld, we add a few further considerations on this point.

First, then, we say, barbarians have no history; and the Irishcertainly had a history long before St. Patrick converted them.Until lately, it is true, the common opinion of writers on Irelandwas adverse to this assertion of ours; but, after the labors ofmodern antiquarians—of such men as O'Donovan, Todd, E. O'Curry,and others—there can no longer be any doubt on the subject. IfJulius Caesar was right in stating that the Druids of Gaulconfined themselves to oral teaching—and the statement may verywell be questioned, with the light of present information on thesubject—it is now proved that the Ollamhs of Erin kept writtenannals which went back to a very remote age of the world. Thenumerous histories and chronicles written by monks of the sixthand following centuries, the authenticity of which cannot be denied,evidently presuppose anterior compositions dating much farther backthan the introduction of our holy religion into Ireland, which theChristian annalists had in their hands when they wrote their books,sometimes in Latin, sometimes in old Irish, sometimes in a strangemedley of both languages. It is now known that St. Patrick broughtto Ireland the Roman alphabet only, and that it was thenceforthused not merely for the ritual of the Church, and the disseminationof the Bible and of the works of the Holy Fathers, but likewisefor the transcription, in these newly-consecrated symbols of thought,of the old manuscripts of the island; which soon disappeared, inthe far greater number of instances at least, owing to the favorin which the Roman characters were held by the people and theirinstructors the bishops and monks. Let those precious old symbolsbe called Ogham, or by any other name—there must have been somethingof the kind.

If any one insists that such was not the case, he must of necessityadmit that the oral teaching of the Ollamhs was so perfect and souniversally current in the same formulas all over the island, thatsuch oral teaching really took the place of writing; and in thiscase, also, which is scarcely possible, however, Ireland had anauthentic history. This last supposition, certainly, can hardlybe credited; and yet, if the first be rejected, it must be admitted,since it cannot be imagined that subsequent Irish historians,numerous as they became in time, could have agreed so welltogether, and remained so consistent with themselves, and soperfectly accurate in their descriptions of places and things ingeneral, without anterior authentic documents of some kind or other,on which they could rely. Any person who has merely glanced atthe astonishing production called the "Annals of the Four Masters,"must necessarily be of this opinion.

In no nation in the world are there found so many old histories,annals, chronicles, etc., as among the Irish; and that fact alonesuffices to prove that in periods most ancient they were truly acivilized nation, since they attached such importance to therecords of events then taking place among them.

But the Irish were, moreover, a branch of the great Celtic race,whose renown for wisdom, science, and valor, was spread throughall parts, particularly among the Greeks. The few details wepurpose giving on the subject will convince the reader that amongthe nations of antiquity they held a prominent position; and notonly were they possessed of a civilization of their own, notdespicable even in the eyes of a Roman—of the great Juliushimself—but they were ever most susceptible of every kind ofprogress, and consequently eager to adopt all the social benefitswhich their intercourse with Rome brought them. At least, theydid so as soon as, acknowledging the superior power of the enemy,they had the good sense to feel that it was all-important toimitate him. Hence sprang that Gallo-Roman civilization whichobtained during the first five or six centuries of the Christianera—a civilization which the barbarians of the North endeavoredto destroy, but to which they themselves finally yielded, byembracing Christianity, and gradually changing their languageand customs.

Everywhere—in Gaul, Italy, Britain, and Ireland—did the Celtsmanifest that susceptibility to progress which is the invariablemark of a state antagonistic to barbarism. In this they totallydiffered from the Vandals and Huns, whom it took the Church sucha dreary period to conquer, and whom no other power save thereligion of Christ could have subdued.

These few words are sufficient for our present purpose. We proceedto show that, in their stubborn opposition to many a current ofEuropean opinion, they acted rightly.

They acted rightly, first of all, in excluding from their courseof studies at Bangor, Clonfert, Armagh, Clonmacnoise, and otherplaces, the subtleties of Greek philosophy, which occasionedheresies in Europe and Asia during the first ages of the Church,and were the cause of so many social and political convulsions.By adhering strictly—-a little too strictly, perhaps—to theirtraditional method of developing thought, they kept error far fromtheir universities, and presented, in the sixth, seventh, and eighthcenturies, the remarkable spectacle in Ireland, France, Germany,Switzerland, and even Northern Italy, of numerous schools whereinno wrangling found a place, and whence never issued a singleproposition which Rome found reason to censure. They were at thattime the educators of Christian Europe, and not even a breath ofsuspicion was ever raised against any one of their innumerableteachers. If their mind, in general, did not on that accountattain the acuteness of the French, Italians, or Germans, it wasat all times safer and more guarded. Even their later hostilityto the English Pale, after the eleventh century, was most useful,from its warning against the teachings of prelates sent from theEnglish Universities of Oxford and Cambridge; and Rome seems tohave approved of that opposition, by using all her power inappointing to Irish sees, even within the Pale, prelates chosenfrom the Augustinian, Dominican, Franciscan, and Carmelite orders,in preference to secular ecclesiastics educated in the great seatsof English learning.

Thus the Irish, by opening their schools gratuitously to all Europe,but chiefly to Anglo-Saxon England, were not only of immense serviceto the Church, but showed how fully they appreciated the benefitsof true civilization, and how ready they were to extend it by theirtraditional teaching. Nor did they confine themselves to receivingscholars in their midst: they sent abroad, during those ages, armiesof zealous missionaries and learned men to Christianize the heathen,or educate the newly-converted Germanic tribes in Merovingian andCarlovingian Gaul, in Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian England, inLombardian Italy, in the very hives of those ferocious tribeswhich peopled the ever-moving and at that time convulsed Germany.

II. They were right in refusing to submit to the Scandinavian yoke,and accept from those who would impose it their taste for city life,and the spirit of maritime enterprise and extensive commerce. Weshall see that this was at the bottom of their two centuries ofstruggle with the Danes; that they were animated throughout thatconflict by their ardent zeal for the Christian religion, whichthe Northmen came to destroy. There is no need of dwelling on thispoint, as we are not aware that any one, even their bitterestenemies, has found fault with them here.

III. They were right in opposing feudalism, and steadily refusingto admit it on their soil. Feudal Europe beheld with surprise theinhabitants of a small island on the verge of the Western Continentlevel to the ground the feudal castles as soon as they were built;reject with scorn the invaders' claim to their soil, after theyhad signed papers which they could not understand; hold fast totheir patriarchal usages in opposition to the new-born Europeannotions of paramount kings, of dukes, earls, counts, and viscounts;fight for four hundred years against what the whole of Europe hadeverywhere else accepted, and conquer in the end; so that the Irishof to-day can say with just pride, "Our island has never submittedto mediaeval feudalism."

And hence the island has escaped the modern results of the system,which we all witness to-day in the terrible hostility of classarrayed against class, the poor against the rich, the lower ordersagainst the higher. The opposition in Ireland between the oppressedand the oppressor is of a very different character, is we shall seelater. But the fact is, that the clan system, with all its strikingdefects, had at least this immense advantage, that the clansmen didnot look upon their chieftains as "lords and masters," but as menof the same blood, true relations, and friends; neither did theheads of the clans look on their men as villeins, serfs, or chattels,but as companions-in-arms, foster-brothers, supporters, and allies.Hence the opposition which exists in our days throughout Europebetween class and class, has never existed in Ireland. Let a sonof their old chiefs, if one can yet be found, go back to them,even but for a few days, after centuries of estrangement, andthey are ready to welcome him yet, as a loyal nation would welcomeher long-absent king, as a family would receive a father it esteemedlost. We knowing what manner a son of a French McMahon was latelyreceived among them.

All hostility is reserved for the foreigner, the invader, theoppressor of centuries, because, in the opinion of the natives,these have no real right to dwell on a soil they have impoverished,and which they tried in vain to enslave. This, at least, is theirfeeling. But the sons of the soil, whether rich or poor, high orlow, are all united in a holy brotherhood. This state of thingsthey have preserved by the exclusion of feudalism.

IV. The Irish were right in not accepting from Europe what isknown as the "revival of learning;" at least, as carried almostto the excess of modern paganism by its first promoters.

This "revival" did not reach Ireland. Many will, doubtless,attribute this fact to the almost total exclusion then supposedto exist of Ireland from all European intercourse. It would bea great error to imagine such to have been the cause. Indeed, atthat very time, Ireland was more in daily contact with Italy,France, and Spain, than had been the case since the eighth century.

If the Irish were right in holding steadfast to the line of theirtraditional studies, in rejecting the city life and commercialspirit of the Danes, in opposing Anglo-Norman feudalism, and,finally, in not accepting the more than doubtful advantages flowingfrom the literary revival of the fifteenth century; if, in allthis, they did not oppose true progress, but merely wished toadvance in the peculiar path opened up to them by the Christianitywhich they had received more fully, with more earnestness, andwith a view to a greater development of the supernatural idea,than any other European nation—then, beyond all other modes, didthey display their strength of will and their undying nationalvitality in their resistance to Protestantism—a resistance whichhas been called opposition to progress, but the success of whichto-day proves beyond question that they were right.

It was, the reader may remark, a resistance to the whole ofNorthern Europe, wherein their island was included. For, thewhole of Northern Europe rebelled against the Church at thebeginning of the sixteenth century, to enter upon a new road ofprogress and civilization, as it has been called, ending finallyin the frightful abyss of materialism and atheism which now gapesunder the feet of modern nations—an abyss in whose yawning wombnullus ordo, sed sempiternus horror habitat. The end of thatprogress is now plain enough: political and social convulsions,without any other probable issue than final anarchy, unless nationsconsent at last to retrace their steps and reorganize Christendom.

But this was not apparent to the eyes of ordinary thinkers in thesixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Only a few great minds sawthe logical consequences of the premises laid down by Protestantism,and predicted something of what we now see.

The Irish was the only northern nation which, to a man, opposedthe terrible delusion, and, at the cost of all that is dear, wagedagainst it a relentless war.

"To a man;" for, in spite of all the wiles of Henry VIII., whobrought every resource of his political talent into play, in orderto win over to his side the great chieftains of the nation—inspite of all the efforts of Elizabeth, who either tried to overcometheir resistance by her numerous armies, or, by the allurementsof her court, strove her best, like her father, to woo to herallegiance the great leaders of the chief clans, particularly O'Neillof Tyrone—at the end of her long reign, after nearly a hundredyears of Protestantism, only sixty Irishmen of all classes hadreceived the new religion.

At first, the struggle assumed a character more political thanreligious, and Queen Elizabeth did her best to give it, apparently,that character. But for her, religion meant politics; and, had theIrish consented to accept the religious changes introduced by herfather and herself, there would have been no question of"rebellion," and no army would have been sent to crush it. TheIrish chieftains knew this well; hence, whenever the queen cameto terms with them, the first article on which they invariablyinsisted was the freedom of their religion.

But, under the Stuarts, and later on, the mask was entirely thrownaside, and the question between England and Ireland reduced itself,we may say, to one of religion merely. All the politicalentanglements in which the Irish found themselves involved by theirloyalty to the Stuarts and their opposition to the Roundheads, neverconstituted the chief difficulty of their position. They were"Papists:" this was their great crime in the eyes of their enemies.Cromwell would certainly never have endeavored to exterminate themas he did, had they apostatized and become ranting Puritans. One ofour main points in the following pages will be to give prominence tothis view of the question. If it had been understood from the first,the army of heroes who died for their God and their country wouldlong ere this have been enrolled in the number of Christian martyrs.

The subsequent policy of England, chiefly after the EnglishRevolution of 1688 and the defeat of James II., clearly shows thesoundness of our interpretation of history. The "penal code," underQueen Anne, and later on, at least has the merit of being free fromhypocrisy and cant. It is an open religious persecution, as, infact, it had been from the beginning.

We shall have, therefore, before our eyes the great spectacle ofa nation suffering a martyrdom of three centuries. All thepersecutions of the Christians under the Roman emperors palebefore this long era of penalty and blood. The Irish, by numerousdecrees of English kings and parliaments, were deprived of everything which a man not guilty of crime has a right to enjoy. Land,citizenship, the right of education, of acquiring property, ofliving on their own soil—every thing was denied them, and deathin every form was decreed, in every line of the new Protestantcode, to men, women, and even children, whose only crime consistedin remaining faithful to their religion.

But chiefly during the Cromwellian war and the nine years of theProtector's reign were they doomed to absolute, unrelentingdestruction. Never has any thing in the whole history of mankindequalled it in horror, unless the devastation of Asia and EasternEurope under Zengis and Timour.

There is, therefore, at the bottom of the Irish character, hiddenunder an appearance of light-headedness, mutability of feeling—nay,at times, futility and even childishness—a depth of according tothe eternal laws which God gave to mankind. Nothing else is intheir mind; they are pursuing no guilty and shadowy Utopia. Whoknows, then, whether their small island may not yet become thebeacon-light which, guiding other nations, shall at a future daysave Europe from the universal shipwreck which threatens her?The providential mission of Ireland is far from being accomplished,and men may yet see that not in vain has she been tried so long inthe crucible of affliction.

Another part of the providential plan as affecting her will showitself, and excite our admiration, in the latter portion of thework we undertake.

The Irish are no longer confined to the small island which gavethem birth. From the beginning of their great woes, they haveknown the bitterness of exile. Their nobility were the first toleave in a body a land wherein they could no longer exist; and,during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they made theIrish name illustrious on all the battle-fields of Europe. At thesame time, many of their priests and monks, unable longer to laboramong their countrymen, spent their lives in the libraries, ofItaly, Belgium, and Spain, and gave to the world those immenseworks so precious now to the antiquarian and historian. Every oneknows what Montalembert, in particular, found in them. They may besaid to have preserved the annals of their nation from total ruin;and the names of the O'Clearys, of Ward and Wadding, of Colgan andLynch, are becoming better known and appreciated every day, astheir voluminous works are more studied and better understood.

But much more remarkable still is the immense spread of the peopleitself during the present age, so fruitful in happy results forthe Church of Christ and the good of mankind. We may say that thelabors of the Irish missionaries during the seventh and eighthcenturies are to-day eclipsed by the truly missionary work of awhole nation spread now over North America, the West India Islands,the East Indies, and the wilds of Australia; in a word, whereverthe English language is spoken. Whatever may have been the visiblecauses of that strange "exodus," there is an invisible cause clearenough to any one who meditates on the designs of God over hisChurch. There is no presumption in attributing to God himself whatcould only come from Him. The catholicity of the Church was to bespread and preserved through and in all those vast regions colonizednow by the adventurous English nation; and no better, no moresimple way of effecting this could be conceived than the one whoseworkings we see in those colonies so distant from the mother-country.

This, for the time being, is the chief providential mission ofIreland, and it is truly a noble one, undertaken and executed ina noble manner by so many thousands, nay millions, of men andwomen—poor, indeed, in worldly goods when they start on theircareer, but rich in faith; and it is as true now as it has everbeen from the beginning of Christianity, that haec est victorianostra, fides vestra.

These few words of our Preface would not suffice to prepare thereader for the high importance of this stupendous phenomenon. WeWe purpose, therefore, devoting our second chapter to the subject,as a preparation for the very interesting details we shall furnishsubsequently, as it is proper that, from the very threshold, anidea may be formed of the edifice, and of the entire proportionsit is destined to assume.

We have so far sketched, as briefly as possible, what the followingpages will develop; and the reader may now begin to understandwhat we said at starting, that no other nation in Europe offers sointeresting an object of study and reflection.

Plato has said that the most meritorious spectacle in the eyes ofGod was that of "a just man struggling with adversity." What mustit be when a whole nation, during nine long ages, offers to Heaventhe most sublime virtues in the midst of the extremest trials? Arenot the great lessons which such a contest presents worthy of studyand admiration?

We purpose studying them, although we cannot pretend to renderfull justice to such a theme. And, returning for a moment to theconsiderations with which we started, we can truly say that, inthe whole range of modern history, it would be difficult, if notimpossible, to find a national life to compare with that of poor,despised Ireland. Neither do we pretend to write the history itself;our object is more humble: we merely pen some considerationssuggested naturally by the facts which we suppose to be alreadyknown, with the purpose of arriving at a true appreciation of thecharacter of the people. For it is the people itself we study;the reader will meet with comparatively few individual names.

We shall find, moreover, that the nation has never varied. Itshistory is an unbroken series of the same heroic facts, the sameterrible misfortunes. The actors change continually; the outwardcirc*mstances at every moment present new aspects, so that theinterest never flags; but the spirit of the struggle is ever thesame, and the latest descendants of the first O'Neills andO'Donnells burn with the same sacred fire, and are inspired bythe same heroic aspirations, as their fathers.

Happily, the gloom is at length lighted up by returning day. Thecontest has lost its ferocity, and we are no longer surroundedby the deadly shade which obscured the sky a hundred years ago.Then it was hard to believe that the nation could ever rise; herfinal success seemed almost an impossibility. We now see thatthose who then despaired sinned against Providence, which waitedfor its own time to arrive and vindicate its ways. And it ischiefly on account of the bright hope which begins to dawn thatour subject should possess for all a lively interest, and fill theCatholic heart with glowing sympathy and ardent thankfulness to God.

I The Celtic Race

II The World Under The Lead Of European Races.—Mission Of The
Irish Race In The Movement

III The Irish Better Prepared To Receive Christianity Than Other Nations

IV How the Irish received Christianity

V The Christian Irish and the Pagan Danes

VI The Irish Free-Clans and Anglo-Norman Feudalism

VII Ireland separated from Europe.—A Triple Episode

VIII The Irish and the Tudors.—Henry VIII.

IX The Irish and the Tudors.—Elizabeth.—The Undaunted Nobility.—The
Suffering Church

X England prepared for the Reception of Protestantism—Ireland not

XI The Irish and the Stuarts.—Loyalty and Confiscation

XII A Century of Gloom.—The Penal Laws

XIII Resurrection.—Delusive Hopes

XIV Resurrection.—Emigration

XV The "Exodus" and its Effects

XVI Moral Force all-sufficient for the Resurrection of Ireland

CHAPTER I

The Celtic Race.

Nations which preserve, as it were, a perpetual youth, should bestudied from their origin. Never having totally changed, some oftheir present features may be recognized at the very cradle oftheir existence, and the strangeness of the fact sets out in bolderrelief their actual peculiarities. Hence we consider it to ourpurpose to examine the Celtic race first, as we may know it fromancient records: What it was; what it did; what were its distinctivefeatures; what its manners and chief characteristics. A strong lightwill thus be thrown even on the Irish of our own days. Our wordsmust necessarily be few on so extensive a subject; but, few asthey are, they will not be unimportant in our investigations.

In all the works of God, side by side with the general orderresulting from seemingly symmetric laws, an astonishing varietyof details everywhere shows itself, producing on the mind of manthe idea of infinity, as effectually as the wonderful aspect of aseemingly boundless universe. This variety is visible, first inthe heavenly bodies, as they are called; star differing from star,planet from planet; even the most minute asteroids never showingthemselves to us two alike, but always offering differences insize, of form, of composition.

This variety is visible to us chiefly on our globe; in the infinitemultiplicity of its animal forms, in the wonderful insect tribes,and in the brilliant shells floating in the ocean; visible alsoin the incredible number of trees, shrubs, herbs, down to the mostminute vegetable organisms, spread with such reckless abundanceon the surface of our dwelling; visible, finally, in the infinityof different shapes assumed by inorganic matter.

But what is yet more wonderful and seemingly unaccountable is that,taking every species of being in particular, and looking at any twoindividuals of the same species, we would consider it an astonishingeffect of chance, were we to meet with two objects of our studyperfectly alike. The mineralogist notices it, if he finds in the samegroup of crystals two altogether similar; the botanist would expresshis astonishment if, on comparing two specimens of the same plant,he found no difference between them. The same may be said of birds,of reptiles, of mammalia, of the same kind. A close observer willeven easily detect dissimilarities between the double organs of thesame person, between the two eyes of his neighbor, the two handsof a friend, the two feet of a stranger whom he meets.

It is therefore but consistent with general analogy that in the moralas well as in the physical faculties of man, the same ever-recurringvariety should appear, in the features of the face, in the shape ofthe limbs, in the moving of the muscles, as well as in the activityof thought, in the mobility of humor, in the combination of passions,propensities, sympathies, and aversions.

But, at the same time, with all these peculiarities perceptible inindividuals, men, when studied attentively, show themselves ingroups, as it were, distinguished from other groups by peculiaritiesof their own, which are generally called characteristics of race;and although, according to various systems, these characteristicsare made to expand or contract at will, to serve an a prioripurpose, and sustain a preconcerted theory, yet there are, withrespect to them, startling facts which no one can gainsay, andwhich are worthy of serious attention.

Two of these facts may be stated in the following propositions:

I. At the cradle of a race or nation there must have been a typeimprinted on its progenitor, and passing from him to all hisposterity, which distinguishes it from all others.

II. The character of a race once established, cannot be eradicatedwithout an almost total disappearance of the people.

The proofs of these propositions would require long details altogetherforeign to our present purpose, as we are not writing on ethnology.We will take them for granted, as otherwise we may say that thewhole history of man would be unintelligible. If, however, writersare found who apply to their notion of race all the inflexibilityof physical laws, and who represent history as a rigid system offacts chained together by a kind of fatality; if a school hassprung up among historians to do away with the moral responsibilityof individuals and of nations, it is scarcely necessary to tellthe reader that nothing is so far from our mind as to adopt ideasdestructive, in fact, to all morality.

It is our belief that there is no more "necessity" in the leaningsof race with respect to nations, than there is in the corruptinstincts of our fallen nature with respect to individuals. Theteachings of faith have clearly decided this in the latter case,and the consequence of this authoritative decision carries withit the determination of the former.

According to the doctrine of St. Augustine, nations are rewardedor punished in this world, because there is no future existencefor them; but the fact of rewards and punishments awarded themshows that their life is not a series of necessary sequences suchas prevail in physics, and that the manifestations or phenomenaof history, past, present, or future, cannot resolve themselvesinto the workings of absolute laws.

Race, in our opinion, is only one of those mysterious forces whichplay upon the individual from the cradle to the grave, which affectalike all the members of the same family, and give it a peculiarityof its own, without, however, interfering in the least with the moralfreedom of the individual; and as in him there is free-will, so alsoin the family itself to which he belongs may God find cause forapproval or disapproval. The heart of a Christian ought to be toofull of gratitude and respect for Divine Providence to take anyother view of history.

It would be presumptuous on our part to attempt an explanation ofthe object God proposed to himself in originating such a diversityin human society. We can only say that it appears He did not wishall mankind to be ever subject to the same rule, the same governmentand institutions. His Church alone was to bear the character ofuniversality. Outside of her, variety was to be the rule in humanaffairs as in all things else. A universal despotism was neverto become possible.

This at once explains why the posterity of Japhet is so differentfrom that of Sem and of Cham.

In each of those great primitive stocks, an all-wise Providenceintroduced a large number of sub-races, if we may be allowed tocall them so, out of which are sprung the various nations whoseintermingling forms the web of human history. Our object is toconsider only the Celtic branch. For, whatever may be the varioustheories propounded on the subject of the colonization of Ireland,from whatever part of the globe the primitive inhabitants may besupposed to have come, one thing is certain, to-day the race isyet one, in spite of the foreign blood infused into it by so manymen of other stocks. Although the race was at one time on the vergeof extinction by Cromwell, it has finally absorbed all the others;it has conquered; and, whoever has to deal with true Irishmen, feelsat once that he deals with a primitive people, whose ancestors dwelton the island thousands of years ago. Some slight differences maybe observed in the people of the various provinces of the island;there maybe various dialects in their language, different appearancein their looks, some slight divergence in their disposition or manners;it cannot be other wise, since, as we have seen, no two individualsof the human family can be found perfectly alike. But, in spiteof all this, they remain Celts to this day; they belong undoubtedly,to that stock formerly wide-spread throughout Europe, and now almostconfined to their island; for the character of the same race inWales, Scotland, and Brittany, has not been, and could not be,kept so pure as in Erin; so that in our age the inhabitants ofthose countries have become more and more fused with their Britishand Gallic neighbors.

We must, therefore, at the beginning of this investigation, statebriefly what we know of the Celtic race in ancient times, and examinewhether the Irish of to-day do not reproduce its chief characteristics.

We do not propose, however, in the present study, referring tothe physical peculiarities of the Celtic tribes; we do not knowwhat those were two or three thousand years ago. We must confineourselves to moral propensities and to manners, and for this viewof the subject we have sufficient materials whereon to draw.

We first remark in this race an immense power of expansion, whennot checked by truly insurmountable obstacles; a power of expansionwhich did not necessitate for its workings an uninhabited and wildterritory, but which could show its energy and make its force feltin the midst of already thickly-settled regions, and among adverseand warlike nations.

As far as history can carry us back, the whole of Western Europe,namely, Gaul, a part of Spain, Northern Italy, and what we callto-day the British Isles, are found to be peopled by a raceapparently of the same origin, divided into an immense number ofsmall republics; governed patriarchally in the form of clans,called by Julius Caesar, "Civitates." The Greeks called them Celts,"Keltai." They do not appear to have adopted a common name forthemselves, as the idea of what we call nationality would neverseem to have occurred to them. Yet the name of Gaels in the BritishIsles, and of Gauls in France and Northern Italy, seems identical.Not only did they fill the large expanse of territory we havementioned, but they multiplied so fast, that they were compelledto send out armed colonies in every direction, set as they werein the midst of thickly-peopled regions.

We possess few details of their first invasion of Spain; but Romanhistory has made us all acquainted with their valor. It was in thefirst days of the Republic that an army of Gauls took possessionof Rome, and the names of Manlius and Camillus are no better knownin history than that of Brenn, called by Livy, Brennus. His celebratedanswer, "Vae victis," will live as long as the world.

Later on, in the second century before Christ, we see another armyof Celts starting from Pannonia, on the Danube, where they hadpreviously settled, to invade Greece. Another Brenn is at the headof it. Macedonia and Albania were soon conquered; and, it is said,some of the peculiarities of the race may still be remarked in manyAlbanians. Thessaly could not resist the impetuosity of the invaders;the Thermopylae were occupied by Gallic battalions, and thatcelebrated defile, where three hundred Spartans once detained thewhole army of Xerxes, could offer no obstacle to Celtic bravery.Hellas, sacred Hellas, came then under the power of the Gauls, andthe Temple of Delphi was already in sight of Brenn and his warriors,when, according to Greek historians, a violent earthquake, the workof the offended gods, threw confusion into the Celtic ranks, whichwere subsequently easily defeated and destroyed by the Greeks.

A branch of this army of the Delphic Brenn had separated fromthe main body on the frontiers of Thrace, taken possession ofByzantium, the future Constantinople, and, crossing the straits,established itself in the Heart of Asia Minor, and there foundedthe state of Galatia, or Gallo-Greece, which so long bore theirname, and for several centuries influenced the affairs of Asiaand of the whole Orient, where they established a social statecongenial to their tastes and customs. But the Romans soon afterinvading Asia Minor, the twelve clannish republics formerlyfounded were, according to Strabo, first reduced to three, thento two, until finally Julius Caesar made Dejotar king of thewhole country.

The Celts could not easily brook such a change of social relations;but, unable to cope against Roman power, they came, as usual, towrangle among themselves. The majority pronounced for anotherchieftain, named Bogitar, and succeeded in forming a party inRome in his favor. Clodius, in an assembly of the Roman people,obtained a decree confirmatory of his authority, and he tookpossession of Pessinuntum, and of the celebrated Temple of Cybele.

The history of this branch of the Celts, nevertheless, did notclose with the evil fortunes of their last king. According toJustinus, they swarmed all over Asia. Having lost their autonomyas a nation, they became, as it were, the Swiss mercenaries ofthe whole Orient. Egypt, Syria, Pontus, called them to their defence."Such," says Justinus, "was the terror excited by their name, andthe constant success of their undertakings, that no king on histhrone thought himself secure, and no fallen prince imagined himselfable to recover his power, except with the help of the ever-readyCelts of those countries."

This short sketch suffices to show their power of expansion inancient times among thickly-settled populations. When we haveshown, farther on, how to-day they are spreading all over theworld, not looking to wild and desert countries, but to largecentres of population in the English colonies, we shall be ableto convince ourselves that they still present the same characteristic.If they do not bear arms in their hands, it is owing to alteredcirc*mstances; but their actual expansion bears a close resemblanceto that of ancient times, and the similarity of effect showsthe similarity of character.

We pass now to a new feature in the race, which has not, to ourknowledge, been sufficiently dwelt upon. All their migrations inold times were across continents; and if, occasionally, they crossedthe Mediterranean Sea, they did so always in foreign vessels.

The Celtic race, as we have seen, occupied the whole of WesternEurope. They had, therefore, numerous harbors on the Atlantic,and some excellent ones on the Mediterranean. Many passed thegreater portion of their lives on the sea, supporting themselvesby fishing; yet they never thought of constructing and arminglarge fleets; they never fought at sea in vessels of their own,with the single exception of the naval battle between JuliusCaesar and the Veneti, off the coast of Armorica, where, in oneday, the Roman general destroyed the only maritime armament whichthe Celts ever possessed.

And even this fact is not an exception to the general rule; forM. de Penhouet, the greatest antiquarian, perhaps, in Celtic lorein Brittany, has proved that the Veneti of Western Gaul were notreally Celts, but rather a colony of Carthaginians, the only oneprobably remaining, in the time of Caesar, of those once numerousforeign colonies of the old enemies of Rome.

Still this strange anomaly, an anomaly which is observable in noother people living on an extensive coast, was not produced byignorance of the uses and importance of large fleets. From thefirst they held constant intercourse with the great navigators ofantiquity. The Celtic harbors teemed with the craft of hardy seamen,who came from Phoenicia, Carthage, and finally from Rome. Heeren,in his researches on the Phoenicians, proves it for that very earlyage, and mentions the strange fact that the name of Ireland withthem was the "Holy Isle." For several centuries, the Carthaginians,in particular, used the harbors of Spain, of Gaul, even of Erinand Britain, as their own. The Celtic inhabitants of those countriesallowed them to settle peaceably among them, to trade with them,to use their cities as emporiums, to call them, in fact,Carthaginian harbors, although that African nation never reallycolonized the country, does not appear to have made war on theinhabitants in order to occupy it, except in a few instances, whenthwarted, probably, in their commercial enterprises; but they alwayslived on peaceful terms with the aborigines, whom they benefited bytheir trade, and, doubtless, enlightened by the narrative of theirexpeditions in distant lands.

Is it not a strikingly strange fact that, under such circ*mstances,the Celts should never have thought of possessing vessels of theirown, if not to push the enterprises of an extensive commerce, forwhich they never showed the slightest inclination, at least forthe purpose of shipping their colonies abroad, and crossing directlyto Greece from Celtiberia, for instance, or from their Italian colonyof the Veneti, replaced in modern times by maritime Venice? Yetso it was; and the great classic scholar, Heeren, in his learnedresearches on the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, remarks it withsurprise. The chief reason which he assigns for the success ofthose southern navigators from Carthage in establishing their colonieseverywhere, is the fact of no people in Spain, Gaul, or the BritishIsles, possessing at the time a navy of their own; and, finding it sosurprising, he does not attempt to explain it, as indeed it reallyremains without any possible explanation, save the lack of inclinationspringing from the natural promptings of the race.

What renders it more surprising still is, that individually theyhad no aversion to a seafaring life; not only many of themsubsisted by fishing, but their curraghs covered the sea allalong their extensive coasts. They could pass from island toisland in their small craft. Thus the Celts of Erin frequentlycrossed over to Scotland, to the Hebrides, from rock to rock, andin Christian times they went as far as the Faroe group, even asfar as Iceland, which some of them appear to have attempted tocolonize long before the Norwegian outlaws went there; and someeven say that from Erin came the first Europeans who landed onfrozen Greenland years before the Icelandic Northmen plantedestablishments in that dreary country. The Celts, therefore, andthose of Erin chiefly, were a seafaring race.

But to construct a fleet, to provision and arm it, to fill it withthe flower of their youth, and send them over the ocean to plunderand slay the inhabitants for the purpose of colonizing the countriesthey had previously devastated, such was never the character ofthe Celts. They never engaged extensively in trade, or what isoften synonymous, piracy. Before becoming christianized, the Celtsof Ireland crossed over the narrow channel which divided them fromBritain, and frequently carried home slaves; they also passedoccasionally to Armorica, and their annals speak of warlikeexpeditions to that country; but their efforts at navigation werealways on an extremely limited scale, in spite of the many inducementsoffered by their geographical position. The fact is striking whenwe compare them in that particular with the Scandinavian free-roversof the Northern Ocean.

It is, therefore, very remarkable that, whenever they got on boarda boat, it was always a single and open vessel. They did so in pagantimes, when the largest portion of Western Europe was theirs; theycontinued to do so after they became Christians. The race has alwaysappeared opposed to the operations of an extensive commerce, andto the spreading of their power by large fleets.

The ancient annals of Ireland speak, indeed, of naval expeditions;but these expeditions were always undertaken by a few persons inone, two, or, at most, three boats, as that of the sons of Ua Corra;and such facts consequently strengthen our view. The only factwhich seems contradictory is supposed to have occurred duringthe Danish wars, when Callaghan, King of Cashel, is said to havebeen caught in an ambush, and conveyed a captive by the Danes,first to Dublin, then to Armagh, and finally to Dundalk.

The troops of Kennedy, son of Lorcan, are said to have beensupported by a fleet of fifty sail, commanded by Falvey Finn, aKerry chieftain. We need not repeat the story so well known toall readers of Irish history. But this fact is found only in thework of Keating, and the best critics accept it merely as anhistorical romance, which Keating thought proper to insert in hishistory. Still, even supposing the truth of the story, all that wemay conclude from it is that the seafaring Danes, at the end oftheir long wars, had taught the Irish to use the sea as a battlefield,to the extent of undertaking a small expedition in order toliberate a beloved chieftain.

It is very remarkable, also, that according to the annals of Ireland,the naval expeditions nearly always bore a religious character, neverone of trade or barter, with the exception of the tale of Brescan,who was swallowed up with his fifty curraghs, in which he tradedbetween Ireland and Scotland.

Nearly all the other maritime excursions are voyages undertakenwith a Christian or Godlike object. Thus our holy religion wascarried over to Scotland and the Hebrides by Columbkill and hisbrother monks, who evangelized those numerous groups of smallislands. Crossing in their skiffs, and planting the cross onsome far-seen rock or promontory, they perched their monasticcells on the bold bluffs overlooking the ocean.

No more was the warrior on carnage bent to be seen on the seaboardsof Ulster or the western coast of Albania, as Scotland was thencalled; only unarmed men dressed in humble monastic garb trod thosewave-beaten shores. At early morning they left the cove of theirconvent; they spread their single sail, and plied their well-wornoars, crossing from Colombsay to Iona, or from the harbor of Bangorto the nearest shore of the Isle of Man.

At noon they may have met a brother in the middle of the straitin his shell of a boat, bouncing over the water toward the pointthey had left. And the holy sign of the cross passed from onemonk to the other, and the word of benison was carried throughthe air, forward and back, and the heaven above was propitious,and the wave below was obedient, while the hearts of the twobrothers were softened by holy feelings; and nothing in the airaround, on the dimly-visible shores, on the surface of the heavingwaves, was seen or heard save what might raise the soul to heavenand the heart to God.

In concluding this portion of our subject, we will merely referto the fact that neither the Celts of Gaul or Britain, nor thoseof Ireland, ever opposed an organized fleet to the numerous hostilenaval armaments by which their country was invaded. When the Romanfleet, commanded by Caesar, landed in Great Britain, when theinnumerable Danish expeditions attacked Ireland, whenever theAnglo-Normans arrived in the island during the four hundred yearsof the colony of the Pale, we never hear of a Celtic fleet opposedto the invaders. Italian, Spanish, and French fleets came inoftentimes to the help of the Irish; yet never do we read that theisland had a single vessel to join the friendly expedition. Wemay safely conclude, then, that the race has never felt anyinclination for sending large expeditions to sea, whether forextensive trading, or for political and warlike purposes. Theyhave always used the vessels of other nations, and it is nosurprise, therefore, to find them now crowding English shipsin their migrations to colonize other countries. It is one ofthe propensities of the race.

A third feature of Celtic character and mind now attracts ourattention, namely, a peculiar literature, art, music, and poetry,wherein their very soul is portrayed, and which belongs exclusivelyto them. Some very interesting considerations will naturally flowfrom this short investigation. It is the study of the constitutionof the Celtic mind.

In Celtic countries literature was the perfect expression of thesocial state of the people. Literature must naturally be soeverywhere, but it was most emphatically so among the Celts. Withthem it became a state institution, totally unknown to othernations. Literature and art sprang naturally from the clan system,and consequently adopted a form not to be found elsewhere. Being,moreover, of an entirely traditional cast, those pursuits impartedto their minds a steady, conservative, traditional spirit, whichhas resulted in the happiest consequences for the race, preservingit from theoretical vagaries, and holding it aloof, even in our days,from the aberrations which all men now deplore in other Europeannations, and whose effects we behold in the anarchy of thought.This last consideration adds to this portion of our subject apeculiar and absorbing interest.

The knowledge which Julius Caesar possessed of the Druids and oftheir literary system was very incomplete; yet he presents to hisreaders a truly grand spectacle, when he speaks of their numerousschools, frequented by an immense number of the youths of thecountry, so different from those of Rome, in which his own mindhad been trained—"Ad has magnus adolescentium numerus disciplinaecausa concurrit:" when he mentions the political and civil subjectssubmitted to the judgment of literary men—"de omnibus controversiispublicis privatisque constituunt. … Si de hereditate, si definibus controversia est, iidem decernunt:" when he states thelength of their studies—"annos nonnulli vicenos in disciplinapermanent:" when he finally draws a short sketch of their courseof instruction— "multa de sideribus atque eorum motu, de mundiac terrarum magnitudine, …. disputant juventutique tradunt."

But, unfortunately, the great author of the "Commentaries" hadnot sufficiently studied the social state of the Celts in Gauland Britain; he never mentions the clan institution, even whenhe speaks of the feuds—factiones—which invariably split theirsepts—civitates—into hostile parties. In his eleventh chapter,when describing the contentions which were constantly rife inthe cities, villages, even single houses, when remarking thecontinual shifting of the supreme authority from the Edui to theSequani, and reciprocally, he seems to be giving in a few phrasesthe long history of the Irish Celts; yet he does not appear tobe aware of the cause of this universal agitation, namely, theclan system, of which he does not say a single world. How couldhe have perceived the effect of that system on their literatureand art?

To understand it at once it suffices to describe in a few wordsthe various branches of studies pursued by their learned men;and, as we are best acquainted with that portion of the subjectwhich concerns Ireland, we will confine ourselves to it. Thereis no doubt the other agglomerations of Celtic tribes, the Gaulschiefly, enjoyed institutions very similar, if not perfectly alike.

The highest generic name for a learned man or doctor was "ollamh."These ollamhs formed a kind of order in the race, and theprivileges bestowed on them were most extensive. "Each one ofthem was allowed a standing income of twenty-one cows and theirgrasses," in the chieftain's territory, besides ample refectionsfor himself and his attendants, to the number of twenty-four,including his subordinate tutors, his advanced pupils, and hisretinue of servants. He was entitled to have two hounds and sixhorses, . . . and the privilege of conferring a temporary sanctuaryfrom injury or arrest by carrying his wand, or having it carriedaround or over the person or place to be protected. His wife alsoenjoyed certain other valuable privileges.—(Prof. E. Curry, Lecture I.)

But to reach that degree he was to prove for himself, purity oflearning, purity of mouth (from satire), purity of hand (frombloodshed), purity of union (in marriage), purity of honesty (fromtheft), and purity of body (having but one wife).

With the Celts, therefore, learning constituted a kind of priesthood.These were his moral qualifications. His scientific attainmentsrequire a little longer consideration, as they form the chiefobject we have in view.

They may at the outset be stated in a few words. The ollamh was"a man who had arrived at the highest degree of historicallearning, and of general literary attainments. He should be anadept in royal synchronisms, should know the boundaries of allthe provinces and chieftaincies, and should be able to trace thegenealogies of all the tribes of Erin up to the first man.—(Prof. Curry,Lecture X.)

Caesar had already told us of the Druids, "Si de hereditate, si definibus controversia est iidem decernunt." In this passage he givesus a glimpse of a system which he had not studied sufficiently toembrace in its entirety.

The qualifications of an ollamh which we have just enumerated, thatis to say, of the highest doctor in Celtic countries, already provehow their literature grew out of the clan system.

The clan system, of which we shall subsequently speak more atlength, rested entirely on history, genealogy, and topography. Theauthority and rights of the monarch of the whole country, of theso-called kings of the various provinces, of the other chieftains intheir several degrees, finally, of all the individuals who composedthe nation connected by blood with the chieftains and kings,depended entirely on their various genealogies, out of which grewa complete system of general and personal history. The conflictingrights of the septs demanded also a thorough knowledge of topographyfor the adjustment of their difficulties. Hence the importance tothe whole nation of accuracy in these matters, and of a competentauthority to decide on all such questions.

But in Celtic countries, more than in all others, topography wasconnected with general history, as each river or lake, mountainor hill, tower or hamlet, had received a name from some historicalfact recorded in the public annals; so that even now the geographicaletymologies frequently throw a sudden and decisive light on disputedpoints of ancient history. So far, this cannot be called a literature;it might be classed under the name of statistics, or antiquarian lore;and if their history consisted merely of what is contained in the oldannals of the race, it would be presumptuous to make a particularalllusion to their literature, and make it one of the chiefcharacteristics of the race. The annals, in fact, were merechronological and synchronic tables of previous events.

But an immense number of books were written by many of their authorson each particular event interesting to each Celtic tribe: and evennow many of those special facts recorded in these books owe theirorigin to some assertion or hint given in the annals. There is nodoubt that long ago their learned men were fully acquainted withall the points of reference which escape the modern antiquarian.History for them, therefore, was very different from what the Greeksand Romans have made it in the models they left us, which we havecopied or imitated.

It is only in their detached "historical tales" that they displayany skill in description or narration, any remarkable pictures ofcharacter, manners, and local traditions; and it seems that in manypoints they show themselves masters of this beautiful art.

Thus they had stories of battles, of voyages, of invasions, ofdestructions, of slaughters, of sieges, of tragedies and deaths, ofcourtships, of military expeditions; and all this strictly historical.For we do not here speak of their "imaginative tales," which givestill freer scope to fancy; such as the Fenian and Ossianic poems,which are also founded on facts, but can no more claim the title ofhistory than the novels of Scott or Cooper.

The number of those books was so great that the authentic list ofthem far surpasses in length what has been preserved of the oldGreek and Latin writers. It is true that they have all been savedand transmitted to us by Christian Irishmen of the centuriesintervening between the sixth and sixteenth; but it is alsoperfectly true that whatever was handed down to us by Irish monksand friars came to them from the genuine source, the primitiveauthors, as our own monks of the West have preserved to us allwe know of Greek and Latin authors.

So that the question so long decided in the negative, whetherthe Irish knew handwriting prior to the Christian era and thecoming of St. Patrick, is no longer a question, now that so muchis known of their early literature. St. Patrick and his brothermonks brought with them the Roman characters and the knowledge ofnumerous Christian writers who had preceded him; but he could notteach them what had happened in the country before his time, eventswhich form the subject-matter of their annals, historical andimaginative tales and poems. For the Christian authors of Irelandsubsequently to transmit those facts to us, they must evidentlyhave copied them from older books, which have since perished.

Prof. E. Curry thinks that the Ogham characters, so often mentionedin the most ancient Irish books, were used in Erin long before theintroduction of Christianity there. And he strengthens his opinionby proofs which it is difficult to contradict. Those characters areeven now to be seen in some of the oldest books which have beenpreserved, as well as on many stone monuments, the remote antiquityof which cannot be denied. One well-authenticated fact suffices,however, to set the question at rest: "It is quite certain," saysE. Curry, "that the Irish Druids and poets had written books beforethe coming of St. Patrick in 432; since we find THAT VERY STATEMENTin the ancient Gaelic Tripartite life of the Saint, as well as inthe "Annotations of Tirechan" preserved in the Book of Armagh, whichwere taken by him (Tirechan) from the lips and books of his tutor,St. Mochta, who was the pupil and disciple of St. Patrick himself."

What Caesar, then, states of the Druids, that they committed everything to memory and used no books, is not strictly true. It musthave been true only with regard to their mode of teaching, in thatthey gave no books to their pupils, but confined themselves tooral instruction.

The order of Ollamh comprised various sub-orders of learned men.And the first of these deserving our attention is the class of"Seanchaidhe," pronounced Shanachy. The ollamh seems to have beenthe historian of the monarch of the whole country; the shanachyhad the care of provincial records. Each chieftain, in fact, downto the humblest, had an officer of this description, who enjoyedprivileges inferior only to those of the ollamh, and partook ofemoluments graduated according to his usefulness in the state; sothat we can already obtain some idea of the honor and respect paidto the national literature and traditions in the person of thosewho were looked upon in ancient times as their guardians from ageto age.

The shanachies were also bound to prove for themselves themoral qualifications of the ollamhs.1

(1 "Purity of hand, bright without wounding,
Purity of mouth, without poisonous satire,
Purity of learning, without reproach,
Purity of husbandship, in marriage."
Many of these details and the following are chiefly derived from
Prof. E. Curry
—(Early Irish Manuscripts.) )

A shanachy of any degree, who did not preserve these "purities,"lost half his income and dignity, according to law, and wassubject to heavy penalties besides.

According to McFirbis, in his book of genealogies, "the historianswere so anxious and ardent to preserve the history of Erin, thatthe description they have left us of the nobleness and dignifiedmanners of the people, should not be wondered at, since they didnot refrain from writing even of the undignified artisans, and ofthe professors of the healing and building arts of ancient times—as shall be shown below, to prove the fidelity of the historians,and the errors of those who make such assertions, as, for instance,that there were no stone buildings in Erin before the coming of theDanes and Anglo-Normans.

"Thus saith an ancient authority: `The first doctor, the firstbuilder, and the first fisherman, that were ever in Erin were—

Capa, for the healing of the sick,
In his time was all-powerful;
And Luasad, the cunning builder,
And Laighne, the fisherman.'"

So speaks McFirbis in his quaint and picturesque style.

The literature of the Celts was, therefore, impressed with thecharacter of realistic universality, which has been the great boastof the romantic school. It did not concern itself merely with thegreat and powerful, but comprised all classes of people, and triedto elevate what is of itself undignified and common in humansociety. This is no doubt the meaning of the quotation just cited.

Among the Celts, then, each clan had his historian to record themost minute details of every-day history, as well as every factof importance to the whole clan, and even to the nation at large;and thus we may see how literature with them grew naturally outof their social system. The same may not appear to hold good atfirst sight with the other classes of literary men; yet it wouldbe easy to discover the link connecting them all, and which wasalways traditional or matter-of-fact, if we may use that expression.

The next SUB-ORDER was that of File, which is generally translatedpoet, but its meaning also involves the idea of philosophy orwisdom added to that of poetry.

The File among the Celts was, after all, only an historian writingin verse; for all their poetry resolved itself into annals, "poeticnarratives" of great events, or finally "ballads."

It is well known that among all nations poetry has preceded prose;and the first writers that appeared anywhere always wrote in verse.It seems, therefore, that in Celtic tribes the order of File wasanterior in point of time to that of Shanachy, and that both musthave sprung naturally from the same social system. Hence themonarch of the whole nation had his poets, as also the provincialkings and every minor chieftain.

In course of time their number increased to such an extent in
Ireland, that at last they became a nuisance to be abated.

"It is said that in the days of Connor McNassa—several centuriesbefore Christ—there met once 1,200 poets in one company; anothertime 1,000, and another 700, namely, in the days of Aedh McAinmireand Columcille, in the sixth century after our Saviour. Andbetween these periods Erin always thought that she had more oflearned men than she wanted; so that from their numbers and thetax their support imposed upon the public, it was attempted tobanish them out of Erin on three different occasions; but theywere detained by the Ultonians for hospitality's sake. This isevident from the Amhra Columcille (panegyric of St. Columba). Hewas the last that kept them in Ireland, and distributed a poet toevery territory, and a poet to every king, in order to lighten theburden of the people in general. So that there were people in theirfollowing, contemporary with every generation to preserve thehistory and events of the country at this time. Not these alone,but the kings, and, saints, and churches of Erin preserved theirhistory in like manner."

From this curious passage of McFirbis, it is clear that the Celticpoets proposed to themselves the same object as the historians did;only that they wrote in verse, and no doubt allowed themselves morefreedom of fancy, without altering the facts which were to them ofparamount importance.

McFirbis, in the previous passage, gives us a succinct accountof the action of Columbkill in regard to the poets or bards ofhis time. But we know many other interesting facts connectedwith this event, which must be considered as one of the mostimportant in Ireland during the sixth century. The order of poetsor bards was a social and political institution, reaching back inpoint of time to the birth of the nation, enjoying extensiveprivileges, and without which Celtic life would have been deprivedof its warmth and buoyancy. Yet Aed, the monarch of all Ireland,was inclined to abolish the whole order, and banish, or even outlaw,all its members. Being unable to do it of his own authority, hethought of having the measure carried in the assembly of Drumceit,convened for the chief purpose of settling peacefully the relationsof Ireland with the Dalriadan colony established in WesternScotland a hundred years before. Columba came from Iona in behalfof Aidan, whom he had crowned a short time previously as Kingof Albania or Scotland. It seems that the bards or poets wereaccused of insolence, rapacity, and of selling their servicesto princes and nobles, instead of calling them to account fortheir misdeeds.

Columba openly undertook their defence in the general assembly ofthe nation. Himself a poet, he loved their art, and could notconsent to see his native country deprived of it. Such a deprivationin his eyes would almost have seemed a sacrilege.

"He represented," says Montalembert, "that care must be taken notto pull up the good corn with the tares, that the general exileof the poets would be the death of a venerable antiquity, and ofthat poetry so dear to the country, and so useful to those whoknew how to employ it. The king and assembly yielded at length,under condition that the number should be limited, and theirprofession laid under certain rules."

Dallan Fergall, the chief of the corporation, composed his "Amhra,"or Praise of Columbkill, as a mark of gratitude from the wholeorder. That the works of Celtic poets possessed real literary merit,we have the authority of Spenser for believing. The author of the"Faerie Queene" was not the friend of the Irish, whom he assistedin plundering and destroying under Elizabeth. He could only judgeof their books from English translations, not being sufficientlyacquainted with the language to understand its niceties. Yet hehad to acknowledge that their poems "savoured of sweet wit andgood invention, but skilled not of the goodly ornaments of poetry;yet were they sprinkled with some pretty flowers of their naturaldevice, which gave good grace and comeliness to them."

He objected, it is true, to the patriotism of their verse, andpretended that they "seldom choose the doings of good men for theargument of their poems," and became "dangerous and desperate indisobedience and rebellious daring." But this accusation is highpraise in our eyes, as showing that the Irish bards of Spenser'stime praised and glorified those who proved most courageous inresisting English invasion, and stood firmly on the side of theirrace against the power of a great queen.

A poet, it seems, required twelve years of study to be master ofhis art. One-third of that time was devoted to practising the"Teinim Laegha," by which he obtained the power of understandingevery thing that it was proper for him to speak of or to say. Thenext third was employed in learning the "Imas Forosnadh," by whichhe was enabled to communicate thoroughly his knowledge to otherpupils. Finally, the last three years were occupied in "Dichedal,"or improvisation, so as to be able to speak in verse on all subjectsof his study at a moment's notice.

There were, it appears, seven kinds of verse; and the poet wasbound to possess a critical knowledge of them, so as to be a judgeof his art, and to pronounce on the compositions submitted to him.

If called upon by any king or chieftain, he was required to relateinstantly, seven times fifty stories, namely, five times fiftyprime stories, and twice fifty secondary stories.

The prime stories were destructions and preyings, courtships,battles, navigations, tragedies or deaths, expeditions, elopements,and conflagrations.

All those literary compositions were historic tales; and theywere not composed for mere amusem*nt, but possessed in the eyesof learned men a real authority in point of fact. If fancy waspermitted to adorn them, the facts themselves were to remainunaltered with their chief circ*mstances. Hence the writers of thevarious annals of Ireland do not scruple to quote many poems orother tales as authority for the facts of history which they relate.

And such also was heroic poetry among the Greeks. The Hellenicphilosophers, historians, and geographers of later times alwaysquoted Homer and Hesiod as authorities for the facts they relatedin their scientific works. The whole first book of the geographyof Strabo, one of the most statistical and positive works ofantiquity, has for its object the vindication of the geographyof Homer, whom Strabo seems to have considered as a reliableauthority on almost every possible subject.

Our limits forbid us to speak more in detail of Celtic historiansand poets. We have said enough to show that both had importantstate duties to perform in the social system of the country, and,while keeping within due bounds, they were esteemed by all as menof great weight and use to the nation. Besides the field of genealogyand history allotted to them to cultivate, their very office tendedto promote the love of virtue, and to check immorality and vice.They were careful to watch over the acts and inclinations of theirprinces and chieftains, seldom failing to brand them with infamyif guilty of crimes, or crown them with honor when they had deservedwell of the nation. In ancient Egypt the priests judged the kingsafter their demise; in Celtic countries they dared to tell themthe truth during their lifetime. And this exercised a most salutaryeffect on the people; for perhaps never in any other country didthe admiration for learning, elevation of feeling, and ardent loveof justice and right, prevail as in Ireland, at least while enjoyingits native institutions and government.

From many of the previous details, the reader will easily seeThat the literature of the Celts presented features peculiar toTheir race, and which supposed a mental constitution seldom foundamong others. If, in general, the world of letters gives expressionIn some degree to social wants and habits, among the Celts thisexpression was complete, and argued a peculiar bent of mind givenentirely to traditional lore, and never to philosophical speculationsand subtlety. We see in it two elements remarkable for theirdistinctness. First, an extraordinary fondness for facts andtraditions, growing out of the patriarchal origin of societyamong them; and from this fondness their mind received a particulartendency which was averse to theories and utopias. All thingsresolved themselves into facts, and they seldom wandered away intothe fields of conjectural conclusions. Hence their extraordinaryadaptation to the truths of the Christian religion, whose dogmasare all supernatural facts, at once human and divine. Hence havethey ever been kept free from that strange mental activity of otherEuropean races, which has led them into doubt, unbelief, skepticism,until, in our days, there seem to be no longer any fixed principlesas a substratum for religious and social doctrines.

Secondly, we see in the Celtic race a rare and unique outburstof fancy, so well expressed in the "Senchus Mor," their great lawcompilation, wherein it is related, that when St. Patrick hadcompleted the digest of the laws of the Gael in Ireland, Dubtach,who was a bard as well as a brehon, "put a thread of poetryround it." Poetry everywhere, even in a law-book; poetryinseparable from their thoughts, their speech, their every-dayactions; poetry became for them a reality, an indispensable necessityof life. This feature is also certainly characteristic of theCeltic nature.

Hence their literature was inseparable from art; and music anddesign gushed naturally from the deepest springs of their souls.

Music has always been the handmaid of Poetry; and in our modernlanguages, even, which are so artificial and removed from primitiveenthusiasm and naturalness, no composer of opera would consent toadapt his inspirations to a prose libretto. It was far more soin primitive times; and it maybe said that in those days poetrywas never composed unless to be sung or played on instruments. Butwhat has never been seen elsewhere, what Plato dreamed, withoutever hoping to see realized, music in Celtic countries becamereally a state institution, and singers and harpers were necessaryofficers of princes and kings.

That all Celtic tribes were fond of it and cultivated it thoroughlywe have the assertion of all ancient writers who spoke of them.According to Strabo, the Third order of Druids was composed ofthose whom he calls Umnetai. What were their instruments is notmentioned; and we can now form no opinion of their former musicaltaste from the rude melodies of the Armoricans, Welsh, and Scotch.

From time immemorial the Irish Celts possessed the harp. Someauthors have denied this; and from the fact that the harp wasunknown to the Greeks and Romans, and that the Gauls of the timeof Julius Caesar do not seem to have been acquainted with it, theyconclude that it was not purely native to any of the British islands.

But modern researches have proved that it was certainly used inErin under the first successors of Ugaine Mor, who was monarch.—Ard-Righ—about the year 633 before Christ, according to theannals of the Four Masters. The story of Labhraid, which seemsperfectly authentic, turns altogether on the perfection withwhich Craftine played on the harp. From that time, at least, theinstrument became among the Celts of Ireland a perpetual sourceof melody.

To judge of their proficiency in its use, it is enough to know towhat degree of perfection they had raised it. Mr. Beauford, inhis ingenious and learned treatise on the music of Ireland, ascultivated by its bards, creates genuine astonishment by thediscoveries into which his researches have led him.

The extraordinary attention which they paid to expression andeffect brought about successive improvements in the harp, whichat last made it far superior to the Grecian lyre. To make itcapable of supporting the human voice in their symphonies, theyfilled up the intervals of the fifths and thirds in each scale,and increased the number of strings from eighteen to twenty-eight,retaining all the original chromatic tones, but reducing thecapacity of the instrument; for, instead of commencing in the lowerE in the bass, it commenced in C, a sixth above, and terminatedin G in the octave below; and, in consequence, the instrumentbecame much more melodious and capable of accompanying the humanvoice. Malachi O'Morgair, Archbishop of Armagh, introduced otherimprovements in it in the twelfth century. Finally, in later times,its capacity was increased from twenty-eight strings to thirty-three,in which state it still remains.

As long as the nation retained its autonomy, the harp was a universalinstrument among the inhabitants of Erin. It was found in every house;it was heard wherever you met a few people gathered together. Studiedso universally, so completely and perfectly, it gave Irish music inthe middle ages a superiority over that of all other nations. It isCambrensis who remarks that "the attention of these people to musicalinstruments is worthy of praise, in which their skill is, beyondcomparison, superior to any other people; for in these the modulationis not slow and solemn, as in the instruments of Britain, but thesounds are rapid and precipitate, yet sweet and pleasing. It isextraordinary, in such rapidity of the fingers, how the musicalproportions are preserved, and the art everywhere inherent amongtheir complicated modulations, and the multitude of intricate notesso sweetly swift, so irregular in their composition, so disorderlyin their concords, yet returning to unison and completing the melody."

Giraldus could not express himself better, never before havingheard any other music than that of the Anglo-Normans; but it isclear, from the foregoing passage, that Irish art surpassed allhis conceptions.

The universality of song among the Irish Celts grew out of theirnature, and in time brought out all the refinements of art. Longbefore Cambrensis's time the whole island resounded with musicand mirth, and the king-archbishop, Cormac McCullinan, could notbetter express his gratitude to his Thom*ond subjects than byexclaiming—

"May our truest fidelity ever be given
To the brave and generous clansmen of Tal;
And forever royalty rest with their tribe,
And virtue and valor, and music and song!"

Long before Cormac, we find the same mirthful glee in the Celticcharacter expressed by a beautiful and well-known passage in thelife of St. Bridget: Being yet an unknown girl, she entered, bychance, the dwelling of some provincial king, who was at the timeabsent, and, getting hold of a harp, her fingers ran over thechords, and her voice rose in song and glee, and the whole familyof the royal children, excited by the joyful harmony, surroundedher, immediately grew familiar with her, and treated her as anelder sister whom they might have known all their life; so thatthe king, coming back, found all his house in an uproar, filledas it was with music and mirth.

Thus the whole island remained during long ages. Never in thewhole history of man has the same been the case with any othernation. Plato, no doubt, in his dream of a republic, had somethingof the kind in his mind, when he wished to constitute harmony asa social and political institution. But he little thought that,when he thus dreamed and wrote, or very shortly after, the veryobject of his speculation was already, or was soon to be, inactual existence in the most western isle of Europe.

Before Columba's time even the Church had become reconciled tothe bards and harpers; and, according to a beautiful legend,Patrick himself had allowed Oisin, or Ossian, and his followers,to sing the praises of ancient heroes. But Columbkill completedthe reconciliation of the religious spirit with the bardicinfluence. Music and poetry were thenceforth identified withecclesiastical life. Monks and grave bishops played on the harpin the churches, and it is said that this strange spectaclesurprised the first Norman invaders of Ireland. To use the wordsof Montalembert, so well adapted to our subject: "Irish poetry,which was in the days of Patrick and Columba so powerful and sopopular, has long undergone, in the country of Ossian, the samefate as the religion of which these great saints were the apostles.Rooted, like it, in the heart of a conquered people, and like itproscribed and persecuted with an unwearying vehemence, it hascome ever forth anew from the bloody furrow in which it wassupposed to be buried. The bards became the most powerful alliesof patriotism, the most dauntless prophets of independence, andalso the favorite victims of the cruelty of spoilers and conquerors.They made music and poetry weapons and bulwarks against foreignoppression; and the oppressors used them as they had used thepriests and the nobles. A price was set upon their heads. Butwhile the last scions of the royal and noble races, decimatedor ruined in Ireland, departed to die out under a foreign sky,amid the miseries of exile, the successor of the bards, theminstrel, whom nothing could tear from his native soil, was pursued,tracked, and taken like a wild beast, or chained and slaughteredlike the most dangerous of rebels.

"In the annals of the atrocious legislation, directed by theEnglish against the Irish people, as well before as after theReformation, special penalties against the minstrels, bards, andrhymers, who sustained the lords and gentlemen, . . . are to bemet with at every step.

"Nevertheless, the harp has remained the emblem of Ireland, evenin the official arms of the British Empire, and during all lastcentury, the travelling harper, last and pitiful successor of thebards, protected by Columba, was always to be found at the side ofthe priest, to celebrate the holy mysteries of the proscribed worship.He never ceased to be received with tender respect under the thatchedroof of the poor Irish peasant, whom he consoled in his misery andoppression by the plaintive tenderness and solemn sweetness of themusic of his fathers."

Could any expression of ours set forth in stronger light the Celticmind and heart as portrayed in those native elements of music andliterature? Could any thing more forcibly depict the real characterof the race, materialized, as it were, in its exterior institutions?We were right in saying that among no other race was what isgenerally a mere adornment to a nation, raised to the dignity ofa social and political instrument as it was among the Celts. Henceit was impossible for persecution and oppression to destroy it,and the Celtic nature to-day is still traditional, full of faith,and at the same time poetical and impulsive as when those greatfeatures of the race held full sway.

Besides music, several other branches of art, particularlyarchitecture, design, and calligraphy, are worthy our attention,presenting, as they do, features unseen anywhere else; and wouldenable us still better to understand the character of the Celticrace. But our limits require us to refrain from what might bethought redundant and unnecessary.

We hasten, therefore, to consider another branch of ourinvestigation, one which might be esteemed paramount to all others,and by the consideration of which we might have begun this chapter,only that its importance will be better understood after what hasbeen already said. It is a chief characteristic which grew soperfectly out of the Celtic mind and aptitudes, that long centuriesof most adverse circ*mstances, we may say, a whole host of contraryinfluences were unable to make the Celts entirely abandon it. Wemean the clan system, which, as a system, indeed, has disappearedthese three centuries ago, but which may be said to subsist stillin the clan spirit, as ardent almost among them as ever.

It is beyond doubt that the patriarchal government was the firstestablished among men. The father ruled the family. As long as helived he was lawgiver, priest, master; his power was acknowledgedas absolute. Hiis children, even after their marriage, remainedto a certain extent subject to him. Yet each became in turn thehead of a small state, ruled with the primitive simplicity ofthe first family.

In the East, history shows us that the patriarchal governmentwas succeeded immediately by an extensive and complete despotism.Millions of men soon became the abject slaves of an irresponsiblemonarch. Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, appear at once in history aspowerful states at the mercy of a despot whose will was law.

But in other more favored lands the family was succeeded by thetribe, a simple development of the former, an agglomeration ofmen of the same blood, who could all trace their pedigree to theacknowledged head; possessing, consequently, a chief of the samerace, either hereditary or elective, according to variable rulesalways based on tradition. This was the case among the Jews, amongthe Arabs, with whom the system yet prevails; even it seemsprimitively in Hindostan, where modern research has brought tolight modes of holding property which suppose the same system.

But especially was this the case among the Celts, where the systemhaving subsisted up to recently, it can be better known in all itsdetails. Indeed, their adherence to it, in spite of every obstaclethat could oppose it, shows that it was natural to them, congenialto all their inclinations, the only system that could satisfy andmake them happy; consequently, a characteristic of the race.

There was a time when the system we speak of ruled many a land,from the Western Irish Sea to the foot of the Caucasus. Everywherewithin those limits it presented the same general features; inIreland alone has it been preserved in all its vigor until thebeginning of the seventeenth century, so rooted was it in theIrish blood. Consequently, it can be studied better there. Whatwe say, therefore, will be chiefly derived from the study ofIrish customs, although other Gaelic tribes will also furnishus with data for our observations.

In countries ruled by the clan system, the territory was dividedamong the clans, each of them occupying a particular district,which was seldom enlarged or diminished. This is seen particularlyin Palestine, in ancient Gaul, in the British islands. Hence theirhostile encounters had always for object movable plunder of anykind, chiefly cattle; never conquest nor annexation of territory.The word "preying," which is generally used for their expeditions,explains their nature at once. It was only in the event of theextinction of a clan that the topography was altered, and frequentlya general repartition of land among neighboring tribes took place.

It is true, when a surplus population compelled them to send abroadswarms of their youth, that the conquest of a foreign country becamean absolute necessity. But, on such occasions it was outside of Celticlimits that they spread themselves, taking possession of a territorynot their own. They almost invariably respected the land of otherclans of the same race, even when most hostile to them; exceptionsto this rule are extremely rare. It was thus that they sent largearmies of their young men into Northern Italy, along the Danube,into Grecian Albania and Thrace, and finally into the very centreof Asia Minor. The fixing of the geographical position of each tribewas, therefore, a rule among them; and in this they differed fromnomadic nations, such as the Tartars in Asia and even the NorthAmerican Indians, whose hold on the land was too slight to offer anyprolonged resistance to invaders. Hence the position of the Galliccivitates was definite, and, so to speak, immovable, as we may seeby consulting the maps of ancient Gaul at any time anterior to itsthorough conquest by the Romans; not so among the German tribes,whose positions on the maps must differ according to time.

We have already seen that so sacred were the limits of the clandistricts, that one of the chief duties of ollamhs and shanachieswas to know them and see them preserved.

But if territory was defined in Celtic nations, the right ofholding land differed in the case of the chieftain and theclansman. The head of the tribe had a certain well-defined portionassigned to him in virtue of his office, and as long only as heheld it; the clansmen held the remainder in common, no particularspot being assigned to any one of them.

As far, therefore, as the holding of land was concerned, therewere neither rich nor poor among the Celts; the wealth of thebest of them consisted of cattle, house furniture, money, jewelry,and other movable property. In the time of St. Columba, theowner of five cows was thought to be a very poor man, althoughhe could send them to graze on any free land of his tribe. Thereis no doubt that the almost insurmountable difficulty of the landquestion at this time originated in the attachment of the peopleto the old system, which had not yet perished in their affections;and certainly many "agrarian outrages," as they are called, havehad their source in the traditions of a people once accustomedto move and act freely in a free territory.

It is needless to call the attention of the reader to anotherconsequence of that state of things, namely, the persistence ofterritorial possessions. As no individual among them could alienatehis portion, no individual or family could absorb the territory tothe exclusion of others; no great landed aristocracy consequentlycould exist, and no part of the land could pass by purchase or inany other way to a different tribe or to an alien race. The forceof arms sometimes produced temporary changes, nothing more. It isthe same principle which has preserved the small Indian tribesstill existing in Canada. Their "reservations," as they are called,having been legalized by the British Government at the time ofthe conquest from the French, the territory assigned to them wouldhave remained in their occupancy forever in the midst of theever-shifting possessions of the white race, had not the OttawaParliament lately "allowed" those reservations to be dividedamong the families of the tribes, with power for each to disposeof its portion, a power which will soon banish them from thecountry of their ancestors.

The preceding observations do not conflict in the least with whatis generally said of inheritance by "gavel kind," whereby theproperty was equally divided among the sons to the exclusion ofthe daughters; as it is clear that the property to be thus dividedwas only movable and personal property.

But after the land we must consider the persons under theclan-system. Under this head we shall examine briefly:

I. The political offices, such as the dignities of Ard-Righ orsupreme monarch, of the provincial kings, and of the subordinatechieftains.

II. The state of the common people.

III. The bondsmen or slaves.

All literary or civil offices, not political, were hereditary.Hence the professions of ollamh, shanachy, bard, brehon, physician,passed from father to son—a very injudicious arrangement apparently,but it seems nevertheless to have worked well in Ireland. Strangeto say, however, these various classes formed no castes as inEgypt or in India, because no one was prevented from embracingthose professions, even when not born to them; and, in the end,success in study was the only requisite for reaching the highestround of the literary or professional ladder, as in China.

But a stranger and more dangerous feature of the system was thatin political offices the dignities were hereditary as to thefamily, elective as to the person. Hence the title of Ard-Righor supreme monarch did not necessarily pass to the eldest son ofthe former king, but another member of the same family might beelected to the office, and was even designated to it during thelifetime of the actual holder, thus becoming Tanist or heir-apparent.Every one sees at a glance the numberless disadvantages resultingfrom such an institution, and it must be said that most of thebloody crimes recorded in Irish history sprang from it.

At first sight, the dignity of supreme monarch would almost seemto be a sinecure under the clan system, as the authority attachedto it was extremely limited, and is generally compared in itsrelations to the subordinate kings, as that of metropolitan tosuffragan bishops in the Church. Nevertheless, all Celtic nationsappear to have attached a great importance to it, and the realmisfortunes of Ireland began when contention ran so high for theoffice that the people were divided in their supreme allegiance,and no Ard-Righ was acknowledged at the same time by all; whichhappened precisely at the period of the invasion under Strongbow.

Some few facts lately brought to light in the vicissitudes ofvarious branches of the Celtic family show at once how highly allCelts, wherever they might be settled, esteemed the dignity ofsupreme monarch. It existed, as we have said, in all Celticcountries, and consequently in Gaul; and the passage in the"Commentaries" of Julius Caesar on the subject is too importantto be entirely passed over.

After having remarked in the eleventh chapter, "De Bello Gallico,"lib. vi., that in Gaul the whole country, each city or clan, andevery subdivision of it, even to single houses, presented thestrange spectacle of two parties, "factiones," always in presenceof and opposed to each other, he says in Chapter XII.: —at thearrival of Caesar in Gaul the Eduans and the Sequanians werecontending for the supreme authority—"The latter civitas—clan—namely, the Sequanians, being inferior in power—because fromtime immemorial the supreme authority had been vested in theEduans—had called to its aid the Germans under Ariovist by theinducement of great advantages and promises. After many successfulbattles, in which the entire nobility of the Eduan clan perished,the Sequanians acquired so much power that they rallied tothemselves the greatest number of the allies of their rivals,obliged the Eduans to give as hostages the children of theirnobles who had perished, to swear that they would not attemptany thing against their conquerors, and even took possession ofa part of their territory, and thus obtained the supreme commandof all Gaul."

We see by this passage that there was a supremacy resting in thehands of some one, over the whole nation. The successful tribehad a chief to whom that supremacy belonged. Caesar, it is true,does not speak of a monarch as of a person, but attributes thepower to the "civitas," the tribe. It is well known, however,that each tribe had a head, and that in Celtic countries thepower was never vested in a body of men, assembly, committee, orboard, as we say in modern times, but in the chieftain, whatevermay have been his degree.

The author of the "Commentaries" was a Roman in whose eyes thestate was every thing, the actual office-holder, dictator, consul,or praetor, a mere instrument for a short time; and he was too apt,like most of his countrymen, to judge of other nations by his own.

We may conclude from the passage quoted that there was a suprememonarch in Gaul as well as in Ireland, and modern historians ofGaul have acknowledged it.

But there is yet a stranger fact, which absolutely cannot beexplained, save on the supposition that the Celts everywhere heldthe supreme dignity of extreme if not absolute importance in theirpolitical system.

To give it the preeminence it deserves, we must refer to a subsequentevent in the history of the Celts in Britain, since it happenedthere several centuries after Caesar, and we will quote the wordsof Augustin Thierry, who relates it:

"After the retreat of the legions, recalled to Italy to protectthe centre of the empire and Rome itself against the invasionof the Goths, the Britons ceased to acknowledge the power of theforeign governors set over their provinces and cities. The forms,the offices, the very spirit and language of the Roman administrationdisappeared; in their place was reconstituted the traditionalauthority of the clannish chieftains formerly abolished by Romanpower. Ancient genealogies carefully preserved by the poets,called in the British language bairdd - bards - helped to discoverthose who could pretend to the dignity of chieftains of tribesor families, tribe and family being synonymous in their language;and the ties of relationship formed the basis of their socialstate. Men of the lowest class, among that people, preserved inmemory the long line of their ancestry with a care scarcely knownto other nations, among the highest lords and princes. All theBritish Celts, poor or rich, had to establish their genealogy inorder fully to enjoy their civil rights and secure their claim ofproperty in the territory of the tribe. The whole belonging to aprimitive family, no one could lay any claim to the soil, unless hisrelationship was well established.

"At the top of this social order, composing a federation of smallhereditary sovereignties, the Britons, freed from Roman power,constituted a high national sovereignty; they created a chieftainof chieftains, in their tongue called Penteyrn, that is to say,a king of the whole, in the language of their old annals. Andthey made him elective.—It was also formerly the custom in Gaul.—The object was to introduce into their system a kind ofcentralization, which, however, was always loose among Celtictribes."—(Conquete de l'Angleterre, liv. i.)

It is evident to us that if the Britons constituted a supremepower, when freed from the Roman yoke, it was only because theyhad possessed it before they became subject to that yoke. It is,therefore, safe to conclude that there was a supreme monarch inBritain and in Gaul as well as in Ireland; and since the Britons,after having lost for several centuries their autonomy of government,thought of reestablishing this supreme authority as soon as theywere free to do so, it is clear that they attached a realimportance to it, and that it entered as an essential elementinto the social fabric.

But what in reality was the authority of the Ard-Righ in Ireland,of the Penteyrn in Britain, of the supreme chief in Gaul, whosename, as usual, is not mentioned by Caesar?

First, it is to be remarked that a certain extent of territory wasalways under his immediate authority. Then, as far as we can gatherfrom history, there was a reciprocity of obligations between thehigh power and the subordinate kings or chieftains, the formergranting subsidies to the latter, who in turn paid tribute tosupport the munificence or military power of the former.

We know from the Irish annals that the dignity of Ard-Righ wasalways sustained by alliances with some of the provincial kings,to secure the submission of others, and we have a hint of thesame nature in the passage, already quoted, from Caesar, as alsotaking place in Gaul.

We know also from the "Book of Rights" that the tributes and stipendsconsisted of bondsmen, silver shields, embroidered cloaks, cattle,weapons, corn, victuals, or any other contribution.

The Ard-Righ, moreover, convened the Feis, or general assemblyof the nation, every third year; first at Tara, and after Tarawas left to go to ruin in consequence of the curse of St. Ruadhanin the sixth century, wherever the supreme monarch establishedhis residence.

The order of succession to the supreme power was the weakest pointof the Irish constitution, and became the cause of by far thegreatest portion of the nation's calamities. Theoretically theeldest son—some say the eldest relative—of the monarch succeededhim, when he had no blemish constituting a radical defect: thesupreme power, however, alternating in two families. To securethe succession, the heir-apparent was always declared during thelife of the supreme king; but this constitutional arrangementcaused, perhaps, more crimes and wars than any other socialinstitution among the Celts. The truth is that, after theheir-apparent, sustained by some provincial king, supplanted thereigning monarch, one of the provincial chieftains claimed thecrown and succeeded to it by violence.

Yet the general rule that the monarch was to belong to the raceof Miledh was adhered to almost without exception. One hundredand eighteen sovereigns, according to the moat accredited annals,governed the whole island from the Milesian conquest to St. Patrickin 432. Of these, sixty were of the family of Heremon, settledin the northern part of the island; twenty-nine of the posterityof Heber, settled in the south; twenty-four of that of Ir; threeissued from Lugaid, the son of Ith. All these were of the race ofMiledh; one only was a firbolg, or plebeian, and one a woman.

It is certainly very remarkable that for so long a time—nearlytwo thousand years, according to the best chronologists—Irelandwas ruled by princes of the same family. The fact is unparalleledin history, and shows that the people were firmly attached to theirconstitution, such as it was. It extorted the admiration of SirJohn Davies, the attorney-general of James I, and later of Lord co*ke.

The functions of the provincial kings of Ulster, Munster,Leinster, and Connaught, were in their several districts the sameas those which the Ard-Righ exercised over the whole country. Theyalso had their feuds and alliances with the inferior chieftains,and in peaceful times there was also a reciprocity of obligationsbetween them. Presents were given by the superiors, tributes bythe inferiors; deliberations in assembly, mutual agreement forpublic defence, wars against a common enemy, produced among themtraditional rules which were generally followed, or occasionaldissensions.

Sometimes a province had two kings, chiefly Munster, whichwas often divided into north and south. Each king had hisheir-apparent, the same as the monarch. Indeed, every hereditaryoffice had, besides its actual holder, its Tanist, with right ofsuccession. Hence causes of division and feuds were needlesslymultiplied; yet all the Celtic tribes adhered tenaciously to allthose institutions which appeared rooted in their very nature, andwhich contributed to foster the traditional spirit among them.

For these various offices and their inherent rights were allderived from the universally prevailing family or clannishdisposition. Genealogies and traditions ruled the whole, and gave,as we have seen, to their learned men a most important part andfunction in the social state; and thus what the Greek and Latinauthors, Julius Caesar principally, have told us of the CelticDruids, is literally true of the ollamhs in their various degrees.

But the clannish spirit chiefly showed itself in the authority andrights of every chieftain in his own territory. He was truly thepatriarch of all under him, acknowledged as he was to be the headof the family, elected by all to that office at the death of hispredecessor, after due consultation with the files and shanachies,to whom were intrusted the guardianship of the laws which governedthe clan, and the preservation of the rights of all according tothe strict order of their genealogies and the traditional rulesto be observed.

The power of the chieftain was immense, although limited on everyside by laws and customs. It was based on the deep affection ofrelationship which is so ardent in the Celtic nature. For all theclansmen were related by blood to the head of the tribe, and eachone took a personal pride in the success of his undertakings. Nofeudal lord could ever expect from his vassals the like self-devotion;for, in feudalism, the sense of honor, in clanship, family affection,was the chief moving power.

In clanship the type was not an army, as in feudalism, but afamily. Such a system, doubtless, gave rise to many inconveniences."The breaking up of all general authority," says the Very Rev. DeanButler (Introduction to Clyn's "Annals"), "and the multiplicationof petty independent principalities, was an abuse incident onfeudalism; it was inherent in the very essence of the patriarchalor family system. It began, as feudalism ended, with small independentsocieties, each with its own separate centre of attraction, eachclustering round the lord or the chief, and each rather repellingthan attracting all similar societies. Yet it was not without itsadvantages. If feudalism gave more strength to attack an enemy,clanship secured more happiness at home. The first implied onlyequality for the few, serfdom or even slavery for the many; theother gave a feeling of equality to all."

It was, no doubt, this feeling of equality, joined to that ofrelationship, which not only secured more happiness for the Celt,but which so closely bound the nobility of the land to the inferiorclasses, and gave these latter so ardent an affection for theirchieftains. Clanship, therefore, imparted a peculiar characterto the whole race, and its effect was so lasting and seeminglyineradicable as to be seen in the nation to-day.

Wherever feudalism previously prevailed, we remark at this timea fearful hatred existing between the two classes of the samenation; and the great majority of modern revolutions had theirorigin in that terrible antagonism. The same never existed, andcould not exist, in Celtic Countries; and if England, after aconflict of many centuries, had not finally succeeded in destroyingor exiling the entire nobility of Ireland, we should, doubtless,see to this very day that tender attachment between high and low,rich and poor, which existed in the island in former ages.

This, therefore, not only imparted a peculiar character to thepeople, but also gave to each subordinate chieftain an immensepower over his clan; and it is doubtful if the whole history ofthe country can afford a single example of the clansmen refusingobedience to their chief, unless in the case of great criminalsplaced by their atrocities under the ban of society in formertimes, and under the ban of the Church, since the establishmentof the Christian religion among them.

The previous observations give us an insight into the state ofthe people in Celtic countries. Since, however, we know thatslavery existed among them, we must consider a moment what kindof slavery it was, and how soon it disappeared without passing,as in the rest of Europe, through the ordeal of serfdom.

At the outset, we cannot, as some have done, call slaves theconquered races and poor Milesians, who, according to the ancientannals of Ireland, rose in insurrection and established a king oftheir own during what is supposed to be the first century of theChristian era. The attacotts, as they were called, were notslaves, but poor agriculturists obliged to pay heavy rents: theirvery name in the Celtic language means "rent-paying tribes orpeople." Their oppression never reached the degree of sufferingunder which the Irish small farmers of our days are groaning. For,according to history, they could in three years prepare from theirsurplus productions a great feast, to which the monarch and allhis chieftains, with their retinue, were invited, to be treacherouslyassassinated at the end of the banquet. The great plain of Magh Cro,now Moy Cru, near Knockma, in the county of Galway, was requiredfor such a monster feast; profusion of meats, delicacies, anddrinks was, of course, a necessity for the entertainment of sucha number of high-born and athletic guests, and the feast lastednine days. Who can suppose that in our times the free cottiersof a whole province in Ireland, after supporting their familiesand paying their rent, could spare even in three years the moneyand means requisite to meet the demands of such an occasion? Butthe simple enunciation of the fact proves at least that the attacottswere no slaves, but at most merely an inferior caste, deprived ofmany civil rights, and compelled to pay taxes on land, contraryto the universal custom of Celtic countries.

Caesar, it is true, pretends that real slavery existed among theCelts in Gaul. But a close examination of that short passage inhis "Commentaries," upon which this opinion is based, will proveto us that the slavery he mentions was a very different thing fromthat existing among all other nations of antiquity.

"All over Gaul," he says, "there are two classes of men who enjoyall the honors and social standing in the state—the Druids andthe knights. The plebeians are looked upon almost as slaves, havingno share in public affairs. Many among them, loaded with debt,heavily taxed, or oppressed by the higher class, give themselvesin servitude to the nobility, and then, in hos eadem omnia suntjura quoe dominis in servos, the nobles lord it over them as, withus, masters over their slaves."

It is clear from this very passage that among the Celts no suchservile class existed as among the Romans and other nations ofantiquity. The plebeians, as Caesar calls them, that is to say,the simple clansmen, held no office in the state, were not summonedto the councils of the nation, and, on that account, were nobodiesin the opinion of the writer. But the very name he gives them - plebs - shows that they were no more real slaves than the Romanplebs. They exercised their functions in the state by the elections,and Caesar did not know they could reach public office by applicationto study, and by being ordained to the rank of file, or shanachy,or brehon, in Ireland, at least: and this gave them a direct sharein public affairs.

He adds that debt, taxation, and oppression, obliged a great manyto give themselves in servitude, and that then they were amongthe Celts what slaves were among the Romans.

This assertion of Caesar requires some examination. That therewere slaves among the Gaels, and particularly in Ireland, we knowfrom several passages of old writers preserved in the variousannals of the country. St. Patrick himself was a slave there inhis youth, and we learn from his history and other sources howslaves were generally procured, namely, by piratical expeditionsto the coast of Britain or Gaul. The Irish curraghs, in pagantimes, started from the eastern or southern shores of the island,and, landing on the continent or on some British isle, they capturedwomen, children, and even men, when the crew of the craft was strongenough to overcome them; the captives were then taken to Irelandand sold there. They lost their rights, were reduced to the stateof "chattels," and thus became real slaves. Among the presentsmade by a superior to an inferior chieftain are mentioned bondsmenand bondsmaids. We cannot be surprised at this, since the samething took place among the most ancient patriarchal tribes of theEast, and the Bible has made us all acquainted with the male andfemale servants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who are also calledbondsmen and bondswomen. Among the Celts, therefore, slaves wereof two kinds: those stolen from foreign tribes, and those whohad, as it were, sold themselves, in order to escape a heavieroppression: these latter are the ones mentioned by Caesar.

The number of the first class must always have been very small,at least in Ireland and Britain, since the piratical excursionsof the Celtic tribes inhabiting those countries were almostinvariably undertaken in curraghs, which could only bring afew of these unfortunate individuals from a foreign country.

As to the other class, whatever Caesar may say of their numberin Gaul, making it composed of the greatest part of the plebeiansor common clansmen, we have no doubt but that he was mistaken,and that the number of real slaves reduced to that state bytheir own act must have always been remarkably small.

How could we otherwise account for the numerous armies levied bythe Gaulish chieftains against the power of Rome, or by the Britishand Irish lords in their continual internecine wars? The clansmenengaged in both cases were certainly freemen, fighting with thedetermination which freedom alone can give, and this considerationof itself suffices to show that the great mass of the Celtic tribeswas never reduced to slavery or even to serfdom.

Moreover, the whole drift of the Irish annals goes to prove thatslavery never included any perceptible class of the Celtic population;it always remained individual and domestic, never endangering thesafety of the state, never tending to insurrection and civil disorder,never requiring the vigilance nor even the care of the mastersand lords.

The story of Libran, recorded in the life of St. Columbkill, isso pertinent to our present purpose, and so well adapted to giveus a true idea of what voluntary slavery was among the Celtictribes, that we will give it entire in the words of Montalembert:

"It was one day announced to Columba in Iona that a strangerhad just landed from Ireland, and Columba went to meet him inthe house reserved for guests, to talk with him in private andquestion him as to his dwelliing-place, his family, and the causeof his journey. The stranger told him that he had undertaken thispainful voyage in order, under the monastic habit and in exile,to expiate his sins. Columba, desirous of trying the reality ofhis repentance, drew a most repulsive picture of the hardshipsand difficult obligations of the new life. 'I am ready,' said thestranger, 'to submit to the most cruel and humiliating conditionsthat thou canst command me.' And, after having made confession,he swore, still upon his knees, to accomplish all the requirementsof penitence. 'It is well,' said the abbot: 'now rise from thyknees, seat thyself, and listen. You must first do penance forseven years in the neighboring island of Tirce, after which Iwill see you again.' 'But,' said the penitent, still agitated byremorse, 'how can I expiate a perjury of which I have not yetspoken? Before I left my country I killed a poor man. I was aboutto suffer the punishment of death for that crime, and I was alreadyin irons, when one of my relatives, who is very rich, delivered meby paying the composition demanded. I swore that I would servehim all my life; but, after some days of service, I abandoned him,and here I am notwithstanding my oath.' Upon this the saint addedthat he would only be admitted to the paschal communion after hisseven years of penitence.

"When these were completed, Columba, after having given him thecommunion with his own hand, sent him back to Ireland to his patron,carrying a sword with an ivory handle for his ransom. The patron,however, moved by the entreaties of his wife, gave the penitenthis pardon without ransom. 'Why should we accept the price sentus by the holy Columba? We are not worthy of it. The request ofsuch an intercessor should be granted freely. His blessing willdo more for us than any ransom.' And immediately he detached thegirdle from his waist, which was the ordinary form in Ireland forthe manumission of captives or slaves. Columba had, besides,ordered his penitent to remain with his old father and motheruntil he had rendered to them the last services. This accomplished,his brothers let him go, saying, 'Far be it from us to detain aman who has labored seven years for the salvation of his soul withthe holy Columba!' He then returned to Iona, bringing with him thesword which was to have been his ransom. 'Henceforward thou shaft becalled Libran, for thou art free and emancipated from all ties,' saidColumba; and he immediately admitted him to take the monastic vows."

Servitude, therefore, continued in Ireland after the establishmentof Christianity; but how different from the slavery of otherEuropean countries, which it took so many ages to destroy, andwhich had to pass through so many different stages! Although wecannot know precisely when servitude was completely abolishedamong the Celts, the total silence of the contemporary annals onthe subject justifies the belief that the Danes, on their firstlanding, found no real slaves in the country; and, if the Danesthemselves oppressed the people wherever they established theirpower, they could not make a social institution of slavery. Ithad never been more than a domestic arrangement; it could notbecome a state affair, as among the nations of antiquity.

In clannish tribes, therefore, and particularly among the Celts,the personal freedom of the lowest clansman was the rule, deprivationof individual liberty the exception. Hence the manners of the peoplewere altogether free from the abject deportment of slaves andvilleins in other nations—a cringing disposition of the lowerclass toward their superiors, which continues even to this dayamong the peasantry of Europe, and which patriarchal nations havenever known. The Norman invaders of Ireland, in the twelfth century,were struck with the easy freedom of manner and speech of thepeople, so different from that of the lower orders in feudalcountries. They soon even came to like it; and the superciliousfollowers of Strongbow readily adopted the dress, the habits, thelanguage, and the good-humor of the Celts, in the midst of whomthey found themselves settled.

And it is proper here to show what social dispositions and habitswere the natural result of the clan system, so as to becomecharacteristic of the race, and to endure forever, as long at leastas the race itself. The artless family state of the sept naturallydeveloped a peculiarly social feeling, much less complicated thanin nations more artificially constituted, but of a much deeper andmore lasting character. In the very nature of the mind of thosetribes there must have been a great simplicity of ideas, and onthat account an extraordinary tenacity of belief and will. Thereis no complication and systematic combination of political, moral,and social views, but a few axioms of life adhered to with a mostadmirable energy; and we therefore find a singleness of purpose,a unity of national and religious feeling, among all the individualsof the tribe.

As nothing is complicated and systematized among them, the politicalsystem must be extremely simple, and based entirely on the family.And family ideas being as absolute as they are simple, the politicalsystem also becomes absolute and lasting; without improving, it istrue, but also without the constant changes which bring miserywith revolution to thoughtful, reflective, and systematic nations.What a frightful amount of misfortunes has not logic, as it iscalled, brought upon the French! It was in the name of logicaland metaphysical principles that the fabric of society was destroyeda hundred years ago, to make room for what was then called a morerationally-constituted edifice; but the new building is not yetfinished, and God only knows when it will be!

The few axioms lying at the base of the Celtic mind with respectto government are much preferable, because much more conduciveto stability, and consequently to peace and order, whatever mayhave been the local agitation and temporary feuds and divisions.Hence we see the permanence of the supreme authority resting inone family among the Celts through so many ages, in spite ofcontinual wrangling for that supreme power. Hence the permanenceof territorial limits in spite of lasting feuds, although territorywas not invested in any particular inheriting family, but in apurely moral being called the clan or sept.

As for the moral and social feelings in those tribes, they arenot drawn coldly from the mind, and sternly imposed by the externallaw, in the form of axioms and enactments, as was the case chieflyin Sparta, and as is still the case in the Chinese Empire to-day;but they gush forth impetuously from impulsive and loving hearts,and spread like living waters which no artificially-cut stonescan bank and confine, but which must expand freely in the landthey fertilize.

Deep affection, then, is with them at the root of all moral andsocial feelings; and as all those feelings, even the national andpatriotic, are merged in real domestic sentiment, a great purityof morals must exist among them, nothing being so conducivethereto as family affections.

Above all, when those purely-natural dispositions are raised tothe level of the supernatural ones by a divinely-inspired code, bythe sublime elevation of Christian purity, then can there be foundnothing on earth more lovely and admirable. Chastity is alwaysattractive to a pure heart; patriarchal guilelessness becomessacred even to the corrupt, if not altogether hardened, man.

Of course we do not pretend that this happy state of things iswithout its exceptions; that the light has no shadow, the beautyno occasional blemish. We speak of the generality, or at least ofthe majority, of cases; for perfection cannot belong to this world.

Yet mysticism is entirely absent from such a moral and religiousstate, on account, perhaps, of the paucity of ideas by which theheart is ruled, and perhaps also on account of the artlesssimplicity which characterizes every thing in primitively-constitutednations. And, wonderful to say, without any mysticism there isoften among them a perfect holiness of life, adapting itself toall circ*mstances, climates, and associations. The same heart ofa young maiden is capable of embracing a married life or ofdevoting itself to religious celibacy; and in either case theduties of each are performed with the most perfect simplicity andthe highest sanctity. Hence, how often does a trifling circ*mstance

determine for her her whole subsequent life, and make her eitherthe mother of a family or the devoted spouse of Christ! Yet, thefinal determination once taken, the whole after-life seems tohave been predetermined from infancy as though no other coursecould have been possible.

There is no doubt that sensual corruption is particularly engenderedby an artificial state of society, which necessarily fostersmorbidity of imagination and nervous excitability. A primitiveand patriarchal life, on the contrary, leads to moderation in allthings, and repose of the senses.

Herein is found the explanation of the eagerness with which theCelts everywhere, but particularly in Ireland, as soon asChristianity was preached to them, rushed to a life of perfectionand continence. St. Patrick himself expressed his surprise, andshowed, by several words in his "Confessio," that he was scarcelyprepared for it. "The sons of Irishmen," he says, "and the daughtersof their chieftains, want to become monks and virgins of Christ."We know what a multitude of monasteries and nunneries sprang upall over the island in the very days of the first apostle and ofhis immediate successors. Montalembert remarks that, according tothe most reliable and oldest documents, a religious house isscarcely mentioned which contained less than three thousand monksor nuns. It appeared to be a consecrated number; and this tookplace immediately after the conversion of the island to Christianity,while even still a great number were pagans.

"There was particularly," says St. Patrick, "one blessed Irish girl,gentle born, most beautiful, already of a marriageable age, whom Ihad baptized. After a few days she came back and told me that amessenger of God had appeared to her, advising her to become a virginof Christ, and live united to God. Thanks be to the Almighty! Sixdays after, she obtained, with the greatest joy and avidity, whatshe wished. The same must be said of all the virgins of God; theirparents—those remaining pagans, no doubt—instead of approving ofit, persecute them, and load them with obloquy; yet their numberincreases constantly; and, indeed, of all those that have beenthus born to Christ, I cannot give the number, besides thoseliving in holy widowhood, and keeping continency in the midst ofthe world.

"But those girls chiefly suffer most who are bound to service;they are often subjected to terrors and threats—from paganmasters surely—yet they persevere. The Lord has given his holygrace of purity to those servant-girls; the more they are temptedagainst chastity, the more able they show themselves to keep it."

Does not this passage, written by St. Patrick, describe preciselywhat is now of every-day occurrence wherever the Irish emigrate?The Celts, therefore, were evidently at the time of their conversionwhat they are now; and it has been justly remarked that, of allnations whose records have been kept in the history of the CatholicChurch, they have been the only ones whose chieftains, princes, evenkings, have shown themselves almost as eager to become, not onlyChristians, but even monks and priests, as the last of their clansmenand vassals. Every where else the lower orders chiefly have furnishedthe first followers of Christ, the rich and the great being few atthe beginning, and forming only the exception.

The evident consequence of this well-attested fact is that thepagan Celts, even of the highest rank, generally led pure lives,and admired chastity. But there is something more. Morality restson the sense of duty; the deeper that sense is imprinted in theheart of man, the more man becomes truly moral and holy. It canbe almost demonstrated that scarcely any thing gives more solidityto the sense of duty than a simple and patriarchal life. Theirviews of morals being no more complicated than their views ofany thing else; being accustomed to reduce every thing of aspiritual, moral nature to a few feelings and axioms, as it were,but at the same time becoming strongly attached to them on accountof the importance which every man naturally bestows on matters ofthat sort; what among other nations forms a complicated code ofmorality more or less pure, more or less corrupt, for the nationsof which we speak becomes compressed, so to speak, in a nutshell,and, the essence remaining always at the bottom, the idea of dutygrows paramount in their minds and hearts, and every thing theydo is illumined by that light of the human conscience, which,after all, is for each one of us the voice of God. False issuesdo not distract their minds, and give a wrong bias to theconscience. Hence Celtic tribes, by their very nature, werestrictly conscientious.

So preeminently was this the case with them that spiritual thingsin their eyes became, as they truly are, real and substantial.Hence their religion was not an exterior thing only. On the contrary,exterior rites were in their eyes only symbolical, and mere emblemsof the reality which they covered.

It should, therefore, be no matter of surprise to us to find thatfor them religion has always been above all things; that they havealways sacrificed to it whatever is dear to man on earth. They allseem to feel as instinctively and deeply as the thoroughly cultivatedand superior mind of Thomas More did, that eternal things areinfinitely superior to whatever is temporal, and that a wise manought to give up every thing rather than be faithless to his religion.

From the previous remarks, we map conclude, with Mr. MatthewArnold, who has applied his critical and appreciative mind to thestudy of the Celtic character, that "the Celtic genius has sentimentas its main basis, with love of beauty, charm, and spiritualityfor its excellence," but, he adds, "ineffectualness and self-willfor its defects." On these last words we may be allowed to make afew concluding observations.

If by "ineffectualness" is understood that, owing to their impulsivenature, the Celts often attempted more than they could accomplish,and thus failed; or that on many occasions of less import theychanged their mind, and, after a slight effort, did not perseverein an undertaking just begun, there is no doubt of the truth ofthe observation. But, if the celebrated writer meant to say thatthis defect of character always accompanied the Celts in whateverthey attempted, and that thus they were constantly foiled andnever successful in any thing; or, still worse, that, owing towant of perseverance and of energy, they too soon relaxed in theirefforts, and that every enterprise and determination on theirpart became "ineffectual"—we so far disagree with him that themain object of the following pages will be to contradict thesepositions, and to show by the history of the race, in Ireland atleast, that, owing precisely to their "self-will," they were neverultimately unsuccessful in their aspirations; but that, on thecontrary, they have always in the end effected what with theiraccustomed perseverance and self-will they have at all times stoodfor. At least this we hope will become evident, whenever they had agreat object in view, and with respect to things to which theyattached a real and paramount importance.

CHAPTER II.

THE WORLD UNDER THE LEAD OF THE EUROPEAN RACES.—MISSION OF THEIRISH RACE IN THE MOVEMENT.

"The old prophecies are being fulfilled; Japhet takes possessionof the tents of Sem."—(De Maistre, Lettre au Comte d'Avaray.)

The following considerations will at once demonstrate the importanceand reality of the subject which we have undertaken to treat upon:

It was at the second birth of mankind, when the family of Noah,left alone after the flood, was to originate a new state of things,and in its posterity to take possession of all the continentsand islands of the globe, that the prophecy alluded to at thehead of this chapter was uttered, to be afterward recorded byMoses, and preserved by the Hebrews and the Christians till theend of time.

Never before has it been so near its accomplishment as we see itnow; and the great Joseph de Maistre was the first to point thisout distinctly. Yet he did not intend to say that it is only inour times that Europe has been placed by Providence at the headof human affairs; he only meant that what the prophet saw andannounced six thousand years ago seems now to be on the pointof complete realization.

It will be interesting to examine, first, in a general way, howthe race of Japhet, to whom Europe was given as a dwelling place,gradually crept more and more into prominence after having at theoutset been cast into the shade by the posterity of the two othersons of Noah.

The Asiatic and African races, the posterity of Sem and Cham,appear in our days destitute of all energy, and incapable notonly of ruling over foreign races, but even of standing alone andescaping a foreign yoke. It has not been so from the beginning.There was a period of wonderful activity for them. Asia and Africafor many ages were in turn the respective centres of civilizationand of human history; and the material relics of their formerenergy still astonish all European travellers who visit the Pyramidsof Egypt, the obelisks and temples of Nubia and Ethiopia, theimmense stone structures of Arabia, Petraea and Persia, as wellas the stupendous pagodas of Hindostan. How, under a burning sun,men of those now-despised races could raise structures so mightyand so vast in number; how the ancestors of the now-wretched Copt,of the wandering Bedouin, of the effete Persian, of the dreamyHindoo, could display such mental vigor and such physical enduranceas the remains of their architectural skill and even of theirliterature plainly show, is a mystery which no one has hithertoattempted to solve. Nothing in modern Europe, where such activitynow prevails, can compare with what the Eastern and Southern racesaccomplished thousands of years ago. Ethiopia, now buried in sandand in sleep, was, according to Heeren, the most reliable observerof antiquity in our days, a land of immense commercial enterprise,and wonderful architectural skill and energy. In all probabilityEgypt received her civilization from this country; and Homer singsof the renowned prosperity of the long-lived and happy Ethiopians.It is useless to repeat here what we have all learned in our youthof Babylon and Nineveh, in Mesopotamia; of Persepolis, in fertileand blooming Iran; of the now ruined mountain-cities of Idumaeaand Northern Arabia; of Thebes and Memphis; of Thadmor, in Syria;of Balk and Samarcand, in Central Asia; of the wonderful citieson the banks of the Ganges and in the southern districts of thepeninsula of Hindostan.

That the ancestors of the miserable men who continue to exist inall those countries were able to raise fabrics which time seemspowerless to destroy, while their descendants can scarcely erecthuts for their habitation, which are buried under the sand at thefirst breath of the storm, is inexplicable, especially when we takeinto consideration the principles of the modern doctrine of humanprogress and the indefinite perfectibility of man.

At the time when those Eastern and Southern nations flourished,the sons of Japhet had not yet taken a place in history. Silentlyand unnoticed they wandered from the cradle of mankind; and, ifscripture had not recorded their names, we should be at a lossto-day to reach back to the origin of European nations. Yet werethey destined, according to prophecy, to be the future rulers ofthe world; and their education for that high destiny was a rudeand painful one, receiving as they did for their share of theglobe its roughest portion: an uninterrupted forest covering alltheir domain from the central plateau which they had left to theshores of the northern and western ocean, their utmost limit.Many branches of that bold race—audax Japeti genus—fell intoa state of barbarism, but a barbarism very different from that ofthe tribes of Oriental or Southern origin. With them degradationwas not final, as it seems to have been with some branches atleast of the other stems. They were always reclaimable, alwaysapt to receive education, and, after having existed for centuriesin an almost savage state, they were capable of once more attainingthe highest civilization. This the Scandinavian and German tribeshave satisfactorily demonstrated.

It may even be said that all the branches of the stock of Japhetfirst fell from their original elevation and passed through realbarbarism, to rise again by their own efforts and occupy a prominentposition on the stage of history; and this fact has, no doubt, givenrise to the fable of the primitive savage state of all men.

That the theory is false is proved at once by the sudden emergenceof all Eastern nations into splendor and strength without everhaving had barbarous ancestors. But, when they fall, it seems tobe forever; and it looks at least problematical whether Westernintercourse, and even the intermixture of Western blood, canreinvigorate the apathetic races of Asia. As to their rising oftheir own accord and assuming once again the lead of the world,no one can for a moment give a second thought to the realizationof such a dream.

But how and when did the races of Japhet appear first in history?How and when did the Eastern races begin to fall behind theiryounger brethren?

A great deal has been written, and with a vast amount of dogmatism,concerning the Pelasgians and their colonizations and conquests onthe shore and over the islands of the Mediterranean Sea. But nothingcan be proved with certainty in regard to their origin and manners,their rise and fall. In fact, European history begins with that ofGreece; and the struggle between Hellas and Persia is at once thebrilliant introduction of the sons of Japhet on the stage of theworld—the Trojan War being more than half fabulous.

The campaigns of Alexander established the supremacy of the West;and from that epoch the Oriental races begin to fall into thatprofound slumber wherein they still lie buried, and which thebrilliant activity of the Saracens and Moslems broke for a time—now,we must hope, passed away forever.

The downfall of the far Orient was not, however, contemporaneouswith the supremacy of Greece over the East. The great peninsulaof India was still to show for many ages an astonishing activityunder the successive sway of the Hindoos, the Patans, the Moguls,and the Sikhs. China also was to continue for a long time an immenseand prosperous empire; but the existence of both these countrieswas concentrated in themselves, so that the rest of the world feltno result from their internal agitations. Life was gradually ebbingaway in the great Mongolian family, and the silent beatings ofthe pulse that indicated the slow freezing of their blood couldneither be heard nor felt beyond their own territorial limits.

Nothing new in literature and the arts is visible among them afterthe appearance, on their western frontiers, of the sons of Japhet,led by the Macedonian hero. It now seems established that Sanscritliterature, the only, but really surprising proof of intellectuallife in Hindostan, is anterior to that epoch.

As to China, the great discoveries which in the hands of theEuropean races have led to such wonderful results, the mariner'scompass, the printing-press, gunpowder, paper, bank-notes, remainedfor the Chinese mere toys or without further improvements aftertheir first discovery. It is not known when those great inventionsfirst appeared among them. They had been in operation for agesbefore Marco Polo saw them in use, and scarcely understood themhimself. Europeans were at that time so little prepared for thereception of those material instruments of civilization, that thepublication of his travels only produced incredulity with regardto those mighty engines of good or evil.

But those very proofs of Oriental ingenuity establish the fact ofa point of suspension in mental activity among the nations whichdiscovered them. Its exact date is unknown; but every thing tendsto prove that it took place long ages ago, and nothing is so wellcalculated to bring home to our minds the great fact which we arenow trying to establish as the simple mention of the two followingphenomena in the life of the most remote Eastern nations:

The genius of the East was at one time able to produce literaryworks of a philosophical and poetical character unsurpassed bythose of any other nation. The most learned men of modern timesin Europe, when they are in the position to become practicallyacquainted with them, and peruse them in their original dialects,can scarcely find words to express their astonishment, intimatelyconversant as they are with the masterpieces of Greece and Romeand of the most polite Christian nations. They find in Sanscritpoems and religious books models of every description; but theychiefly find in them an abundance, a freshness, a mental energy,which fill them with wonder; yet all those high intellectualendowments have disappeared ages ago, no one knows how nor preciselywhen. It is clear that the nation which produced them has falleninto a kind of unconscious stupor, which has been its mentalcondition ever since, and which to-day raises puny Europe to thestature of a giant before the fallen colossus.

Again: many ages ago the Mongolian family in China invented manymaterial processes which have been mainly the clause of the riseof Europe in our days. They were really the invention of the Chinese,who neither received them from nor communicated them to any othernation. Ages ago they became known to us accidentally through theirinstrumentality; but, as we were not at that time prepared for theadoption of such useful discoveries, their mention in a book thenread all over Europe excited only ridicule and unbelief. As soonas the Western mind mastered them of itself, they became straightwayof immense importance, and gave rise, we may say, to all that wecall modern civilization. But in the hands of the Chinese theyremained useless and unproductive, as they are to this day, althoughthey may now see what we have done with them. Their mind, therefore,once active enough to invent mighty instruments of material progress,long ago became perfectly incapable of improving on its own invention,so that European vessels convey to their astonished sight what wasoriginally theirs, but so improved and altered as to render theoriginal utterly contemptible and ridiculous. And, what is strangerstill, though they can compare their own rude implements with ours,and possess a most acute mind in what is materially useful, theycannot be brought to confess Western superiority. The advantagewhich they really possessed over us a thousand years ago is stilla reality to their blind pride.

But it is time to return to the epoch when the race of Japhet beganto put forth its power.

Roman intellectual and physical vigor was the first great forcewhich gave Europe that preeminence she has never since lost; andthere was a moment in history when it seemed likely that a nation,or a city rather, was on the point of realizing the propheticpromise made to the sons of Noah.

But an idolatrous nation could not receive that boon; and theRoman sway affected very slightly the African and Asiatic nations,whatever its pretensions may have been.

For, when Rome had subdued what she called Europe, Asia, and Africa—the whole globe—whenever she found that her empire did not reachthe sea, she established there posts of armed men; colonies weresent out and legions distributed along the line; even in some places,as in Britain, walls were constructed, stretching across islands, ifnot along continents. Whatever country had the happiness of beingincluded between those limits belonged to "the city and the world"-urbi et orbi; beyond was Cimmerian darkness in the North, orburning deserts in the South. Mankind had no right to exist outsideof her sway; and, if some roaming barbarians strayed over theinhospitable confines, they could not complain at having theirexistence swept off from the field of history, so unworthy werethey of the name of men. Science itself, the science of thosetimes, had to admit such ideas and dictate them to polished writers.Hence, according to the greatest geographers, mankind could existneither in tropical nor in arctic regions; and Strabo, dividing theglobe into five zones, declared that only two of them were habitable.

We now know how false were those assertions, and indeed howcirc*mscribed was the power of ancient Rome. She pretended touniversal as well as to eternal dominion; but she deceived herselfin both cases. Under her sway the races of Japhet were not "todwell in the tents of Sem." She was not worthy of accomplishingthe great prophecy which is now under our consideration.

It is, however, undoubtedly due to her that the children of Japhetbecame the dominant race of the globe, and the Eastern nations,once so active and so powerful, were overshadowed by her glory,and had already fallen into that slumber which seems eternal.

Egypt was reduced so low that a victorious Roman general had onlyto appear on her borders to insure immediate submission.

Syria and Mesopotamia were fast becoming the frightful deserts theyare to-day. Persia dared not move in the awful presence of a fewlegions scattered along the Tigris; and, if, later on, the Parthiankings made a successful resistance against Rome, it was only owingto the abominable corruption of Roman society at the time; but,in fact, Iran had fallen to rise no more, save spasmodicallyunder Mohammedan rule.

The fact is, that, in the subsequent flood of barbarians which forcenturies overwhelmed and destroyed the whole of Europe, we behold,on all sides, streams of Northern European races, members of thesame family of Japhet. It was the Goths that ruined Palestine evenin the time of St. Jerome. If side by side with Northern nationsthe Huns appeared, no one knows precisely whence they came. Attilacalled himself King of the Scythians and the Goths, as well asgrandson of Nimrod. He came with his mighty hosts from beyond theDanube; this is all that can be said with certainty of his origin.

The East, therefore, was already dead, and could furnish no powerfulfoe against that Rome which it detested. It is even in this Orientalsupineness that we can find a reason for the duration of theinglorious empire of Constantinople. Rome and the West, though farmore vigorous, were overwhelmed by barbarians of the same originalstock sent by Providence to "renew its youth like that of the eagle."Constantinople and the East continued for a thousand years longer todrag out their feeble existence, because the far Orient could notsend a few of its tribes to touch their walls and cause them tocrumble into dust. It is even remarkable that the armies of Mohammedand his successors, in the flush of their new fanaticism, did notdare for a long time to attack the race of Japhet settled on theBosporus. From their native Arabia they easily overran Egypt andNorthern Africa, Syria and Palestine, Mesopotamia and Persia. ButAsia Minor and Thrace remained for centuries proof against theirfury, and, whenever their fleets appeared in the Bosporus, theywere easily defeated by the unworthy successors of Constantineand Theodosius. This fact, which has not been sufficiently noticed,shows conclusively that the energy imparted by Mohammedanismto Oriental nations would have lasted but a short time, andencountered in the West a successful resistance, had not theTurks appeared on the scene, destroyed the Saracen dynasties,and, by infusing the blood of Central Asia into the veins ofEastern and Southern fanatics, prolonged for so many ages thesway of the Crescent over a large portion of the globe.

This was the turning-point in human affairs between the East andthe West. We do not write history, and cannot, consequently, enterinto details. It is enough to say that a new element, strengthenedby a long struggle with Moslemism, was to give to the West a lastingpreponderance which ancient Rome could not possess, and whosedevelopments we see in our days. This new element was the Christianreligion, solidly established on the ruins of idolatry and heresy;far more solidly established, consequently, than under the Christianemperors of Rome, while paganism still existed in the capital itself.

The Christian religion, which was to make one society of all thechildren of Adam; which, at its birth, took the name of universalor catholic (whereas previously all religions had been merelynational, and therefore very limited in their effects upon mankindat large); which alone was destined to establish and maintain,through all ages, spite of innumerable obstacles, a real universalsway over all nations and tribes—the Christian religion alonecould give one race preponderance over others until all shouldbecome, as it were, merged into one.

At first it seemed that Providence destined that high calling forthe Semitic branch of the human family. The Hebrew people, trainedby God himself, through so many ages, for the highest purposes,finally gave birth to the great Leader who, by redeeming all men,was to gather them all into one family. This Leader, our divineLord, himself a Hebrew, chose twelve men of the same nation tobe the founders of the great edifice. We know how, the divineplan was frustrated by the stubbornness of the Jews, whorejected the corner-stone of the building, to be themselvesdashed against its walls and destroyed. The sons of Japhet weresubstituted for the sons of Sem, Europe for Asia, Rome forJerusalem; and the real commencement of the lasting preponderanceof the West dates from the establishment of the Christian Churchin Rome.

See how, from Christianity, the Caucasian race, as we call it,came to be the rulers of the world. A mighty revolution, whereinall the branches of that great race become intermingled andconfused, sweeps over the Roman Empire. Every thing seemsdestroyed by the onset of the barbarians, in order that they, byreceiving the only true religion which they found without seekingamong those whom they conquered, might become worthy of fulfillingthe designs of Providence. All the barriers are overthrown that oneinstitution, called Christendom, may take form and harmony. Thereare to be no more Romans, nor Gauls, nor Iberians, nor Germans, norScandinavians—only Christians. It is a renewed and reinvigoratedrace of Japhet, imbued with true doctrine, clothed with solidvirtues, animated with an overwhelming energy. It is a colossalstatue, moulded by popes, chiselled by bishops, set on its feet byChristian emperors and kings, chiefly by Charlemagne, Alfred, LouisIX, and Otho. Is there not perfect unity between those great mendivided by such intervals of space and time? Is not their work auniversal republic, whose foundations they laid with their own hands?

The rest of the world, still prostrate at the feet of foolish idols,or carried away by human errors and delusions, sinks deeper anddeeper into apathy and corruption, while Europe is reserved formighty purposes in centuries to come. A stream is gathering in theWest, which is destined to sweep down and bear away all obstacles,and to cover every continent with its regenerating waters.

That stream is modern European history. It has been recorded inthousands of volumes, many of which, however, are totally unreliablefables of those mighty events. Those only have had the key to itsright interpretation who have followed the Christian light given fromabove, as a star, to guide the wonderful giant in his course. Thechief among them were: of old, Augustine, the author of the "Cityof God;" Orosius, the first to condense the annals of the worldinto the formula, "divina providentia regitur mundus et hom*o;"Otho of Freysinguen, in his work "De mutatione rerum;" and theauthor of "Gesta Dei per Francos;" in modern times, Bossuet andhis followers.

The destruction of idolatry was of such vital importance in theregeneration of the world that it sufficed as a dogma to imbue agreat branch of the Semitic family with a strong life for severalcenturies. Moslemism has no other truth to support it than theassertion of God's unity; but, by waging war against the Trinityand, consequently, against the very foundation of Christian belief,it became, for a long time, the greatest obstacle to the disseminationof truth. It prevented the early triumph of the Caucasian race,and galvanized, for a time, the nations of the East and South intoa false life.

The ravages of the Tartar hordes under Genghis Khan and hissuccessors were in no sense life, but only a fitful madness.

The European stream was thus impeded in its flood by the newactivity of Arabia and Turkomania. It was a struggle in whichvictory, for a long time, hung in the balance: it required manycrusades of the whole of Western Europe; the long heroism of theSpanish and Portuguese nations; the incessant attack and defenceof the Templars and the Knights of Malta over the whole surfaceof the Mediterranean Sea, to secure the preponderance of the West.It was finally decided at Lepanto. Since that great day,Mohammedanism has gradually declined, and there now seems noinsurmountable obstacle to the free flowing of the European stream.

This stream, however, is not hom*ogeneous: far from it. Had theChristian element always remained alone in it, or at least supreme,long ere this the victory would have been secure forever, and theCatholic missions alone would have fulfilled the old propheciesand given to the sons of Japhet possession of the tents of Sem—aglorious work so well begun in the East, in India and Japan; inthe West, in the whole of America!

But, unfortunately, the policy of the papacy, which was also thatof Charlemagne, and of other great Christian sovereigns, was notcontinued. The Norman feudalism of England and Northern France;the Caesarism of Germany and the Capetian kings; the heresiesbrought from the East by the Crusaders; the paganism and neo-Platonismof the revival of learning; above all, the fearful upheaval of thewhole of Europe by the Protestant schism and heresy, troubled thepurity of that great Japhetic stream, and has retarded to our daysits momentous and overwhelming impetuosity.

Wonderful, indeed, that in the whole of Europe one small islandalone was forever stubbornly opposed to all these aberrations,which has stood her ground firmly, and, we may now say, successfully.The reader already knows that the demonstration of this stupendousfact is the object of the present volume.

Having stood aloof so long from all those wanderings from theright path, she has scarcely appeared in the field of Europeanhistory save as the victim of Scandinavia and of England. Butthere is a time in the series of ages for the appearance of allthose called by Providence to enact a part. What is a myriad ofyears for man is not a moment for God; and it would seem that wehad reached at last the epoch wherein Ireland is to be rewardedfor her steadfastness and fidelity.

The impetus now imparted to European power becomes each day moreclearly defined, and, to judge by recent appearances, Irishmen areabout to play no inglorious part in it. The power of expansion, socharacteristic of them from the beginning, has of late years assumedgigantic proportions. The very hatred of their enemies, the measuresadopted by their oppressors to annihilate them, have only served togive them a larger field of operations and a much stronger force.It is not without purpose that God has spread them in such numbersover so many different islands and continents. It is theirs to giveto the spread of Japhetism among the sons of Sem its right directionand results. The other races of Western Europe would, had they beenleft to themselves alone, have converted that great event into acurse for mankind, and perhaps the forerunner of the last calamities;but the Irish, having kept themselves pure, are the true instrumentsin the hands of God for righting what is wrong and purifying whatis corrupt.

Had Europe remained in its entirety as steadfast to the trueChristian spirit as the small island which dots the sea on itswestern border, what an incalculable happiness it would have provedto the whole globe, resting as it does to-day under the lead ofthe race of Japhet !

But where now are the pure waters which should vivify andfertilize it? Innumerable elements are floating in their midstwhich can but destroy life and spread barrenness everywhere.

Let us see what Europeans believe; what are the motives whichactuate them; what they propose to themselves in disseminatingtheir influence and establishing their dominion; what the real,openly-avowed purposes of the leaders are in the vast schemewhich embraces the whole earth; what becomes of foreign racesas soon as they come in contact with them.

The bare idea causes the blood of the Christian to curdle inhis veins, and he thanks God that his life shall not beprolonged to witness the successful termination of the vastconspiracy against God and humanity.

For, in our days, spite of so many deviations in the course ofthe great European stream, it is truly a matter of wonder whatpower it has obtained over the globe in its mastery, its control,its unification. What, then, would have been the result had itscourse remained constantly under Christian guidance!

It is only a short time since the whole earth has become knownto us; and we may say that, for Europe, it has been enough onlyto know it in order to become at once the mistress of it; suchpower has the Christian religion given her! The first circumnavigationof the globe under Magellan took place but yesterday, and to-dayEuropean ships cover the oceans and seas of the world, bearingin every sail the breath and the spirit of Japhetism. The stubbornice-fields of the pole can scarcely retard their course, and hardynavigators and adventurous travellers jeopardize their lives inthe pursuit of merely theoretical notions, void almost of anypractical utility.

The most remote and, up to recently, inaccessible parts of theearth are as open to us, owing to steam, as were the countriesbordering on the Mediterranean to the ancients. The Argonauticexpedition along the southern coast of the Black Sea was in itsday an heroic undertaking. The Phoenician colonies establishedin Africa and Spain by a race trying for the first time in thehistory of man to launch their ships on the ocean in orderto trade with Northern tribes as far as Ireland and the Baltic,though never losing sight of the coast; the attempts of theCarthaginians to circumnavigate Africa; the three years' voyagesof the ships of Solomon in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf,were one and all far more hazardous undertakings than the longvoyages of our steamships across the Indian Ocean to Australia,or around Cape Horn to California and the South Sea Islands,through the Southern and Northern Pacifics.

From all large seaboard cities in any part of the globe, linesof steamers now bear men to every point of the compass, so thatthe very boards at the entrances of offices, to be found everywherefor the accommodation of travellers, are as indices of works onuniversal geography.

And the European, still unsatisfied with all he has achievedin speed and comfort, looks to more rapid and easier modes ofconveyance. Scientific men have been for many years engagedin experiments by means of which they hope to replace the oceanby the atmosphere as a public highway for nations; and the currentsof air rushing in every direction with the velocity of themost rapid winds may yet be used by our children instead ofrivers, thenceforth deserted, and of ocean-streams at last leftempty and waste as before the voyages of Columbus and De Gama.

All this constitutes a positive and stern fact staring us in theface, and giving to the Caucasian race a power of which our ancestorswould never have dreamed. And if all this is to be the only resultof man's activity—the attainment of merely worldly purposes—God,whose world this is, may look down on it from heaven as on the workof Titans preparing to attack his rights, and He will know how toturn all these mighty efforts of the sons of Japhet to his ownholy designs. He may use a small branch of that great race,preserved purposely from the beginning unsullied by mere thrift,and prepared for his work by long persecution, a considerationwhich we shall examine later on.

Meanwhile the great mass of the European family is allowed to goon in its wonderful undertaking; and we turn to it yet a short while.

As if to favor still more directly this work of the unificationof the globe, Providence has placed at the disposal of the primemovers in the enterprise pecuniary means which no one could haveforeseen a few years ago.

In 1846, on a small branch of one of the great rivers of California,a colonist discovers gold carried as dust with the sand, and soona great part of the country is found to be immensely rich in theprecious metal. That first discovery is followed by others equallyimportant, and after a few years gold is found in abundance on bothsides of a long range of the Rocky Mountains; again in the north,nearly as high up as the arctic circle. North America, in fact,is found to be a vast gold deposit. Australia soon follows, andthat new continent, whose exploration has scarcely begun, is saidto be dotted all over by large oases of auriferous rock and gravel.In due time the same news comes from South Africa, where it hasbeen lately reported that diamonds, in addition to gold, enrichthe explorer and the workman.

It is needless to speak of mines of silver and mercury after goldand diamonds; but the result is that the European race is straightwayprovided with an enormous wealth commensurate with the immensecommercial and manufacturing enterprises required for the establishmentof its supremacy all over the globe.

There is work, therefore, for all the ships afloat; others andlarger ones have to be constructed; and modern engineering skillplaces on the bosom of the deep sea vessels which few, indeed, ofthe greatest rivers can accommodate in their channels and bays.

All these means of dominion and dissemination once procured,the great work clearly assigned to the race of Japhet may proceed.

Intercourse with the most savage and uncivilized tribes is eagerlycultivated even at the risk of life. New avenues to trade areopened up in places where men, still living in the most primitivestate, have few if any wants; and it is considered as part of thekeen merchant's skill to fill the minds of these uncouth andunsophisticated barbarians with the desire of every possibleluxury. Have we not lately heard that the savages of the FeejeeIslands, who were a few years ago cannibals, have now a kingseeking the protection of England, if not the annexation of hiskingdom to the British empire?

Yes, the material civilization of Europe, the new discoveriesof steam and magnetism, the untiring energy of men aiming atuniversal dominion, give to the Caucasian race such a superiorityover the rest of mankind that the time seems to be fast approachingwhen the manners, the dress, the look even of Europeans, willsupersede all other types, and spread everywhere the dead levelof our habits.

This fact has already been realized in America, North and South.Geographers may give lengthened descriptions of the original tribeswhich still possess a shadow of existence; foreign readers mayperhaps imagine that the continent is still in the quietpossession of rude and uncivilized races roaming at will over itssurface, and allowing some Europeans to occupy certain cities andharbors for the purposes of trade and barter. We know that nothingcould be more erroneous. The Europeans are the real possessors,north and south; the Indians are permitted to exist on a few spotscontracting year by year into narrower limits. The northern andlarger half of the continent is chiefly the dwelling-place of themost active branch of the bold race of Japhet. The first of theiron lines which are to connect its Atlantic and Pacific coastshas recently been laid. Cities spring up all along its track: theharbors of California, Oregon, and Alaska, will soon swarm muchmore than now with hardy navigators ready to europeanize the variousgroups of islands scattered over the Pacific. Already in the Sandwichand Tahiti groups the number of Europeans is greatly in excess ofthat of the natives. Those natives who, in the Philippine Islands,have been preserved by the Catholic Church, will too soon disappearfrom the surface of the largest ocean of the globe.

Then Eastern Asia will be attacked much more seriously than everbefore. Since its discovery, Europeans could only reach itthrough the long distances which divide Western Europe from Chinaand Japan. But within a short time numerous lines of steamships,starting from San Francisco, Portland, Honolulu, and many otherharbors yet nameless, will land travellers in Yokohama, Hakodadi,Yeddo, Shanghai, Canton, and other emporiums of Asia.

Nor will the Americans of the United States be alone in the race.Several governments are preparing to cut a canal through the Isthmusof Panama, or Darien, or Tehuantepec, as has already been donewith that of Suez; and soon ships starting from Western Europewill, with the aid of steam, traverse the Atlantic and PacificOceans successively as two large lakes to land their passengersand cargoes on the frontiers of China and India.

The Japanese, those Englishmen of the East, are ready to adoptEuropean inventions. They are indeed already expert in many ofthem, and seem on the alert to conform to European manners. Itis said that the nation is divided into two parties on that veryquestion of conformity; before long they will all be of one mind.What an impulse will thus be given to the europeanization of Chinaand Tartary!

In Hindostan, England has fairly begun the work; but the climateof the peninsula offering an obstacle to the introduction of alarge number of men of the Caucasian race, it will be more probablyfrom the foot of the Himalaya Mountains that the spread of the racewill commence. Already the English and the Russians are concentratingtheir forces on the Upper Indus. The question merely is, Whichnation will be the first to inoculate the dreamy sons of Sem withthe spirit and blood of Japhet? It seems that Central Asia will formthe rallying-ground for the last efforts of the Titans to unify theirpower, as it was thence that the power of God first dispersed them.

A glance at the rest of the world as witnessing the same astonishingspectacle, and we pass on. Australia is clearly destined to be entirelyEuropean; the number of natives, already insignificant compared to thatof the colonists, will soon disappear utterly. Turkey, the Caucasus,Bokhara, are rapidly taking a new shape and adopting Western manners.

The African triangle offers the greatest resistance, owing to itsdeserts, its terrible climate, and the savage or childish dispositionof its inhabitants. Yet the attempt to europeanize it is at thismoment in earnest action at its southernmost cape, all along itsnorthern line skirting the Mediterranean, in Egypt chiefly, andalso through the Erythrean Gulf in the east; finally, on manypoints of its western shore, which, strange to say, lags behind,although it formed the first point of discovery by the Portuguese.

To condense all we have just said to a few lines: it looks asthough all races of men, except the Caucasian, were undergoinga rapid process of unification or disappearance.

In America certainly the phenomenon is most striking.

In Asia all the native races seem palsied and unable to holdtogether in the presence of the Russians and the English.

In Africa, Mohammedanism still preserves to the natives a certainactivity of life, but even that is fast on the wane.

Finally, in Australia and the Pacific Ocean the disappearance ofthe natives is still more striking and more sudden in its actionthan even in America.

This state of things did not exist two hundred years ago; andwhen the Crusades began the reverse was the case.

We cannot believe that this immense, universal fact is merely anexterior one resulting from new appliances, new comforts, newoutward habits; what is called material civilization. We cannotbelieve that it is merely the dress, houses, culinary regime, thepopular customs of those numerous foreign tribes or nations whichare undergoing such a wonderful change. This outward phenomenonsupposes a substratum, an interior reality of ideas and principlesworthy our chief attention as the real cause of all those exteriorchanges; a cause, nevertheless, which is scarcely thought of inthe public estimate of this mighty revolution.

It is the mind of Europe: it is the belief or want of belief,the religious or irreligious views, the grasping ambition, theheadlong desire of an impossible or unholy happiness, the recklesssway of unbridled passions, which try to spread themselves amongall nations, and bring them all up, or rather down, to the levelof intoxicated, tottering, maddened Europe.

If the monstrous scheme succeeds, there will be no more prayer inthe villages of the devout Maronites, no more submission to God inthe mountains of Armenia, no more simplicity of faith among theshepherds of Chaldea, no more purity of life among the wanderingchildren of Asiatic deserts.

Side by side with truth and virtue many errors and monstrositieswill doubtless disappear, but not to be replaced with what ismuch better.

The muezzin of the mosques will no longer raise his voice from theminarets at noon and nightfall; the simple Lama will no longerbelieve in the successive incarnations of Buddha; no longer willthe superstitious Hindoo cast himself beneath the car of Juggernaut;many another such absurdity and crime will, let us hope, disappearforever. But with what benefit to mankind? After all, is notsuperstition even better for men than total unbelief? And, whenthe whole world is reduced to the state of Europe, when what wedaily witness there shall be reproduced in all continents andislands, will men really be more virtuous and happy?

We must not think, however, that there is nothing truly good inthe stupendous transformation which we have endeavored to sketch.If it really be the accomplishment of the great prophecy mentionedby us at the beginning of this chapter, it is a noble and aglorious event. God will know how to turn it to good account, andit is for us to hail its coming with thankfulness.

There is no doubt that the actual superiority of the race of Japhet,by force of which this wonderful revolution is being accomplished,is the result of Christianity, that is, of Catholicity. It isbecause Europe, or the agglomeration of the various branches ofthe race of Japhet, was for fifteen hundred years overshadowedby the true temple of God, his glorious and infallible Church;it is because the education of Europeans is mainly due to thetrue messengers of God, the Popes and the bishops; it is becausethe mind of Europe was really formed by the great Catholic thinkers,nurtured in the monasteries and convents of the Church; it is,finally, because Europeans are truly the sons of martyrs andcrusaders, that on them devolves the great mission of regeneratingand blending into one the whole world.

But, unfortunately, the work is spoiled by adjuncts in the movementwhich have grown up in the centuries preceding us. In fact, thewhole European movement has been thrown on a wrong track, whichwe have already pointed out as mere material civilization.

Still, in spite of all the dross, there is a great deal of puremetal in the Japhetic movement. Underlying it all runs thedoctrine that all men are sprung from the same father, and thatall have had the same Redeemer; that, consequently, all arebrethren, and that there should be no place among them for castesand classes, as of superior and inferior beings; that the God theChristians adore is alone omnipotent; that idolatry of all kindsought to disappear, and that ultimately there should be but oneflock and one shepherd.

These are saving truths, still held to in the main by the raceof Japhet, in spite of some harsh and opposing false assertions,truths which the Catholic Church alone teaches in their purity,and which are yet destined, we hope, to make one of all mankind.

But her claims are yet far from being acknowledged by theleaders in the movement. And who are those leaders? A questionall-important.

England is certainly the first and foremost. Endowed with all thecharacteristics of the Scandinavian race, which we shall touch uponafter, deeply infused with the blood of the Danes and Northmen, shehas all the indomitable energy, all the systematic grasp of mind andsternness of purpose joined to the wise spirit of compromise andconservatism of the men of the far North; she, of all nations, hasinherited their great power of expansion at sea, possessing allthe roving propensities of the old Vikings, and the spirit oftrade, enterprise, and colonization, of those old Phoenicians ofthe arctic circle.

The Catholic south of Europe, Spain and Portugal, having, throughcauses which it is not the place to investigate here, lost theirpower on the ocean; the temporary maritime supremacy of Hollandhaving passed away, because the people of that flat country weretoo close and narrow-minded to grasp the world for any length oftime; France, the only modern rival of England as a naval power,having been compelled, owing to the revolutions of the last andthe present centuries, to concentrate her whole strength on theContinent of Europe; the young giant of the West, America, beingyet unable to grasp at once a vast continent and universal swayover the pathways of the ocean, England had free scope for hermaritime enterprises, and she threw herself headlong into thiscareer. Out of Europe she is incontestably the first power of thewhole world. To give a better idea of the extent of her dominion,we subjoin an abridged sketch from the "History of a Hundred Years,"by Cesare Cantu:

"In Europe she has colonies at Heligoland, Gibraltar, Malta, andthe Ionian Isles.

"In Africa, Bathurst, Sierra Leone, many establishments on thecoast of Guinea, the islands of Mauritius, Rodrigo, Sechelles,Socotora, Ascension, St. Helena, and, most important of all,the Cape Colony.

"In Asia, where she replaced the French and Dutch, she has,besides Ceylon, an empire of 150,000,000 of people in India,the islands of Singapore and Sumatra, part of Malacca, and manyestablishments in China.

"In America, she is mistress of Canada, New Brunswick, and othereastern provinces; the Lucayes, Bermudas, most of the Antilles,part of Guiana, and the Falkland Isles.

"In the Southern Ocean, the greater part of Australia, Tasmania,Norfolk, Van Diemen's Land, New Zealand, and many other groupsof Oceanica are hers.

"What other state can compete with her in the management ofcolonies, and in the selection of situations from which shecould command the sea? Jersey and Guernsey are her keys of theStraits of Dover; from Heligoland she can open or shut the mouthsof the Elbe and Weser; from Gibraltar she keeps her eye on Spainand the States of Barbary, and holds the gates of the Mediterranean.With Malta and Corfu she has a like advantage over the Levant.Socotora is for her the key of the Red Sea, whence she commandsEastern Africa and Abyssinia. Ormuz, Chesmi, and Buschir, giveher the mastery over the Persian Gulf, and the large rivers whichflow into it. Aden secures the communication of Bombay with Suez.Pulo Pinang makes her mistress of the Straits of Malacca, andSingapore, of the passage between China and India. At the Capeof Good Hope her troops form an advanced guard over the IndianOcean; and from Jamaica she rules the Antilles and trades securelywith the rest of Central and South America.

"Englishmen have made a careful survey of the whole of theMediterranean Sea, of the course of the Indus, the Ganges, theBramaputra, the Godavery, and other rivers of India; of thewhole littoral between Cape Colony and China; England has steamshipson the Amazon and Niger, and her vessels are found everywhere onthe coast of Chili and Peru."

Other European families try to follow in her footsteps; at theirhead the United States now stand. Primitively an offshoot of theEnglish stock, the blood of all other Japhetic races has given thelatter country an activity and boldness which will render it intime superior in those respects to the mother-country herself.

Yet at this time, even in the presence of the United States, inthe presence of all other maritime powers, England stands at thehead of the Japhetic movement.

Unfortunately, her first aim, after acquiring wealth and securingher power, is, to exclude the Roman Catholic Church as far as ispracticable from the benefit of the system, to oppose her whenevershe would follow in the wake of her progress, and either to allowpaganism or Mohammedanism to continue in quiet possession whereverthey exist, or to substitute for them as far as possible herProtestantism. At all events, the Catholicity of the Church isto be crushed, or at least thwarted, to make room for thecatholicity of the English nation.

And it looks as though such, in truth, would have been the result,had not the stubbornness of the Irish character stood in the way;if the Celt of Erin, after centuries of oppression and oppositionto the false wanderings of the European stream, had not insistedon following the English lord in his travels, dogging his stepseverywhere, entering his ships welcome or unwelcome, rushing onshore with him wherever he thought fit to land, and there plantedhis shanty and his frame church in the very sight of statelypalaces lately erected, and gorgeous temples with storied windowsand softly-carpeted floors.

And after a few years the Irish Celt would show himself as activeand industrious in his new country as oppression had made himindolent and careless on his own soil; the shanty would be replacedby a house worthy of a man; above all, the humble dwelling which hefirst raised to his God would disappear to make room for an edificenot altogether unworthy of divine majesty; at least, far above thepretentious structures of the oppressors of his religion. The eyesof men would be again turned to "the city built upon a mountain;" andthe character of universality, instead of being wrested from the trueChurch, would become more resplendent than ever through the steadfastIrish Celt.

Thus the spreading of the Gospel in distant regions would beaccomplished without a navy of their own. As their ancestors didin pagan times, they would use the vessels of nations born forthrift and trade; the stately ships of the "Egyptians" would beused by the true "people of God."

For them hath Stephenson perfected the steam-engine, so as toenable vessels to undertake long voyages at sea without the necessaryhelp of sails; for them Brunel and others had spent long years inplanning and constructing novel Noah's arks capable of containingall clean and unclean animals; for them the Barings and otherwealthy capitalists had embraced the five continents and the islesof the ocean in their financial schemes; the Jews of England,Germany, and France, the Rothschilds and Mendelssohns, hadaccumulated large amounts of money to lend to ship-buildingcompanies; for them, in fine, the long-hidden gold depositsof California, Australia, and many other places, had beendiscovered at the proper time to replenish the coffers of the godless,that they might undertake to furnish the means of transportationand settlement for the missionaries of God!

And, to prove that this is no exaggeration, it is enough to lookat the number of emigrants that were to be carried to foreign parts,and that actually left England for her various colonies or for theUnited States. For several years one thousand Irish people saileddaily from the ports of Great Britain; and for a great numberof years 200,000 at least did so every twelve months. When we come,to contrast the Irish at home with the Irish abroad, we shallgive fuller details than are possible here. These few words sufficeto show the immense number of vessels and the vast sums that wererequired for such an extraordinary operation.

This phenomenon is surely curious enough, universal enough, andsufficiently portentous in its consequences, to deserve a thoroughinquiry into its causes and the way in which it was brought about.

It will be seen that it all came from the Irish having keptthemselves aloof from the other branches of the great Japhetic racein order to join in the general movement at the right time and intheir own way, constantly opposed to all the evil that is in it,but using it in the way Providence intended.

The chapters which follow will be devoted to the development ofthis general idea; the few remarks with which we close the presentmay tend to set the conclusion which we draw more distinctly beforeour minds.

There is no doubt that, taking the Irish nation as a whole, wefind in it features which are visible in no other European nation;and that, taking Europe as a whole, in all its complexity ofhabits, manners, tendencies, and ways of life, we have a picturewholly distinct from that of the Irish people. England has strivenduring the last eight hundred years to shape it and make it thecreature of her thought, and England has utterly failed.

The same race of men and women inhabit the isle of Erin to-day asthat which held it a thousand years ago, with the distinction thatit is now far more wretched and deserving of pity than it was then.The people possess the same primitive habits, simple thoughts,ardent impulsiveness, stubborn spirit, and buoyant disposition,in spite of ages of oppression. In the course of centuries theyhave not furnished a single man to that army of rash minds whichhave carried the rest of Europe headlong through lofty, perhaps,but at bottom empty and idle theories, to the brink of thatbottomless abyss into which no one can peer without a shudder.

No heresiarch has found place among them; no fanciful philosopher,no holder of fitful and lurid light to deceive nations and leadthem astray, no propounder of social theories opposed to thoseof the Gospel, no inventor of new theogonies and cosmologies—newin name, old in fact—rediscovered by modern students in theKings_ of China, the Vedas of Hindostan, the Zends of Persia,or Eddas of the North; no ardent explorer of Nature, seekingin the bowels of the earth, or on the summits of mountains, orin the depths of the ocean, or the motions of the stars, proofsthat God does not exist, or that matter has always existed, thatman has made himself, developing his own consciousness out ofthe instinct of the brute, or even out of the material motionsof the zoophyte.

We would beg the reader to bear in mind those insane theories soprevalent to-day, out of which society can hope for nothing butconvulsions and calamities, to see how all the nations of Europehave contributed to the baneful result except the Irish; thatthey alone have furnished no false leader in those wanderingsfrom the right path; that their community has been opposed allthrough to the adoption of the theories which led to them, havespurned them with contempt, and even refused to inquire intothem: with these thoughts and recollections in his mind, he mayunderstand what we mean when we assert that the Irish havestubbornly refused to enter upon the European movement. Although,by the reception of Christianity, they were admitted into theEuropean family, the Christianity which they received was sothoroughly imbibed and so completely carried out that any thingin the least opposed to it was sternly rejected by the wholenation. Hence they became a people of peculiar habits. Rejectingthe harsh features of feudalism, not caring for the refinement ofthe so-called revival of learning, sternly opposed at all times toProtestantism, they would have naught to do with what was rejectedor even suspected by the Church, until in our days they offer tothe eyes of the world the spectacle we have sketched. Thus havethey, not the least by reason of their long martyrdom, become fitinstruments for the great work Providence asks of them to-day.

England, the great leader in the material part of the socialmovement which has been the subject of this chapter, for a longtime hesitated to adopt principles altogether subversive tosociety. In her worldly good sense she endeavored to follow whatshe imagined a via media in her wisdom, to avoid what seemedto her extremes, but what is in reality the eternal antagonismof truth and falsehood, of order and chaos. Twenty years backthere was a unanimity among English writers to speak thelanguage of moderation and good sense whenever a rash author offoreign nations hazarded some dangerous novelties; and in theirreviews they immediately pointed out the poison which layconcealed under the covering of science or imagination, and theperil of these ever-increasing new discoveries. If anyEnglishman sanctioned those theories, he could not form a schoolamong his countrymen, and remained almost alone of his party.

But at last England has given way to the universal spread oftemptation, and to-day she runs the race of disorganization asardent as any, striving to be a leader among other leaders toruin. Every one is astounded at the sudden and remarkable change.It is truly inexplicable, save by the fearful axiom, Quos Deusvult perdere, dementat. Hence not a few expect soon to seestorms sweep over the devoted island of Great Britain, which nolonger forms an exception to the universality of the evil wehave indicated.

Which, then, is the one safe spot in Europe, whither the tideof folly, or madness rather, has not yet come?

Ireland alone is the answer.

CHAPTER III.

THE IRISH BETTER PREPARED TO RECEIVE CHRISTIANITY THANOTHER NATIONS.

The introduction of Christianity gave Europe a power over theworld which pagan Rome could not possess. All the branches ofthe Japhetic family combined to form what was with justice andpropriety called Christendom. Ireland, by receiving the Gospel,was really making her first entry into the European family; butthere were certain peculiarities in her performance of thisgreat act which gave her national life, already deviating fromthat of other European nations, a unique impulse. The first ofthose peculiarities consisted in her preparation for the greatreception of the faith, and the few obstacles she encountered inher adoption of it, compared with those of the rest of the world.

Providence wisely decreed that redemption should be delayeduntil a large portion of mankind had attained to the highestcivilization. It was not in a time of ignorance and barbarismthat the Saviour was born. The Augustan is, undoubtedly, themost intellectual and refined age, in point of literary andartistic taste, that the world has ever seen. A few centuriesbefore, Greece had reached the summit of science and art. Nocountry, in ancient or modern times, has surpassed the acumen ofher philosophical writers and the aesthetic perfection of herpoets and artists. Rome made use of her to embellish her cities,and inherited her taste for science and literature.

But art and literature embody ideas only; and, as Ozanam says sowell: "Beneath the current of ideas which dispute the empire ofthe world, lies that world itself such as labor has made it,with that treasure of wealth and visible adornment which renderit worthy of being the transient sojourn-place of immortal souls.Beneath the true, the good, and the beautiful, lies the useful,which is brightened by their reflection. No people has morekeenly appreciated the idea of utility than that of Rome; nonehas ever laid upon the earth a hand more full of power, or morecapable of transforming it; nor more profusely flung thetreasures of earth at the feet of humanity . . . .

"At the close of the second century . . the rhetoricianAristides celebrated in the following terms the greatness of theRoman Empire: 'Romans, the whole world beneath your dominionseems to keep a day of festival. From time to time a sound ofbattle comes to you from the ends of the earth, where you arerepelling the Goth, the Moor, or the Arab. But soon that soundis dispersed like a dream. Other are the rivalries and differentthe conflicts which you excite through the universe. They arecombats of glory, rivalries in magnificence between provincesand cities. Through you, gymnasia, aqueducts, porticoes, temples,and schools, are multiplied; the very soil revives, and theearth is but one vast garden!'

"Similar, also, was the language of the stern Tertullian: `Intruth, the world becomes day after day richer and bettercultivated; even the islands are no longer solitudes; the rockshave no more terrors for the navigator; everywhere there arehabitations, population, law, and life.'

"The legions of Rome had constructed the roads which furrowedmountains, leaped over marshes, and crossed so many differentprovinces with a like solidity, regularity, and uniformity; andthe various races of men were lost in admiration at the sight ofthe mighty works which were attributed in after-times to Caesar,to Brunehaud, to Abelard!"

It was in the midst of those worldly glories that Christ wasborn, that he preached, and suffered, that his religion wasestablished and propagated. It found proselytes at once amongthe most polished and the most learned of men, as well as amongslaves and artisans; and thus was it proved that Christianitycould satisfy the loftiest aspirations of the most civilized aswell as insure the happiness of the most numerous and miserableclasses.

But we must reflect that the advanced civilization of Greece andRome was in fact an immense obstacle to the propagation of truth,and, what is more to be regretted, often gave an unnaturalaspect to the Christianity of the first ages in the Roman world—a half-pagan look—so that the barbarian invasion was almostnecessary to destroy every thing of the natural order; that theChurch alone remaining face to face with those uncouth childrenof the North, might begin her mission anew and mould them allinto the family called "Christendom." "Christianity," toquote Ozanam again, "shrank from condemning a veneration of thebeautiful, although idolatry was contained in it; and as ithonored the human mind and the arts it produced, so thepersecution of the apostate Julian, in which the study of theclassics had been forbidden to the faithful, was the severest ofits trials. Literary history possesses no moment of greaterinterest than that which saw the school with its profane—that is to say pagan—traditions and texts received into theChurch. The Fathers, whose christian austerity is our wonder,were passionate in their love of antiquity, which they covered,as it were, with their sacred vestments. . . . By their favor,Virgil traversed the ages of iron without losing a page, and, byright of his Fourth Eclogue, took rank among the prophets andthe sibyls. St. Augustine would have blamed paganism less, if,in place of a temple to Cybele, it had raised a shrine to Plato,in which his works might have been publicly read. St. Jerome'sdream is well known, and the scourging inflicted upon him byangels for having loved Cicero too well; yet his repentance wasbut short-lived, since he caused the monks of the Mount ofOlives to pass their nights in copying the Ciceronian dialogues,and did not shrink himself from expounding the comic and lyricpoets to the children of Bethlehem."

We know already that nothing of the kind existed in Ireland whenthe Gospel reached her, and that there the new religion assumeda peculiar aspect, which has never varied, and which made her atonce and forever a preeminently Christian nation.

Among the Greeks and Romans, literature and art, althoughaccepted by the Church, were nevertheless deeply impregnatedwith paganism. All their chief acts of social life required aprofession of idolatry; even amusem*nts, dramaticrepresentations, and simple games, were religious andconsequently pagan exhibitions.

We do not here speak of the attractions of an atheistic andmaterialist philosophy, of a voluptuous, often, and demoralizingliterature and poetry, of an unimaginable prostitution of art tothe vilest passions, which the relics of Pompeii too abundantlyindicate.

But apart from those excesses of corruption and unbelief, which,no doubt, virtuous pagans themselves abhorred, the approved,correct, and so-called pure life of the best men of pagan Romenecessitated the contamination of idolatrous worship. Apart fromthe thousand duties, festivals, and the like, decreed orsanctioned by the state, the most ordinary acts of life, theenlisting of the soldier, the starting on a military expedition,the assumption of any civil office or magistracy, the civiloaths in the courts of law, the public bath, the public walkalmost, the current terms in conversation, the private readingof the best books, the mere glancing at a multitude of exteriorobjects, constituted almost as many professions of a false andpagan worship.

How could any one become a Christian and at the same time remaina Greek or a Roman? The gloomy views of the Montanist Tertullianwere, to many, frightful truths requiring constant care and self-examen. For the Christian there were two courses open—bothexcesses, yet either almost unavoidable: on the one side, aterrible rigorism, making life unsupportable, next to impossible;on the other, a laxity of thought and action leading tolukewarmness and sometimes apostasy.

Bearing in mind what was written on the subject in the firstthree ages of Christianity, not only by Tertullian, but by mostorthodox writers, St. Cyprian, Lactantius, Arnobius, and theauthors of many Acts of martyrs, we may easily understand howthe doctrines of Christianity stood in danger of never takingdeep root in the hearts of men surrounded by such temptations,themselves born in paganism, and remaining, after theirconversion, exposed to seductions of such an alluring character.

Therefore this same "high civilization," as it is called, in themidst of which Christianity was preached, was a real danger tothe inward life of the new disciple of Christ.

How could it be otherwise, when it is a fact now known toall, that, even at the beginning of the fifth century, Rome wasalmost entirely pagan, at least outwardly, and among her highestclasses; so that the poet Claudian, in addressing Honorius at thebeginning of his sixth consulship, pointed out to him the site ofthe capitol still crowned with the Temple of Jove, surrounded bynumerous pagan edifices, supporting in air an army of gods; andall around temples, chapels, statues, without number—in fact, thewhole Roman and Greek mythology, standing in the City of theCatacombs and of the Popes!

The public calendars, preserved to this day, continued to notethe pagan festivals side by side with the feasts of the Saviourand his apostles. Within the city and beyond, throughout Italyand the most remote provinces, idols and their altars were stillsurrounded by the thronging populace, prostrate at their feet.

If in the cities the new religion already dared displaysomething of its inherent splendor, the whole rural populationwas still pagan, singing the praises of Ceres and of Bacchus,trembling at Fauns and Satyrs and the numerous divinities of thegroves and fountains. Christianity then held the same standingin Italy that in the United States Catholicity holds to-day inthe midst of innumerable religious sects.

This is not the place to show how far the paganism of Greece andRome had corrupted society, and how complete was its rottennessat the time. It has been already shown by several great writersof this century. Enough for our purpose to remark that even someChristian writers, of the age immediately succeeding that of theearly martyrs, showed themselves more than half pagans in theirtastes and productions. Ausonius in the West, the preceptor ofSt. Paulinus, is so obscene in some of his poems, so thoroughlypagan in others, that critics have for a long time hesitated topronounce him a Christian. How many of his contemporarieshovered like him on the confines of Christianity and paganism!When Julian the apostate restored idolatry, many, who had onlydisgraced the name of Christian, openly returned to the worshipof Jupiter and Venus, and their apostasy could scarcely be causefor regret to sincere disciples of our Lord.

In the East the phenomenon is less striking. Strange to say,idolatry did not remain so firmly rooted in the country, whereit first took such an alluring shape; and Constantinople was inevery sense of the word a Christian city when Rome, in hersenate, fought with such persistent tenacity for her altars ofVictory, her vestals, and her ancient worship.

Yet there, also, Christian writers were too apt to interfuse theold ideas with the new, and to adopt doctrines placed, as itwere, midway between those of Plato and St. Paul. There werebishops even who were a scandal to the Church and yet remainedin it. Synesius is the most striking example; whose doctrine wascertainly more philosophical than Christian, and whose life,though decorous, was altogether worldly. The history of Arianismshows that others besides Synesius were far removed from theideal of Christian bishops so worthily represented at the timeby many great doctors and holy pontiffs.

Such, in the East as well as in the West, were the perilsbesetting the true Christian spirit at the very cradle of ourholy religion.

Nor was the danger confined to the mythology of paganism, itsliterature and poetry. Philosophy itself became a real stumbling-block to many, who would fain appear disciples of faith, whenthey gave themselves up to the most unrestrained wanderings ofhuman reason.

The truth is, that Greek philosophy, divided into so manyschools in order to please all tastes, had become a wide-spreadinstitution throughout the Roman world. The mind of the East wasbest adapted to it, and those who taught it were, consequently,nearly all Greeks. Cicero had made it fashionable among many ofhis countrymen; and although the Latin mind, always practical tothe verge of utilitarianism, was not congenial to utopianspeculations, still, as it was the fashion, all intellectual menfelt the need of becoming sufficiently acquainted with it to beable to speak of it and even to embrace some particular school.Those patricians, who remained attached to the stern principlesof the old republic, became Stoics; while the men of the corruptaristocracy called themselves, with Horace, members of the"Epicurean herd." Hence the necessity for all to train theirminds to scientific speculation, converted the Western worldinto a hot-bed of wild and dangerous doctrines.

In the opinion of some Eastern Fathers of the Church, Greekphilosophy had been a preparation for the Gospel, and could bemade subservient to the conversion of many. Thus we find St.Justin, the martyr, all his life long glorying in the name ofphilosopher, and continuing to wear, even after his conversion,the philosopher's cloak so much derided by the scoffer, Lucian.

Still, despite this very respectable opinion, we can entertainno doubt, in view of what happened at the time and of subsequentevents, that philosophy grew to be a stumbling-block in the pathof Christianity, and originated the worst and most dangerousforms of heresy; that it sowed the seed, in the European mind,of all errors, by creating that speculative tendency ofcharacter so peculiar to most branches of the Japhetic race.

Persian Dualism, and, as many think, Pantheistic Buddhism, whichwere then flourishing in Central and Eastern Asia, infected theAlexandrian schools, and impressed philosophy with a new anddreamy character, which became the source of subsequent andfrightful errors. The Neo-Platonism of Porphyry and Plotinus wasintended, in the minds of its originators, to lay a scientificbasis for polytheism; and, in Jamblichus finally, became an openjustification of the most absurd fables of mythology.

But, though this might satisfy Julian and those who followed himin his apostasy, it could not come to be an inner danger to theChurch. With many, however, it assumed a form which at onceengendered the worst errors of Gnosticism; and Gnosticism was,at first, considered a Christian heresy; so that a man might bea pantheist, of the worst kind, and still call himself Christian.St. John had foreseen the danger from the beginning, and it issaid that he wrote his gospel against it because the doctrineopenly denied the divinity of Christ. But the sect became muchmore powerful after his death, and allured many Christians whowere disposed, from a misinterpretation of some texts of St.Paul on the struggle between the flesh and the spirit, toembrace a system which professed to explain the origin of thatstruggle.

The Alexandrian Gnosticism failed to excite in the minds of theholy monks of the East that aversion which we now feel for itstenets, inasmuch as it did not openly anathematize theScriptures of the Old Law, nay, even preserved a certain outwardrespect for them, on account of the multitude of Jews living inAlexandria, and particularly because the open system of Dualism,which afterward came from Syria and in the hands of Manesestablished the existence of two equal and eternal principles ofgood and evil, found no place in the teachings of Valentinus andhis school.

But even this frightful Syrian Gnosticism, which gave to theprinciple of evil an origin as ancient and sacred as that of Godhimself—Manicheism barefaced and radically immoral—sorepugnant to our feelings, so monstrous to our more correctideas, bore a semblance of truth for many minds, at that timeinclined toward every thing which came from the East. We knowwhat a firm hold those doctrines took on the great soul ofAugustine, who for a long time professed and cherished them.Rome, under the pagan emperors, had received with open arms theOriental gods and the philosophy which endeavored to explaintheir mythology; and many gifted minds of the third and fourthcenturies lost themselves in the contemplation of thosemysteries which from out Central Asia spread a lurid glare overthe Western world.

This first danger, however, was warded off by the writings of St.Ignatius of Antioch, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Clement ofAlexandria, Tertullian, Origen, St. Epiphanius, Theodoret, andothers, long before the time of St. Augustine, the last of them.Gnosticism was prevented from any longer imparting a wrongtendency to Christian doctrines, and it died out, until restoredduring the Crusades to revive in the middle ages in its mostmalignant form.

But at the very moment of its decline, philosophy entered theChurch; almost to wreck her by inspiring Arius and Pelagius. Theteachings of the first were clearly Neo-Platonic; of the second,Stoic: and all the errors prevalent in the Church from the thirdto the sixth century originated in Arianism and Pelagianism.

In Plato, as read in Alexandria, Arius found all the materialfor his doctrine, which spread like wild-fire over the wholeChurch. Many things conspired to swell the number of hisadherents: the ardent love for philosophy so inherent in theEastern Church, to the extent of many believing that Plato wasalmost a Christian, and his doctrines therefore endowed withreal authority; the natural disposition of men to adopt the newand a seeming rational explanation of unfathomable mysteries;the apparent agreement of his doctrine with certain passages ofScripture, where the Son is said to be inferior to the Father;but chiefly the satisfaction it afforded to a number of newChristians who had embraced the faith at the conversion ofConstantine on political rather than conscientious grounds, andwho were at once relieved of the supernatural burden ofbelieving in a God-man, born of a woman, and dying on a cross.Faith reduced to an opinion; religion become a philosophy; amere man, let his endowments be what they might, recognized asour guide, and not overwhelming us with the dread weight of adivine nature; all this explains the historic phrase of St.Jerome after the Council of Rimini, "The world groaned andwondered to find itself Arian."

Any person acquainted with ecclesiastical history knows how theChurch of Christ would have surely become converted into a mererational school, under the pressure of these doctrines, were itnot for the promises of perpetuity which she had received.

We know also what a time it took to establish truth: how manycouncils had to meet, how many books had to be written, theefforts required from the rulers of the Church, chiefly from theRoman pontiffs, to calm so many storms, to explain so manydifficult points of doctrine, to secure the final victory.

And, after all had been accomplished, there still remained theroot of the evil engrafted in what we call the philosophicalturn of mind of the Western nations—that is to say, in thedisposition to call every thing in question, to seek out strangeand novel difficulties, to start war-provoking theories in themidst of peace, to aim at founding a new school, or at least tostand forth as the brilliant and startling expounder of olddoctrines in a new form, in fine to add a last name to the list,already over-long, of those who have disturbed the world bytheir skill in dialectics and sophism.

Pelagius followed Arius, and his errors had the same object inview in the long-run, to strip our holy religion of all that isspiritual and divine.

In the time of St. Augustine and St. Jerome, there existed amongChristians an extraordinary tendency to embrace all possiblephilosophical doctrines, even when directly opposed to the firstprinciples of revealed religion; and, within the Church, thedanger of subtilizing on every question connected with well-known dogmas was much greater than many imagine.

From the previous reflections we may learn how difficult it wasto establish, in pagan Europe, a thoroughly Christian life anddoctrine; and that, after society had come to be apparentlyimbued with the new spirit, it was still too easy to disturb theflowing stream of the heavenly graces of the Gospel. Thisresulted, we repeat, from causes anterior to Christianity, fromsources of evil which the divine religion had to overcome, andwhich too often impeded its supernatural action. In fact, theecclesiastical history of those ages is comprised mainly indepicting the almost continual deviations from the straight lineof pure doctrine and morality, and the strenuous effortsassiduously made by the rulers of the Church against a never-ceasing falling away.

Having taken this glance at the early workings of Christianitythrough the rest of the world, we may now turn fairly to theimmediate subject we have in hand, and trace its course inIreland. From the very beginning we are struck by thepeculiarities—blessed, indeed—which show themselves, as in allother matters, in its reception of the truth. The island,compared with Europe, is small, it is true; but the heroismdisplayed by its inhabitants during so many ages, in support ofthe religion which they received so freely, so generously, andat once, in mind as well as heart, marks it out as worthy of aspecial account; and, from its unique reception and adherence tothe faith, as worthy of, if possible, a natural explanation ofsuch action beyond the promptings of Divine grace, since itsastonishing perseverance, its unswerving faith, form to-day asgreat a characteristic of the nation as they did on the day ofits entry into the Christian Church.

We proceed to examine, then, the kind of idolatry which itsfirst apostle encountered on landing in the island, and the easewith which it was destroyed, so as to leave behind no poisonousshoots of the deadly root of evil.

In order to understand the religious system of Ireland previousto the preaching of the Gospel, we must first take a generalsurvey of polytheism, if it can be so called, in all Celticcountries, and of the peculiar character which it bore inIreland itself.

Of old, throughout all countries, religion possessed certainthings in common, which belonged to the rites and creeds of allnations, and were evidently derived from the primitivetraditions of mankind, and, consequently, from a true and Divinerevelation. Such were the belief in a golden age, in the fallfrom a happy beginning, in the penalty imposed on sin, whichgave a reason for great mundane calamities—the Deluge chiefly—the memory of which lived in the traditions of almost everynation; in the necessity of prayer and expiatory sacrifice; inthe transmission of guilt from father to son, expressed in allprimitive legislations, and to this day preserved in the Chineselaws and customs; in the existence of good and bad spirits,whence, most probably, arose polytheism; in the hope of thefuture regeneration of man, represented in Greece by thebeautiful myth of Pandora's box; and, finally, in the doctrineof eternal rewards and punishments.

Each one of these strictly true dogmas underwent more or less ofalteration in its passage through the various nations ofantiquity, but was, nevertheless, everywhere preserved in someshape or form.

At what precise epoch did mankind begin wrongfully to interpretthese primitive traditions? When did the worship of idols ariseand become universal? No one can tell precisely. All we know forcertain is, that a thousand years before Christ idolatryprevailed everywhere, and that even the Jewish people often fellinto this sin, and were only brought back by means of punishmentto the worship of the true God.

But if error tainted the whole system of worship among nations,it differed in the various races of men according to the varietyof their character. Ferocity or mildness of manners, acutenessor obtuseness of understanding, activity or indolence ofdisposition, a burning, a cold, or a temperate climate, asmiling or dreary country, but chiefly the thousand differencesof temper which are as marked among mankind as the almost in-finite variety of forms visible in creation, gave to eachindividual religion its proper and characteristic types, whichin after-times, when truth was brought down from heaven for all,imparted to the universal Christian spirit a peculiar outwardform in each people, an interior adaptation to its peculiardispositions, destined in the Divine plan to introduce into thefuture Catholic Church the beautiful variety requisite to makeits very universality possible among mankind.

To enter into details on the Celtic religion would carry usbeyond due limits. The question as to whether the ancient Celtswere idolaters or not still remains undecided, though in Francealone more than six hundred volumes have been written on thesubject. Julius Caesar believed that they were worshippers ofidols in the same sense as his own countrymen; but he probablystood alone in his opinion. Aristotle, Pythagoras, Polyhistor,Ammianus Marcellinus, considered the Druids as monotheistphilosophers. Most of the Greek writers agreed with them, as didall the Alexandrian Fathers of the Church in the third andfourth centuries.

Among the moderns the majority leans to a contrary opinion;nevertheless, many authors of weight, distinguishing the publicworship of the common people from the doctrine of the Druids,assert the monotheism of this sacerdotal caste. Samuel F. N.Morus particularly, who, with J. A. Ernesti, was esteemed themaster of antiquarian scholarship in Europe during the lastcentury, maintains, in his edition of the "Commentaries" ofCaesar, that "human beings, as well as human affairs, fortunes,travels, and wars, were thought by the Celts to be governed andruled by one supreme God, and that the system of apotheosis,common to nearly all ancient nations, was totally unknown inancient Gaul, Britain, and the adjacent islands."

The ancient authorities concurring with these conclusions are sonumerous and clear spoken that the great historian of Gaul,Amedee Thierry, thinks that such a pure and mystic religion,joined to such a sublime philosophy, could not have been theproduct of the soil. In his endeavor to investigate its origin,he supposes that it was brought to the west of Europe by theEastern Cymris of the first invasion; that it was adopted by thehigher classes of society, and that the old idolatrous worshipremained in force among the lower orders.

The unity and omnipotence of the Godhead, metempsychosis, or thedoctrine and the transmigration of soul —not into the bodies ofanimals, as it obtained and still obtains in the East, but intothose of other human beings—the eternal duration of existingsubstances, material and spiritual, consequently the immortalityof the human soul, were the chief dogmas of the Druids,according to the majority of antiquarians.

If this be true, then it can be said boldly that, with theexception of revealed religion in Judea, which was always farmore explicit and pure, no system can be found in ancient timessuperior to that of the Druids, more especially if we add that,in addition to religious teaching, a whole system of physics wasalso developed in their large academies. "They dispute," saysCaesar, "on the stars and their motions, on the size of theuniverse and of this earth, on the nature of physical things, aswell as on the strength and power of the eternal God."

To bring our question home, what were the religious belief andworship of the Irish Celts while still pagans? Very few positivefacts are known on the subject; but we have data enough to showwhat they were not; and in such cases negative proofs are amplysufficient.

It was for a long time the fashion with Irish historians toattribute to their ancestors the wildest forms of ancientidolatry. They appeared to consider it a point of national honorto make the worship of Erin an exact reflex of Eastern, Grecian,or Roman polytheism. They erected on the slightest foundationsgrand structures of superstitious and abominable rites. Fire-worship, Phoenician or African horrors, the rankest idol-worship,even human sacrifices of the most revolting nature, were,according to them, of almost daily occurrence in Ireland. But,with the advancement of antiquarian knowledge, all thosephantoms have successively disappeared; and, the more theancient customs, literature, and history of the island arestudied, the more it becomes clear that the pretended proofsadduced in support of those vagaries are really withoutfoundation.

In the first place, there is not the slightest reason to believethat the human sacrifices customary in Gaul were ever practisedin Ireland. No really ancient book makes any mention of them.They were certainly not in vogue at the time of St. Patrick, ashe could not have failed to give expression to his horror atthem in some shape or form, which expression would have beenrecorded in one, at least, of the many lives of the saint,written shortly after his death, and abounding in details ofevery kind. If not, then, during his long apostleship, we maysafely conclude that they never took place before, as there wasno reason for their discontinuance prior to the propagation ofChristianity.

There was a time when all the large cromlechs which abound inthe island were believed to be sacrificial stones; and it ishighly probable that the opinion so prevalent during the lastcentury with respect to the reality of those cruel rites had itsorigin in the existence of those rude monuments. After manyinvestigations and excavations around and under cromlechs of allsizes, it is now admitted by all well-informed antiquarians thatthey had no connection with sacrifices of any kind. They weremerely monuments raised over the buried bodies of chieftains orheroes. Many sepulchres of that description have been opened,either under cromlechs or under large mounds; great quantitiesof ornaments of gold, silver, or precious stones, utensils ofvarious materials, beautiful works of great artistic merit, havebeen discovered there, and now go to fill the museums of thenation or private cabinets. Nothing connected with religiousrites of any description has met the eyes of the learned seekersafter truth. Thus it has been ascertained that the old race hadreached a high degree of material civilization; but no clew toits religion has been furnished.

As to fire-worship, which not long ago was admitted by all ascertainly forming a part of the Celtic religion in Ireland, solittle of that opinion remains to-day that it is scarcelydeserving of mention. There now remains no doubt that the roundtowers, formerly so numerous in Ireland, had nothing whatever todo with fire-worship. For a long time they were believed to havebeen constructed for no other object, and consequently longprior to the coming of St. Patrick. But Dr. Petrie and otherantiquarians have all but demonstrated that the round towersnever had any connection with superstition or idolatry at all;that they were of Christian origin, always built near someChristian church, and of the same materials, and had for theirobject to call the faithful to prayer, like the campanile ofItaly, to be a place of refuge for the clergy in time of war,and to give to distant villages intimation of any hostileinvasion.

The fact in the life of St. Patrick, when he appeared before thecourt of King Laeghaire, upon which so much reliance is placedas a proof of the existence of fire-worship, is now ofproportionate weakness. It seems, to judge by the most reliableand ancient manuscripts, that, after all, the kindling of theking's fire was scarcely a religious act.

McGeoghegan, whose history is compiled, from the best-authenticated documents, says: "When the monarch convened anassembly, or held a festival at Tara, it was customary to make abonfire on the preceding day, and it was forbidden to lightanother fire in any other place at the same time, in theterritory of Breagh."

This is all; and the probable cause of the prohibition was to dohonor to the king. Had it been an act of worship, Patrick, inlighting his own paschal-fire, would not only have showndisrespect to the monarch, but in the eyes of the peoplecommitted a sacrilege, which could scarcely have missed mentionby the careful historians of the time.

But the proof that we are right in our interpretation of theceremony is clear, from the following passage, taken from thework of Prof. Curry on "Early Irish Manuscripts:" "We see, bythe book of military expeditions, that, when King Dathi— theimmediate predecessor of Laeghaire on the throne of Ire- land—thought of conquering Britain and Gaul, he invited the states ofthe nation to meet him at Tara, at the approaching feast ofBaltaine (one of the great pagan festivals of ancient Erin) onMay-day.

"The feast of Tara this year was solemnized on a scale ofsplendor never before equalled. The fires of Lailten (now calledLelltown in the north of Ireland) were lighted, and the sports,games, and ceremonies, were conducted with unusual magnificenceand solemnity.

"These games and solemnities are said to have been institutedmore than a thousand years previously by Lug, in honor of Lailte,the daughter of the King of Spain, and wife of MacEire, thelast king of the Firbolg colony. It was at her court that Lughad been fostered, and at her death he had her buried at thisplace, where he raised an immense mound over her grave, andinstituted those annual games in her honor.

"These games were solemnized about the first day of August, andthey continued to be observed down to the ninth century"-therefore, in Christian times-and consequently the lighting ofthe fires had as little connection with fire-worship as thegames with pagan rites.

A more serious difficulty meets us in the destruction of Crom
Cruagh by St. Patrick, and it is important to consider how far
Crom Cruagh could really be called an idol.

With regard to the statues of Celtic gods, all the researchesand excavations which the most painstaking of antiquarians haveundertaken, especially of late years, have never resulted in thediscovery, not of the statue of a god, but of any pagan signwhatever in Ireland. It is clear, from the numerous details ofthe life of St. Patrick, that he never encountered eithertemples or the statues of gods in any place, although occasionalmention is made of idols. The only fact which startles thereader is the holy zeal which moved him to strike with his"baculus Jesu" the monstrous Crom Cruagh, with its twelve "sub-gods."

In all his travels through Ireland-and there is scarcely a spotwhich he did not visit and evangelize-St. Patrick meets withonly one idol, or rather group of idols, situated in the CountyCavan, which was an object of veneration to the people. Nowhereelse are idols to be found, or the saint would have thought ithis duty to destroy them also. This first fact certainly placesthe Irish in a position, with regard to idolatry, far differentfrom that of all other polytheist nations. In all othercountries it is characteristic of polytheism to multiply thestatues of the gods, to expose them in all public places, intheir houses, but chiefly within or at the door of edificeserected for the purpose. Yet in Ireland we find nothing of thekind, with the exception of Crom Cruagh. The holy apostle of thenation goes on preaching, baptizing, converting people, withoutfinding any worship of gods of stone or metal; he only hearsthat there is something of the kind in a particular spot, and hehas to travel a great distance in order to see it, and show thepeople their folly in venerating it.

But what was that idol? According to the majority of expoundersof Irish history, it was a golden sphere or ball representingthe sun, with twelve cones or pillars of brass, around it,typifying, probably, astronomical signs. St. Patrick, in his"Confessio," seems to allude to Crom Cruagh when he says: "Thatsun which we behold by the favor of God rises for us every day;but its splendor will not shine forever; nay, even all those whoadore it shall be miserably punished."

The Bollandists, in a note on this passage of the "Confessio,"think that it might refer to Crom Cruagh, which possiblyrepresented the sun, surrounded by the signs of the twelvemonths, through which it describes its orbit during the year.

We know that the Druids were, perhaps, better versed in thescience of astronomy than the scholars of any other nation atthe time. It was not in Gaul and Britain only that they pursuedtheir course of studies for a score of years; the same fact isattested for Ireland by authorities whose testimony is beyondquestion. May we not suppose that a representation of mereheavenly phenomena, set in a conspicuous position, had in courseof time become the object of the superstitious veneration of thepeople, and that St. Patrick thought it his duty to destroy it?And the attitude of the people at the time of its destructionshows that it could not have borne for them the same sacredcharacter as the statue of Minerva in the Parthenon did for theGreeks or that of Capitoline Jove for the Romans. Can we supposethat St. Paul or St. Peter would have dared to break either ofthese? And let us remark that the event we discuss occurred atthe very beginning of St. Patrick's ministry, and before he hadyet acquired that great authority over the minds of all whichafterward enabled him fearlessly to accomplish whatever his zealprompted him to do.

Whatever explanation of the whole occurrence may be given, wedoubt if we shall find a better than that we advance, and theconsiderations arising from it justify the opinion that theIrish Celts were not idolaters like all other peoples ofantiquity. They possessed no mythology beyond harmless fairy-tales, no poetical histories of gods and goddesses to please theimagination and the senses, and invest paganism with such anattractive garb as to cause it to become a real obstacle to thespread of Christianity.

Moreover, what we have said concerning the belief in theomnipotence of one supreme God, whatever might be his nature, asthe first dogma of Druidism, would seem to have lain deep in theminds of the Irish Celts, and caused their immediatecomprehension and reception of monotheism, as preached by St.Patrick, and the facility with which they accepted it. They werecertainly, even when pagans, a very religious people; otherwisehow could they have embraced the doctrines of Christianity withthat ardent eagerness which shall come under our considerationin the next chapter? A nation utterly devoid of faith of anykind is not apt to be moved, as were the Irish, perhaps beyondall other nations, at the first sight of supernatural truths,such as those of Christianity. And so little were they attachedto paganism, so visibly imbued with reverence for the supremeGod of the universe, that, as soon as announced, they acceptedthe dogma.

The simple and touching story of the conversion of the twodaughters of King Laeghaire will give point and life to thisvery important consideration. It is taken from the "Book ofArmagh," which Prof. O'Curry, who is certainly a competentauthority, believes older than the year 727, when the popularIrish traditions regarding St. Patrick must have still beenalmost as vivid as immediately after his death.

St. Patrick and his attendants being assembled at sunrise at thefountain of Clebach, near Cruachan in Connaught, Ethne andFelimia, daughters of King Laeghaire, came to bathe, and foundat the well the holy men.

"And they knew not whence they were, or in what form, or fromwhat people, or from what country; but they supposed them to befairies—duine sidhe—that is to say, gods of the earth, or aphantasm.

"And the virgins said unto them: 'Who are ye, and whence are ye?'

"And Patrick said unto them: 'It were better for you to confessto our true God, than to inquire concerning our race.'

"The first virgin said: `Who is God?

"'And where is God?

"'And where is his dwelling-place?

"'Has God sons and daughters, gold and silver?

"'Is he living?

"'Is he beautiful?

"'Did many foster his son?

"'Are his daughters dear and beauteous to men of this world?

"'Is he in heaven or on earth?

"'In the sea?—In rivers?—In mountainous places?—In valleys?

"'Declare unto us the knowledge of him?

"'How shall he be seen?-How shall he be loved?-How is he to be found?

"'Is it in youth?-Is it in old age that he is to be found?'

"But St. Patrick, full of the Holy Ghost, answered and said:

"'Our God is the God of all men-the God of heaven and earth-ofthe sea and rivers. The God of the sun, and the moon, and allstars. The God of the high mountains, and of the lowly valleys.The God who is above heaven, and in heaven, and under heaven.

"'He has a habitation in the heavens, and the earth, and the sea,
and all that are thereon.

"'He inspireth all things. He quickeneth all things. He is overall things.

"'He hath a Son coeternal and coequal with himself. The Son isnot younger than the Father, nor the Father older than the Son.And the Holy Ghost breatheth in them. The Father, and the Son,and the Holy Ghost, are not divided.

"'But I desire to unite you to a heavenly King inasmuch as youare daughters of an earthly king. Do you believe?'

"And the virgins said, as of one mouth and one heart: Teach usmost diligently how we may believe in the heavenly King. Show ushow we may see him face to face, and whatsoever you shall sayunto us we will do.'

"And Patrick said: 'Believe ye that by baptism you put off thesin of your father and your mother?'

"They answered him, 'We believe.'

"'Believe ye in repentance after sin? 'We believe . . .' etc.

"And they were baptized, and a white garment was put upon theirheads. And they asked to see the face of Christ. And the saintsaid unto them: 'Ye cannot see the face of Christ except yetaste of death, and except ye receive the sacrifice.'

"And they answered: 'Give us the sacrifice that we may beholdthe Son our spouse.'

"And they received the eucharist of God, and they slept in death.

"And they were laid out on one bed-covered with garments -andtheir friends made great lamentations and weeping for them."

This beautiful legend expresses to the letter the way in whichthe Irish received the faith. Nor was it simple virgins only whounderstood and believed so suddenly at the preaching of theapostle. The great men of the nation were as eager almost as thecommon people to receive baptism: the conversion of Dubtach isenough to show this.

He was a Druid, being the chief poet of King Laeghaire—allpoets belonging to the order. After the wife, the brothers, andthe two daughters of the monarch, he was the most illustriousconvert gained by Patrick at the beginning of his apostleship.He became a Christian at the first appearance of the saint atTara, and immediately began to sing in verse his new belief, ashe had formerly sung the heroes of his nation. To the end heremained firm in his faith, and a dear friend to the holy manwho had converted him. How could he, and all the chief convertsof Patrick, have believed so suddenly and so constantly in theGod of the Christians, if their former life had not preparedthem for the adoption of the new doctrine, and if the doctrineof monotheism had offered a real difficulty to theirunderstanding? There was, probably, nothing clear and definitein their belief in an omnipotent God, which is said to have beenthe leading dogma of Druidism; but their simple minds hadevidently a leaning toward the doctrine, which induced them toapprove of it, as soon as it was presented to them with a solemnaffirmation.

In order to elucidate this point, we add a short description ofthe labors and success of this apostle.

In the year 432, Patrick lands on the island. By that time, somefew of the inhabitants may possibly have heard of the Christianreligion from the neighboring Britain or Gaul. Palladius hadpreached the year before in the district known as the presentcounties of Wexford and Wicklow, erected three churches, andmade some converts; but it may be said that Ireland continued inthe same state it had preserved for thousands of years: theDruids in possession of religious and scientific supremacy; thechieftains in contention, as in the time of Fingal and Ossian;the people, though in the midst of constant strife, happy enoughon their rich soil, cheered by their bards and poets; very few,or no slaves in the country; an abundance of food everywhere;gold, silver, precious stones adorning profusely the persons oftheir chiefs, their wives, their warriors; rich stuffs, dyedwith many colors, to distinguish the various orders of society;a deep religious feeling in their hearts, preparing them for thefaith, by inspiring them with lively emotions at the sight ofdivine power displayed in their mountains, their valleys, theirlakes and rivers, and on the swelling bosom of the all-encircling ocean; superstitions of various kinds, indeed, butnone of a demoralizing character, none involving marks ofcruelty or lust; no revolting statues of Priapus, of Bacchus, ofCybele; no obscene emblems of religion, as in all other lands,to confront Christianity; but over all the island, song,festivity, deep affection for kindred; and, as though blood-relationship could not satisfy their heart, fosterage coveringthe land with other brothers and sisters; all permeated with astrong attachment to their clan-system and social customs. Suchis an exact picture of the Erin of the time, which the study ofantiquity brings clearer and clearer before the eyes of themodern student.

Patrick appears among them, leaning on his staff, and bringingthem from Rome and Gaul new songs in a new language set to a newmelody. He comes to unveil for them what lies hidden, unknown tothemselves, in the depths of their hearts. He explains, by thepower of one Supreme God, why it is that their mountains are sohigh, their valley so smiling, their rivers and lakes teemingwith life, their fountains so fresh and cool, and that sun oftheirs so temperate in its warmth, and the moon and stars,lighted with a soft radiance, shimmering over the deep obscurityof their groves.

He directs them to look into their own consciences, to admitthemselves to be sinners in need of redemption, and points outto them in what manner that Supreme God, whom they half knewalready, condescended to save man.

Straightway, from all parts of the island, converts flock to him;they come in crowds to be baptized, to embrace the new law bywhich they may read their own hearts; they are ready to dowhatever he wishes; many, not content with the strictcommandments enjoined on all, wish to enter on the path ofperfection: the men become monks, the women and young girls nuns,that is to say, spouses of Christ. In Munster alone "it wouldbe difficult," says a modern writer, Father Brenan, "to form anestimate of the number of converts he made, and even of thechurches and religious establishments he founded."

And so with all the other provinces of the island. The proof'sstill stand before our eyes. For, as Prof. Curry justly remarks:"No one, who examines for himself, can doubt that at the firstpreaching in Erin of the glad tidings of salvation, by SaintsPalladius and Patrick, those countless Christian churches werebuilt, whose sites and ruins mark so thickly the surface of ourcountry even to this day, still bearing through all thevicissitudes of time and conquest the unchanged names of theiroriginal founders."

According to the commonly-received opinion, St. Patrick'sapostleship lasted thirty-three years; but, whatever may havebeen its real duration, certain it is that his feet traversedthe whole island several times, and, at his passing, churchesand monasteries sprang up in great numbers, and remained to tellthe true story of his labors when their founder had passed away.

Nor was it with Ireland as with Rome, Carthage, Antioch, andother great cities of Europe, Africa, and Asia. Not the slavesand artisans alone filled these newly-erected Christian edifices.Some of the first men of the nation received baptism. We havealready spoken of the family of Laeghaire. In Connaught, at thefirst appearance of the man of God, all the inhabitants of thatportion of the province now represented by the County Mayobecame Christians; and the seven sons of the king of theprovince were baptized, together with twelve thousand of theirclansmen. In Leinster, the Princes Illand and Alind werebaptized in a fountain near Naas. In Munster, Aengus, the Kingof Cashel, with all the nobility of his clan, embraced the faith.A number of chieftains in Thom*ond are also mentioned; and thewhole of the Dalcassian tribe, so celebrated before and after inthe annals of Ireland, received, with the waters of baptism,that ardent faith which nothing has been able to tear from themto this day.

Many Druids even, by renouncing their superstitions, abdicatedtheir power over the people. We have mentioned Dubtach ; hisexample was followed by many others, among whom was Fingar, theson of King cl*to, who is said to have suffered martyrdom inBrittany; Fiech, pupil of Dubtach, himself a poet, and belongingto the noble house of Hy-Baircha in Leinster, was raised by St.Patrick to the episcopacy, and was the first occupant of the Seeof Sletty.

Fiech was a regular member of the bardic order of Druids, a poetby profession, esteemed as a learned man even before he embracedChristianity; and during his lifetime he was, as a Christianbishop, consulted by numbers and regarded as an oracle of truthand heavenly wisdom.

Nevertheless, Patrick encountered opposition. Some chieftainsdeclared themselves against him, without daring openly to attackhim. Many Druids, called in the old Irish annals magi, triedtheir utmost to estrange the Irish people from him. But he stoodin danger of his life only once. It was, in fact, a war ofargument. Long discussions took place, with varied success,ending generally, however, in a victory for truth.

The final result was that, in the second generation after St.Patrick, there existed not a single pagan in the whole ofIreland; the very remembrance of paganism even seemed to havepassed away from their minds ever after; hence arises thedifficulty of deciding now on the character of that paganism.

After its abolition, nothing remained in the literature of thecountry, which was at that time much more copious than atpresent—nothing was left in its monuments or in theinclinations of the people—to imperil the existence of thenewly-established Christianity, or of a nature calculated togive a wrong bias to the religious worship of the people, suchas we have seen was the case in the rest of Europe.

May we not conclude, then, that Ireland was much better preparedfor the new religion than any other country; that, when she wasthus admitted by baptism into the European family, she made herentry in a way peculiar to herself, and which secured to her,once for all, her firm and undeviating attachment to truth?

She had nothing to change in her manners after having renouncedthe few disconnected superstitions to which she had beenaddicted. Her songs, her bards, her festivities, herpatriarchal government, her fosterage, were left to her,Christianized and consecrated by her great apostle; clanshipeven penetrated into the monasteries, and gave rise later on tosome abuses. But, perhaps, the saint thought it better to allowthe existence of things which might lead to abuse than violentlyand at once to subvert customs, rooted by age in the very natureof the people, some of which it cost England, later on,centuries of inconceivable barbarities to eradicate.

As to what exact form, if any, the paganism of the Irish Celtsassumed, we have so few data to build upon that it is now nextto impossible to shape a system out of them. From the passageof the "Confessio" already quoted, we might infer that theyadored the sun; and this passage is very remarkable as the onlymention anywhere made by St. Patrick of idolatry among thepeople. If it was only the emblem of the Supreme Being, thenwould there have been nothing idolatrous in its worship; and thestrong terms in which the saint condemns it perhaps need onlyexpress his fear lest the superstition of the ignorant peoplemight convert veneration into positive idolatry. At all events,there was not a statue, or a temple, or a theological system,erected to or connected with it in any shape.

The solemn forms of oaths taken and administered by the Irishkings would also lead us to infer that they paid a superstitiousrespect to the winds and the other elements. But why shouldthis feeling pass beyond that which even the Christianexperiences when confronted by mysteries in the natural as wellas the supernatural order? The awe-struck pagan saw thelightning leap, the tempest gather and break over him inmajestic fury; heard the great voice of the mighty ocean whichlaved or lashed his shores: he witnessed these wonderful effects;he knew not whence the tempests or the lightnings came, or thevoice of the ocean; he trembled at the unseen power which movedthem —at his God.

So his imagination peopled his groves and hill-sides, his riversand lakes, with harmless fairies; but fairy land has neverbecome among any nation a pandemonium of cruel divinities; andwe doubt much if such innocuous superstition can be rightlycalled even sinful error.

In fact, the only thing which could render paganism truly adanger in Ireland, as opposed to the preaching of Christianity,was the body of men intrusted with the care of religion—theDruids, the magi of the chronicles. But, as we find no tracesof bloody sacrifices in Ireland, the Druids there probably neverbore the character which they did in Gaul; they cannot be saidto have been sacrificing priests; their office consisted merelyin pretended divinations, or the workings of incantations orspells. They also introduced superstition into the practice ofmedicine, and taught the people to venerate the elements ormysterious forces of this world.

Without mentioning any of the many instances which are found inthe histories of the workings of these Druidical incantationsand spells, the consulting of the clouds, and the ceremonieswith which they surrounded their healing art, we go straight toour main point: the ease and suddenness with which all thesedelusions vanished at the first preaching of the Gospel —a factvery telling on the force which they exercised over the mind ofthe nation. All natural customs, games, festivities, socialrelationships, as we have seen, are preserved, many to this day;what is esteemed as their religion, and its ceremonies andsuperstitions, is dropped at once. The entire Irish mindexpanded freely and generously at the simple announcement of aGod, present everywhere in the universe, and accepted it. Thedogma of the Holy Spirit, not only filling all—complens omnia-- but dwelling in their very souls by grace, and filling themwith love and fear, must have appeared natural to them. Theirvery superstitions must have prepared the way for the truth, achange —or may we not say a more direct and tangible objecttaking the place of and filling their undefined yearnings—wasalone requisite. Otherwise it is a hard fact to explain how,within a few years, all Druidism and magic, incantations, spells,and divinations, were replaced by pure religion, by thedoctrine of celestial favors obtained through prayer, by theintercession of a host of saints in heaven, and the belief inChristian miracles and prophecies; whereas, scarcely any thingof Roman or Grecian mythology could be replaced by correspondingChristian practices, although popes did all they could in thatregard. Nearly all the errors of the Irish Celts had theircorresponding truths and holy practices in Christianity, whichcould be readily substituted for them, and envelop themimmediately with distrust or just oblivion. Hence we do not see,in the subsequent ecclesiastical history of Ireland, any thingto resemble the short sketch we have given of the many dangersarising within the young Christian Church, which had theirorigin in the former religion of other European nations.

In regarding philosophy and its perils in Ireland, our task willbe an easy one, yet not unimportant in its bearings onsubsequent considerations. The minds of nations differ asgreatly as their physical characteristics; and to study theIrish mind we have only to take into consideration theinstitutions which swayed it from time immemorial. They were ofsuch a nature that they could but belong to a traditional people.All patriarchal tribes partake of that general character; none,perhaps, so strikingly as the Celts.

People thus disposed have nothing rationalistic in their nature;they accept old facts; and, if they reason upon them, it is tofind proofs to support, not motives to doubt them. They neverrefine their discussions to hair-splitting, synonymous almostwith rejection, as seems to be the delight of what we callrationalistic races. It was among these that philosophy was born,and among them it flourishes. They may, by their acutereasoning, enlarge the human mind, open up new horizons, and, ifconfined within just limits, actually enrich the understandingof man. We are far from pretending that philosophy has only beenproductive of harm, and that it were a blessed thing had thehuman intellect always remained, as it were, in a dormant state,without ever striving to grasp at philosophic truth and raiseitself above the common level; we hold the great names ofAugustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and so many others, in toogreat respect to entertain such an opinion.

Yet it cannot be denied that the excessive study of philosophyhas produced many evils among men, has often been subservient toerror, has, at best, been for many minds the source of a coldand desponding skepticism.

No race of men, perhaps, has been less inclined to follow thoseintellectual aberrations than the Celtic, owing chiefly to itseminently traditional dispositions.

Before Christianity reached them, the intellectual labors of theCelts were chiefly confined to history and genealogy, medicineand botany, law, song, music, and artistic workings in metalsand gems. This was the usual curriculum of Druidic studies.Astronomy and the physical sciences, as well as the knowledge of"the nature of the eternal God," were, according to Caesar,extensively studied in the Gallic schools. Some elements ofthose intellectual pursuits may also have occupied the attentionof the Irish student during the twelve, fifteen, or twenty yearsof his preparation for being ordained to the highest degree ofollamh. But the oldest and most reliable documents which havebeen examined so far do not allow us to state positively thatsuch was the case to any great extent.

In Christian times, however, it seems certain that astronomy wasbetter studied in Ireland than anywhere else, as is proved bythe extraordinary impulse given to that science by Virgil ofSalzburg, who was undoubtedly an Irishman, and educated in hisnative country.

It is from the Church alone, therefore, that they received theirhighest intellectual training in the philosophy and theology ofthe Scriptures and of the Fathers. It is known that, by theintroduction of the Latin and Greek tongues into their schoolsin addition to the vernacular, the Bible in Latin and Greek, andthe writings of many Fathers in both languages, as also the mostcelebrated works of Roman and Greek classical writers, becamemost interesting subjects of study. They reproduced those worksfor their own use in the scriptoria of their numerousmonasteries. We still possess some of those manuscripts of thesixth and following centuries, and none more beautiful orcorrect can be found among those left by the English, French, orItalian monastic institutions of the periods mentioned.

During the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, the Irishschools became celebrated all over Europe. Young Anglo-Saxons ofthe best families were sent to receive their education inInnisfail, as the island was then often called; and, from theircelebrated institutions of learning, numerous teachers andmissionaries went forth to England, Germany (along the Rhine,chiefly), France, and even Switzerland and Italy.

Yet, in the history of all those intellectual labors, we neverread of startling theories in philosophy or theology advanced byany of them, unless we except the eccentric John Scotus Erigena,whom Charles the Bald, at whose court he resided, protected evenagainst the just severity of the Church. Without ever havingstudied theology, he undertook to dogmatize, and would perhapshave originated some heresy, had he found a following in Germanyor France.

But he is the only Irishman who ever threatened the peace of theChurch, and, through her, of the world. Duns Scotus, if he wereIrish, never taught any error, and remained always an acceptedleader in Catholic schools. To the honor of Erin be it said, herchildren have ever been afraid to deviate in the least from thepath of faith. And it would be wrong to imagine that thepreservation from heresy so peculiar to them, and by which theyare broadly distinguished from all other European nations, comesfrom dulness of intellect and inability to follow out anintricate argumentation. They show the acuteness of theirunderstanding in a thousand ways; in poetry, in romantic tales,in narrative compositions, in legal acumen and extemporearguments, in the study of medicine, chiefly in that masterlyeloquence by which so many of them are distinguished. Who shallsay that they might not also have reached a high degree ofeminence in philosophical discussions and ontological theories?They have always abstained from such studies by reason of anatural disinclination, which does them honor, and which hassaved them in modern times, as we shall see in a subsequentchapter, from the innumerable evils which afflict societyeverywhere else, and by which it is even threatened withdestruction.

Thus, among the numerous and versatile progeny of Japhet onesmall branch has kept itself aloof from the universal movementof the whole family; and, in the very act of acceptingChristianity and taking a place in the commonwealth of Westernnations, it has known how to do so in its own manner, and hasthus secured a firm hold of the saving doctrines imparted to thewhole race for a great purpose—the purpose, unfortunately oftendefeated—of reducing to practice and reality the sublime idealof the Christian religion.

The details given in this chapter on the various circ*mstancesconnected with the introduction of our holy faith into Irelandwere necessarily very limited, as our chief object was to speakof the nation's preparation for it. In the following we treatdirectly of what could only be touched upon in the latter partof this.

CHAPTER IV.

HOW THE IRISH RECEIVED CHRISTIANITY.

For the conversion of pagans to Christianity, many exteriorproofs of revelation were vouchsafed by God to man in additionto the interior impulse of his grace. Those exterior proofs aregenerally termed "the evidences of religion." They produce theirchief effect on inquiring minds which are familiar with thereasoning processes of philosophy, and attach great importanceto truth acquired by logical deduction. To this, many pagans ofGreece and Rome owed their conversion; by this, in our days,many strangers are brought, on reflection, to the faith ofChrist, always presupposing the paramount influence of divinegrace on their minds and hearts.

But it is easy to remark that, except in rare cases, those whoare gained over to truth by such a process are with somedifficulty brought under the influence of the supernatural,which forms the essential groundwork of Christianity. Thisinfluence, it is true, is only the effect of the operation ofthe Holy Ghost on the soul of the convert; but the Holy Ghostacts in conformity with the disposition of the soul; and we know,by what has been said on the character of religion among theRomans and the Greeks in the earlier days of the Church, that ittook long ages, the infusion of Northern blood, and thesimplicity of new races uncontaminated by heathen mythology, toinspire men with that deep supernatural feeling which in courseof time became the distinguishing character of the ages of faith.Ireland imbibed this feeling at once, and thus she receivedChristianity more thoroughly, at the very beginning, than didany other Western nation.

The fact is—whatever may be thought or said—the Christianreligion, with all the loveliness it imparts to this world whenrightly understood, though never destroying Nature, but alwayskeeping it in mind, and consecrating it to God, truly endowed,consequently, with the promises of earth as well as those ofheaven—the Christian religion is nevertheless fundamentallysupernatural, full of awe and mystery, heavenly andincomprehensible, before being earthly and the grateful objectof sense.

Without examining the various formularies which heresy compelledan infallible Church to proclaim and impose upon her childrenfrom time to time, the Apostles' Creed alone transfers man atonce into regions supernatural, into heaven itself. The Trinity,the Incarnation, the Redemption, the mission of the Hold Ghoston earth, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, andthe resurrection of the dead, are all mysteries necessitating arevelation on the part of God himself to make them known to andbelieved by man. Do they not place man, even while on earth, indirect communication with heaven?

The firm believer in those mysteries is already a celestialcitizen by faith and hope. He has acquired a new life, newsenses, as it were, new faculties of mind and will—all things,evidently, above Nature.

And it is clear, from many passages of the New Testament, thatour Lord wished the lives of his disciples to be whollypenetrated with that supernatural essence. They were not to bemen of the earth, earthly, but citizens of another country whichis heavenly and eternal. Hence the holiness and perfectionrequired of them—a holiness, according to Christ, like that ofthe celestial Father himself; hence contempt for the things ofthis world, so strongly recommended by our Lord; hence theassurance that men are called to be sons of God, the eternal Sonhaving become incarnate to acquire for us this gloriousprivilege; hence, finally, that frequent recommendation in theGospel to rely on God for the things of this life, and to lookabove all for spiritual blessings.

That reliance is set forth in such terms, in the Sermon on theMount, that, taken literally, man should neglect entirely histemporal advantages, forget entirely Nature, and think only ofgrace, or rather, expect that the things of Nature would begiven us by our heavenly Father "who knows that we need them."

Nature, consequently, assumes a new aspect in this system. It isno longer a complexity of temporal goods within reach of theefforts of man, and which it rests with man alone to procure forhimself. It is, indeed, a worldly treasure, belonging to God, asall else, and which the hand of God scatters profusely among hiscreatures. God will not fail to grant to every one what he needs,if he have faith. Thus God is always visible in Nature; andredeemed man, raised far above the beasts of the field, hasother eyes than those of the body, when he looks around him onthis world.

Had Christianity been literally understood by those who firstreceived it, it would have completely changed the moral, social,and even natural aspect of the universe. The change producedthroughout by the new religion was indeed remarkable, but notwhat it would have been, if the supernatural had taken completepossession of human society. This it did in Ireland, and, it maybe said, in Ireland alone.

To begin with the preaching of St. Patrick, we note his care toimpart to his converts a sufficient knowledge of the Christianmysteries, but, above all, to make those mysteries influencetheir lives by acting more powerfully on the new Christian heartthan even on the mind.

Thus, in the beautiful legend of Ethne and Felimia, the saint,not content with instructing them on the attributes of God, theTrinity, and other supernatural truths, goes further still; herequires a change in their whole being—that it be spiritualized:by deeply exciting their feelings, by speaking of Christ astheir spouse, by making them wish to receive him in the holyEucharist, even at the expense of their temporal life, he soraises them above Nature that they actually asked to die. "Andthey received the Eucharist of God, and they slept in death."

Again, in the hymn of Tara, the heavenly spirit, which consistsin an intimate union with God and Christ, is so admirablyexpressed, that we cannot refrain from presenting an extractfrom it, remarking that this beautiful hymn has been the greatprayer of all Irishmen through all ages down even to our owntimes, though, unfortunately, it is not now so generally knownand used by them as formerly:

"At Tara, to-day, may the strength of God pilot me, may thepower of God preserve me, may the wisdom of God instruct me, maythe eye of God view me, may the ear of God hear me, may the wordof God render me eloquent, may the hand of God protect me, maythe way of God direct me, may the shield of God defend me, etc.

"Christ be with me, Christ before me, Christ after me, Christ inme, Christ under me, Christ over me, Christ at my right, Christat my left; . . . Christ be in the heart of each person whom Ispeak to, Christ in the mouth of each person who speaks to me,Christ in each eye which sees me, Christ in each ear which hearsme!"

Could any thing tend more powerfully to make of those whom heconverted, true supernatural Christians—forgetful of this world,thinking only of another and a brighter one?

The island, at his coming, was a prey to preternaturalsuperstitions. The Druids possessed, in the opinion of thepeople, a power beyond that of man; and history shows the samephenomenon in all pagan countries, not excepting those of ourtime. A real supernatural power was required to overcome that ofthe magi.

Hence, according to Probus, the magicians to whom the arrival ofPatrick had been foretold, prepared themselves for the contest,and several chieftains supported them. Prestiges were, therefore,tried in antagonism to miracles; but, as Moses prevailed overthe power of the Egyptian priests, so did Patrick over theCeltic magicians. It is even said that five Druids perished inone of the contests.

The princes were sometimes also punished with death. Recraid,head of a clan, came with his Druids and with words ofincantation written under his white garments; he fell dead.Laeghaire himself, the Ard-Righ of all Ireland, whose familybecame Christian, but who refused to abandon his superstitions,perished with his numerous attendants.

But a more singular phenomenon was, that death, which was oftenthe punishment of unbelief, became as often a boon to be desiredby the new Christian converts, so completely were they under theinfluence of the supernatural. Thus Ruis found it hard tobelieve. To strengthen his faith, Patrick restored to him hisyouth, and then gave him the choice between this sweet blessingof life and the happiness of heaven; Ruis preferred to die, likeEthne and Felimia.

Sechnall, the bard, told St. Patrick, one day, that he wished tosing the praises of a saint whom the earth still possessed."Hasten, then," said Patrick, "for thou art at the gates ofdeath." Sechnall, not only undisturbed, but full of joy, sang aglorious hymn in honor of Patrick, and immediately after died.

Kynrecha came to the convent-door of St. Senan. "What have womenin common with monks?" said the holy abbot. "We will not receivethee." "Before I leave this place," responded Kynrecha, "I offerthis prayer to God, that my soul may leave the body." And shesank down and expired.

The various lives of the apostle of Ireland and his successorsare full of facts of this nature. Supposing that a high coloringwas given to some of these by the writers, one thing is certain:the people who lived during that apostleship believed in themfirmly, and handed down their belief to their children. Moreover,nothing was better calculated to give to a primitive people,like the Irish, a strong supernatural spirit and character, thanto make them despise the joys of this earth and yearn for abetter country.

There are, indeed, too many facts of a similar kind related inthe lives of St. Patrick and his fellow-workers, to bear theimputation, not of imposition, but even of delusion. The desireof dying, to be united with Christ; the indifference, at least,as to the prolongation of existence; the readiness, if not thejoy, with which the announcement of death was received, are ofsuch frequent mention in those old legends, as matters ofordinary occurrence, surprising no one, that they must beconceded as facts often taking place in those early ages.

And, more striking still, this feeling of accepting death,either as a boon or as a matter of course, and with perfectresignation to the will of God, seems to have been throughout,since the introduction of Christianity, a characteristic of theIrish people. It is often witnessed in our own days, andmanifested, equally by the young, the middle-aged, or the old.The young, closing their eyes to that bright life whosesweetness they have as yet scarcely tasted, never murmur atbeing deprived of it, though hope is to them so alluring; themiddle-aged, called away in the midst of projects yetunaccomplished, see the sudden end of all that before interestedthem, with no other concern than for the children they leavebehind them; the old, among other races generally so tenaciousof life, are, as a rule, glad that their last hour has come, andspeak only of their joy that at last they "go home" to thatcountry whither so many of their friends and kindred have gonebefore them.

This in itself would stamp the Celtic character with anindelible mark, distinguishing it from all other, even mostChristian, peoples.

The second sign we find of the firm hold the supernatural hadtaken of the Irish from the very beginning is their strongbelief in the power of the priesthood. This is so striking amongthem that they have been called by their enemies and those ofthe Church "a priest-ridden people." Let us consider if this isa reproach.

If Christianity be true, what is the priesthood? Even among theGreeks, from whom so many heresies formerly sprang before theywere smitten into insignificance by schism and its punishment—Turkish slavery—when the great doctors sent them by Providencespoke on the subject, what were their words, and what impressiondid they make on their supercilious hearers? St. John Chrysostomwill answer. His long treatise, written to his friend Basil, isbut a glowing description of the great privileges given to theChristian priest by the High-Priest himself—Christ our Lord.

When the great preacher of Antioch, though not yet a priest,describes the awful moment of sacrifice, the altar surrounded byangels descended from heaven, the man consecrated to an officehigher than any on earth, and as high as that of the incarnateSon of God—God himself coming down from above and bringing downheaven with him—who can believe in Christianity and fail to bestruck with awe?

Who can read the words of Christ, declaring that any oneinvested with that dignity is sent by him as he was himself sentby his Father, and not feel the innate respect due to suchdivine honors? Who can read the details of those privileges withrespect to the remission of sin, the conferring of grace by thesacraments, the infallible teaching of truth, the power evengranted to them sometimes over Nature and disease, withoutfeeling himself transported into a world far above this, andwithout placing his confidence in what God himself has declaredso powerful and preeminent in the regions beyond?

Such, in a few words, is the Christian priesthood, ifChristianity possesses any reality and is not an imposture.Among all nations, therefore, where sound faith exists, thegreatest respect is shown to the ministers of God; but the Irishhave at all times been most persistent in their veneration andtrust. And if we would ascertain the cause of their standing inthis regard, we shall find that other nations, while firmlybelieving the words of Christ, keep their eyes open to humanfrailty, and look more keenly and with more suspicion on theconduct of men invested with so high a dignity, but subject atthe same time to earthly passions and sins; while the Irish, onthe contrary, abandon themselves with all the impulsiveness oftheir nature to the feeling uppermost in their hearts, which isever one of trust and ready reliance.

But this statement, whatever may be its intrinsic value, itselfneeds a further explanation, which is only to be found in thegreater attraction the supernatural always possessed for theIrish nature, when developed by grace. They accept fully andunsuspiciously what is heavenly, because they, more than others,feel that they are made for heaven, and the earth, consequently,has for them fewer attractions. They cling to a world far abovethis, and whatever belongs to it is dear to them.

Hence, from the first preaching of Christianity among them, allearthly dignities have paled before the heavenly honors of thepriesthood. They have been taught by St. Patrick that even thesupreme duties of a real Christian king fall far below those ofa Christian bishop.

The king, according to the apostle of Ireland - and his wordshave become a canon of the Irish Church - "has to judge no manunjustly; to be the protector of the stranger, of the widow, andthe orphan; to repress theft, punish adultery, not to keepbuffoons or unchaste persons; not to exalt iniquity, but tosweep away the impious from the land, exterminate parricides andperjurers; to defend the poor, to appoint just men over theaffairs of the kingdom, to consult wise and temperate elders, todefend his native land against its enemies rightfully andstoutly; in all things to put his trust in God."

All this evidently refers only to the exterior polity andadministration. But "the bishop must be the hand which supports,the pilot who directs, the anchor that stays, the hammer thatstrikes, the sun that enlightens, the dew which moistens, thetablet to be written on, the book to be read, the mirror to beseen in, the terror that terrifies, the image of all that isgood; and let him be all for all."

Under this metaphorical style we here discern all the interiorqualities of a spiritual Christian guide, teaching no less byauthority than example.

And, in the opinion of the converts of Patrick, were not thebishops, abbots, and priests, supported by an invisible power,stronger than all visible armies and guards of kings and princes?

"When the King of Cashel dared to contend against the holy abbotMochoemoc, the first night after the dispute an old man took theking by the hand and led him to the northern city-walls; therehe opened the king's eyes, and he beheld all the Irish saints ofhis own sex in white garments, with Patrick at their head; theywere there to protect Mochoemoc, and they filled the plain ofFemyn.

"The second night the old man came again and took the king tothe southern wall, and there he saw the white-robed gloriousarmy of Ireland's virgins, led by Bridget: they too had come todefend Mochoemoc, and they filled the plain of Monael." 1

(1 Many quotations in this chapter are from the "Legend. Hist."by J. G. Shea.)

In the annals of no other Christian nation do we see so manyexamples of the power of the ministers of God to punish thewicked and help and succor the good, as we do in the hagiographyof Ireland. Bad kings and chieftains reproved, cursed, punished;the poor assisted, the oppressed delivered from their enemies,the sick restored to health, the dead even raised to life, areoccurrences which the reader meets in almost every page of thelives of Irish saints. The Bollandists, accustomed as they wereto meet with miracles of that kind, in the lives they published,found in Irish hagiography such a superabundance of them, thatthey refused to admit into their admirable compilation a greatnumber already published or in manuscript. Nevertheless, thecritics of our days, finding nothing impossible to or unworthyof God in the large collection of Colgan and other Irishantiquarians, express their surprise at their exclusion fromthat of Bollandus.

No one at least will refuse to concede that, true or not, thefacts related in those lives are always provocative of piety andredolent of faith. They certainly prove that at all periods oftheir existence the Irish have manifested a holy avidity forevery thing supernatural and miraculous. Do they not know thatour Lord has promised gifts of this description to his apostlesand their successors? And what the acts of the Apostles and manyacts of martyrs positively state as having happened at the verybeginning of the Church, is not a whit less extraordinary orphysically impossible than any thing related in the Irishlegends.

Every Christian soul naturally abhors the unbelief of a Straussor of a Renan as to the former; is it not unnatural, then, forthe same Christian soul to reject the latter because they fallunder the easy sneer of "an Irish legend," and are not containedin Holy Writ?

At all events, the faith of the Irish has never wavered in suchmatters, and to-day they hold the same confidence in thepriests' power that meets us everywhere in the pages of Colganand Ward. The reason is, that they admit Christianity withoutreserve; and in its entirety it is supernatural. The criticismsof human reason on holy things hold in their eyes something ofthe sacrilegious and blasphemous; such criticisms are for themopen disrespect for divine things; and, inasmuch as divinethings are, in fact, more real than any phenomena under naturallaws can be, skepticism in the former case is always moreunreasonable than in the latter, supposing always that thenarrative of the Divine favors reposes on sufficient authority.

It is clear, therefore, that since the preaching of Christianityin Ireland, the world showed itself to the inhabitants of thatcountry in a different light to that in which other men beheldit. For them, Nature is never separated from its Maker; the handof God is ever visible in all mundane affairs, and the frightfulparting between the spiritual and material worlds, firstoriginated by the Baconian philosophy, which culminates in ourdays in the almost open negation of the spiritual, and thusmaterializes all things, is with justice viewed by the childrenof St. Patrick with a holy horror as leading to atheism, if itbe not atheism itself.

Without going to such extremes as the avowed infidels of moderntimes, all other Christian nations have seemed afraid to drawthe logical conclusions whose premises were laid down byrevelation. They have tried to follow a via media betweentruth and error; they have admitted to a certain extent theseparation of God and Nature, supposing the act of creation tohave passed long ages ago, and not continuing through all time;and thus they are bound by their system to hold that miraclesare very extraordinary things, not to be believed prima facie,requiring infinite precautions before admitting the suppositionof their having taken place; all which indicates a realrepugnance to their admission, and an innate fear of supposingGod all-powerful, just, and good. It is the first step toManicheism and the kindred errors; and most Christian nationshaving, unfortunately, imbibed the principles of those errors inthe philosophy of modern times, have almost lost all faith inthe supernatural, and reduced revelation to a meagre and coldsystem, unrealized and not to be realized in human life.

Not so the Irish Religion has entered deep into their life. Itis a thing of every moment and of every place. Nature, God'shandiwork, instead of repelling them from God himself, drawsthem gently but forcibly toward Him, so that they feelthemselves to be truly recipients of the blessings of God bybeing sharers in the blessings of Nature.

And must God's ministers, who have received such extraordinarypowers over the supernatural world, be entirely deprived ofpower over the inferior part of creation? Who can say so, andhave true faith in the words of our Lord? Who can say so, andtruly call himself the follower and companion of the saints whohave all believed so firmly in the constant action of God inthis, the lesser part of his creation?

And this faith of the Irish in the power of the priesthood isnot a thing of yesterday. It dates from their adoption ofChristianity, to continue, we hope, forever. It ought, therefore,to be carefully distinguished from that love for every priestof God which beats so ardently in the hearts of them all, andwhich was so strengthened by a long community of persecution andsuffering.

In Ireland, as in every other Christian country, the priesthoodhas always sided with the people against their oppressors.During the early ages of Christianity in the island, the bishops,priests, and monks, were often called upon to exercise theirauthority and power against princes and chiefs of clans,accustomed to plunder, destroy, and kill, on the slightestpretext, and unused to control their fierce passions, inflamedby the rancor of feuds and the pride of strength and bravery.Some of those chieftains even opposed the progress of religion;and it is said that Eochad, King of Ulster, cast his twodaughters, whom Patrick had baptized and consecrated to God,into the sea.

For several centuries the heads of clans were generally sounruly and so hard to bring under the yoke of Christ, that thesaints, in taking the side of the poor, had to stand as a wallof brass to stem the fury of the great and powerful.

Bridget even, the modest and tender virgin, often spoke harshlyof princes and rulers. "While she dwelt in the land of Bregia,King Connal's daughter-in-law came to ask her prayers, for shewas barren. Bridget refused to go to receive her; but, leavingher without, she sent one of her maidens. When the nun returned:'Mother,' she asked, 'why would you not go and see the queen?you pray for the wives of peasants.' 'Because,' said the servantof God, 'the poor and the peasants are almost all good and pious,while the sons of kings are serpents, children of blood andfornication, except a small number of elect. But, after all, asshe had recourse to us, go back and tell her that she shall havea son; he will be wicked, and his race shall be accursed, yet heshall reign many years.'"

We might multiply examples such as this, wherein the saints andthe ministers of God always side with the poor and the helpless;and their great number in the lives of the old saints at oncegives a reason for the deep love which the lower class of theIrish people felt for the holy men who were at once the servantsof God and their helpers in every distress.

The same thing is to be found in the whole subsequent history ofthe island, chiefly in the latter ages of persecution. But, aswe said before, this affection and love must be distinguishedfrom the feeling of reverence and awe resulting from thesupernatural character of their office. The first feeling ismerely a natural one, produced by deeds of benevolence and holycharity fondly remembered by the individuals benefited. Thesecond was the effect of religious faith in the sacredness ofthe priestly character, and remained in full force even when thepoor themselves fell under reproof or threat in consequence ofsome misdeed or vicious habit.

Hence the universal respect which the whole race entertains fortheir spiritual rulers, and their unutterable confidence intheir high prerogatives. In prosperity as in adversity, infreedom or in subjection, they always preserve an instinctivefaith in the unseen power which Christ conferred on those whomHe chose to be his ministers. This feeling, which is undoubtedlyfound among good Christians in all places, is as certainly onlyfound among particular individuals; but among the Irish Celts itis the rule rather than the exception.

Well have they merited, then, in this sense, from the days of St.Patrick down, the title of a "priest-ridden" people, which hasbeen fixed on them as a term of reproach by those for whom allbelief in the supernatural is belief in imposture.

Another and a stronger fact still, exemplifying the extent towhich the Irish have at all times carried their devotion to thesupernatural character of the Christian religion, is theextraordinary ardor with which, from the very beginning, theyrushed into the high path of perfection, called the way of"evangelical counsels." Nowhere else were such scenes everwitnessed in Christian history.

For the great mass of people the common way of life is thepractice of the commandments of God; it is only the few who feelthemselves called on to enter upon another path, and whoexperience interiorly the need of being "perfect."

In Ireland the case was altogether different from the outset. St.Patrick, notwithstanding his intimate knowledge of the leaningsof the race, expresses in his "Confessio" the wonder and delighthe experienced when he saw in what manner and in what numbersthey begged to be consecrated to God the very first day aftertheir baptism. Yet were they conscious that this very eagernesswould excite the greater opposition on the part of their paganrelatives and friends. Thus we read of the fate of Eochad'sdaughters, and the story of Ethne and Felimia.

The whole nation, in fact, appeared suddenly transported with aholy impetuosity, and lifted at once to the height of Christianlife. Monasteries and nunneries could not be constructed fastenough, although they contented themselves with the lightestfabrics—wattles being the ordinary materials for walls, andslender laths for roofs.

Nor was this an ephemeral ardor, like a fire of stubble or straw,flashing into a momentary blaze, to relapse into deeper gloom.It lasted for several centuries; it was still in full flame atthe time of Columba, more than two hundred years after Patrick;it grew into a vast conflagration in the seventh and eighthcenturies, when multitudes rushed forth from that burning islandof the blest to spread the sacred fire through Europe.

How the nation continued to multiply, when so many devotedthemselves to a holy celibacy, is only to be explained by thelarge number of children with which God blessed those whopursued an ordinary life, and who, from what is related in thechronicles of the time, must have been in a minority.

Of the first monasteries and convents erected not a singlevestige now remains, because of the perishable materials ofwhich they were constructed; yet each of them contained hundreds,nay thousands, of monks or nuns.

But, even in our days, we are furnished with an oculardemonstration of what men could scarcely bring themselves tobelieve, or at least would term an exaggeration, did notstanding proof remain. God inspired his children with thethought of erecting more substantial structures, of buildingwalls of stone and roofing them in with tiles and metal; and theisland was literally covered, not with Gothic castles orluxurious palaces and sumptuous edifices, but with large andcommodious buildings and churches, wherein the religious life ofthe inmates might be carried on with greater comfort andseclusion from the world.

At the time of the Reformation all those asylums of perfectionand asceticism were of course profaned, converted to vile orslavish uses, many altogether destroyed to the very foundations;a greater number were allowed to decay gradually and becomeheaps of ruins.

And what happened when the English Government, unable any longerto resist public opinion, was compelled to consent that a surveybe made of the poor and comparatively few remains still inexistence, in order to manifest a show of interest for the pasthistory of the island; when commissioners were appointed topublish lists and diagrams of the former dwellings of the"saints," which the "zeal" of the "reformers" had battered downwithout mercy? To the astonishment of all, it was proved by theruins still in existence that the greater portion of the islandhad been once occupied by monasteries and convents of everydescription. And Prof. O'Curry has stated his conviction, basedon local traditions and geographical and topographical names,that a great number of these can be traced back to Patrick andhis first companions.

It is clear enough, then, that, from the beginning, the Irishwere not only "priest-ridden," but also very attached to"monkish superstitions."

Yet we could not form a complete idea of that attachment were weto limit ourselves to an enumeration of the buildings actuallyerected, supposing such an enumeration possible at this time.For we know, by many facts related in Irish hagiology, that agreat number of those who devoted themselves to a life ofpenance and austerity, did not dwell even in the humblestructures of the first monks, but, deeming themselves unworthyof the society of their brethren, or condemned by a severe butjust "friend of their soul," as the confessor was then called,hid themselves in mountain-caves, in the recesses of woods orforests, or banished themselves to crags ever beaten by thewaves of the sea.

Yes, there was a time when those dreadful solitudes of theHebrides, which frighten the modern tourist in his summerexplorations, teemed with Christian life, and every rock, cave,and sand-bar had its inhabitant, and that inhabitant an Irishmonk.

They sometimes spent seven years on a desert islet doing penancefor a single sin. They often passed a lifetime on a rock in themidst of the ocean, alone with God, and enjoying no communionbut that of their conscience.

Who knows how many thousands of men have led such a life,shocking, indeed, to the feelings of worldlings, but in realitydevoted to the contemplation of what is above Nature—a life,consequently, exalted and holy?

Passing from the solitudes to the numerous hives where the beesof primitive Christianity in Ireland were busy at workconstructing their combs and secreting their honey, what do wesee? People generally imagine that all monastic establishmentshave been alike; that those of mediaeval times were simply thereproduction of earlier ones. An abbot, the three vows,austerity, psalmody, study—such are the general features commonto all; but those of Ireland had peculiarities which are worthyof examination. We shall find in them a stronger expression ofthe supernatural, perhaps; certainly a more heavenly cast, agreater forgetfulness of the world, its manners and habits, itspassions and aims.

Patrick had learned all he knew of this holy life in theestablishment of Lerins, wherein the West reflected more trulythan it ever did subsequently the Oriental light of the greatfounders of monasticism in Palestine and Egypt.

The first thing to be remarked is the want, to a great extent,of a strict system. The Danes, when Christianized, and the Anglo-Normans, introduced this afterwards; but the genius of the Irishrace is altogether opposed to it, and the Scandinavian races infollowing ages could hardly ever bring them under the colduniformity of an iron rule.

Did St. Patrick establish a rule in the monasteries which hefounded? Did St. Columba two centuries later? Did any of thegreat masters of spiritual life who are known to have exercisedan influence on the world of Irish convents? Not only hasnothing of the kind been transmitted to us, but no mention of itis made in the lives of holy abbots which we possess.1 (1 The"Irish Penitentials," quoted at length in Rev. Dr. Moran's"Early Irish Church," are not monastic rules, although manycanons have reference to monks.) St. Columbanus's rule is theonly one which has come down to us; but the monasteries foundedby him were all situated in Burgundy, Switzerland, Germany, andItaly—that is to say, out of Ireland, out of the island ofsaints. He was compelled to furnish his monasteries with awritten rule, because they were surrounded by barbarous peoples,some of whom his establishments often received as monks, and towhom the holiness of Ireland was unfamiliar or utterly unknown.But why should the people of God, living in his devoted island,redeemed as soon as born by the waters of baptism, be shackledby enactments which might serve as an obstacle to the action ofthe Holy Ghost on their free souls?

According to the common opinion, each founder of a monastery hadhis own rule, which he himself was the first to follow in allits rigor; if disciples came, they were to observe it, or goelsewhere; if, after having embraced it, they found themselvesunable to keep it to the letter, the abbot was indulgent, anddid not impose on them a burden which they could no longer bear,after having first proved their willingness to practise it.

Thus, it is reported that St. Mochta was the only one whopractised his own rule exactly, his monks imitating him as wellas they could. St. Fintan, who was inclined to be severe,received this warning in a vision: "Fight unto the end thyself;but beware of being a cause of scandal to others, by requiringall to fight as thou doest, for one clay is weaker than another."

Thus, every founder, every abbot even, left to the guidance ofthe Holy Spirit, practised austerities which in our days of self-indulgence seem absolutely incredible, and showed themselvessevere to those under their authority. But this severity wastempered by such zeal for the good of souls, and consequently bysuch an unmistakable charity, that the penitent monk carried hisburden not only with resignation, but with joy. This, in after-ages, became a characteristic feature of Irish monasticism.

The life of Columba is full of examples of this holy severity.In St. Patrick's life we read that Colman died of thirst ratherthan quench it before the time appointed by his master.

How many facts of a similar nature might be mentioned! Enough tosay that, after so many ages, in which, thanks to barbarouspersecutions, all ecclesiastical and monastic traditions werelost to Ireland, through the sheer impossibility of followingthem up, the Irish still show a marked predilection for the holyausterity of penance, though the rest of the Christian worldseems to have almost totally forgotten it.

But if the Irish convents lacked system, there was at the sametime in them an exuberance of feeling, an enthusiastic impulse,which is to be found nowhere else to the same extent, and whichwe call their second peculiar feature after they receivedChristianity. This is beautifully expressed in a hymn of theoffice of St. Finian: "Behold the day of gladness; the clerksapplaud and are in joy; the sun of justice, which had beenhidden in the clouds, shines forth again."

As soon as this primitive enthusiasm seemed to slacken in theleast, reformers appeared to enkindle it again. Such was Bridget,such was Gildas, such were the disciples of St. David ofMenevia in Wales, such was any one whom the Spirit of Godinspired with love for Ireland. Thus the scenes enacted in thetime of Patrick were again and again repeated.

And when a monastery was built, it was not properly a monastery,but a city rather; for the whole country round joined in thegoodly work. As some one has said, "it looked as if Ireland wasgoing to cease to be a nation, and become a church."

With regard to the question of ground and the appropriation oflanded property, what matters it who is the owner? If it be clanterritory, there is the clan with nothing but welcome, applause,and assistance. If it be private, the owner is not consultedeven; how could he think of opposing the work of God? Thus, wenever read in Irish history - in the earlier stages at least -of those long charters granted in other lands by kings, dukes,and counts, and preserved with such care in the archives of themonastery. It seems that the Danes, after they became Christians,were the first to introduce the custom; after them, the Anglo-Normans, in the true spirit of their race, made a flourishingbusiness of it. The Irish themselves never thought of such atfirst. There was no fear of any one ever claiming the ground onwhich God's house stood. The buildings were there: the groundneeded to support them: what Irishman could think of drivingaway the holy inmates and pulling the walls about their ears?

The whole surrounding population is busy erecting them. Longrows of wattles and tessel-work are set in right order; overthem a rough roof of boards; within small cells begin to appear,as the slight partitions are erected between them. Symmetry orno symmetery, the position of the ground decides the question;for there is no need of the skill of a surveyor to establish thegrade. Does not the rain run its own way, once it begins?

How far and how wide will those long rows reach? They seem thestreets of a city; and in truth they are. The place is toreceive two, three thousand monks, over and above the studentscommitted to their care. And, in addition to the cells to dwellin, there are the halls wherein to teach; the museums andrepositories of manuscripts, of sacred objects; the rooms towrite in, translate, compose; the sheds to hold provisions, toprepare and cook them, ready for the meal.

For the most important edifice—the temple of God—alone stonesare cut, shaped, and fitted each to each with care and precision.A holy simplicity surrounds the art; yet are there not wantingcarven crosses and other divine emblems sculptured out. Within,the heavenly mysteries of religion will be performed. Should youask, "Why so small?" the answer is ready. That large space emptyaround holds room enough for the worshippers, whose numberscould be accommodated in no edifice. The minds of Irisharchitects had not yet expanded to the conception of a St.Peter's. Inside is room enough for the ministers of religion;without, at the tinkling of the bell, in the round toweradjoining, the faithful will join in the services.

Nor was it only in the erection of those edifices that a cheerfulimpulse, which overlooked or overcame all difficulties, wasdisplayed. The monastic life was not all the time a life ofpenance and gloomy austerity, but of active work also andoverflowing feeling, of true poetry and enthusiastic exultation.We read in the fragments we still possess how, on the arid rockof Iona, Columba remembered his former residence at Derry, withits woods of oaks and the pure waters of its loughs. In all thelives of Irish saints we read of the deep attachment they alwayspreserved for their country, relatives, and friends; what theydid and were ready to do for them. And though all this was atbottom but a natural feeling, the extent to which it was carriedwill make us better acquainted with the Irish character, andexplain more clearly that extraordinary expansion of soul which,in the domains of the supernatural, surpassed every thingwitnessed elsewhere.

"In a monastery two brothers had lived from childhood. The elderdied, and while he was dying the other was laboring in theforest. When he came back, he saw the brethren opening a gravein the cemetery, and thus he learned that his brother was dead.He hastened to the spot where the Abbot Fintan, with some of hismonks, were chanting psalms around the corpse, and asked him thefavor of dying with his brother, and entering with him into theheavenly kingdom. 'Thy brother is already in heaven,' repliedFintan, 'and you cannot enter together unless he rise again.'Then he knelt in prayer, the angels who had received the holysoul restored it, and the dead man, rising in his bier, calledhis brother: 'Come,' said he, 'but come quickly; the angelsawait us.' At the same time he made room beside him, and both,lying down, slept together in death, and ascended together tothe kingdom of God."

This anecdote may tend better than any thing else to show us howNature and grace were united in the Irish soul, to warm it,purify it, exalt it above ordinary feelings and earthly passions,and keep it constantly in a state of energy and vitalityunknown to other peoples. For, in what page of theecclesiastical history of other nations do we read of thingssuch as these?

With regard to their country, also, grace came to the aid ofNature; the supernatural was, therefore, seldom absent from thenatural in their minds, and something of this double union has,remained in them in every sense, and has, no doubt, contributedto render their nationality imperishable in spite of persecution.How ardent and pure in the heart of Columba was the love ofIreland, from which he was a voluntary exile! Patrick, also,though not native born, yielded to none in that sacred feeling;one of the three things he sought of God on dying was, that Erinshould not "remain forever under a foreign yoke:" Kieran offeredthe same prayer, and their reason for thus praying was that shewas the "island of saints," destined to help out the salvationof many.

Religion has been invariably connected with that acute sentimentever present in the minds of Irishmen for their country; and itis, doubtless, that holy and supernatural feeling which haspreserved a country which enemies strove so strenuously to wrestfrom them.

But it was not love of country alone, of relatives and friends,which enkindled in their hearts a spirit of enthusiasm; theirwhole monastic life was one of high-spirited devotedness, andenergy, and action, more than human.

We see them laboring in and around their monastic hive. How theypray and chant the divine office; how they study and expound theholy doctrine to their pupils; how they are ever travelling,walking in procession by hundreds and by thousands through theisland, the interior spirit not allowing them to stand still.There are so many pilgrimages to perform, so many shrines tovenerate, so many works of brotherly love to undertake. Othermonks in other countries, indeed, did the same, but seldom withsuch universal ardor. The whole island, as we said, is onechurch. On all sides you may meet bishops, and priests, andmonks, bearing revered relics, or proceeding to found a newconvent, plant another sacred edifice, or establish a house forthe needy. The people on the way fall in and follow theirfootsteps, sharers of the burning enthusiasm. Many-how many!-were thus attracted to this mode of life, wherein there wasscarce aught earthly, but all breathing holiness and heavenlygrace!

Thus the island was from the beginning a holy island. But zealfor God in their own country alone not being enough for theirardor, those men of God were early moved by the impulse of goingabroad to spread the faith. Volumes might be written of theirapostleship among barbarous tribes; we have room only for a fewwords.

They first went to the islands north of them, to the Hebrides,the Faroe Isles, and even Iceland, which they colonized beforethe Norwegian pirates landed there. Then they evangelizedScotland and the north of England; and, starting fromLindisfarne, they completed the work of the conversion of theAnglo-Saxons, which was begun by St. Augustin and his monks inthe south.

Finally, the whole continent of Western Europe offered itself totheir zeal, and at once they were ready to enter fully andunreservedly into the current of new ideas and energies which atthat time began to renew the face of that portion of the worldoverspread by barbarians from Germany. Under the Merovingiankings in France, and later on, under the Carlovingian dynasty,they became celebrated in the east of France, on the banks ofthe Rhine, even in the north through Germany, in the heart ofSwitzerland, and the north of Italy. This is not the place toattempt even a sketch of their missionary labors, now known toall the students of the history of those times. But we may heremention that at that time the Irish monarchs and rulers becameacquainted with continental dynasties and affairs through thenecessary intercourse held by the Irish bishops and monks withRome, the centre of Catholicity. Thus we see that Malachi IIcorresponded with Charles the Bald, with a view of making apilgrimage to Rome.

We learn from the yellow-book of Lecain that Conall, son ofCoelmuine, brought from Rome the law of Sunday, such as wasafterward practised in Ireland.

Over and above the Irish missionaries who kept up a constantcorrespondence from the Continent of Europe with their nativeland, it is known that many in those early ages went onpilgrimages to Rome; among others, St. Degan, St. Kilian, theapostle of Franconia; St. Sedulius the younger, who assisted ata Roman council in 721, and was sent by the Pope on a mission toSpain; St. Donatus, afterward Bishop of Fiesole, and hisdisciple, Andrew. St. Cathald went from Rome to Jerusalem, andon his return was made Bishop of Tarento. Donough, son of BrianBoru, went to Rome in 1063, carrying, it is said, the crown ofhis father, and there died.

It has been calculated that the ancient Irish monks held fromthe sixth to the ninth century thirteen monasteries in Scotland,seven in France, twelve in Armoric Gaul, seven in Lotharingia,eleven in Burgundy, nine in Belgium, ten in Alsatia, sixteen inBavaria, fifteen in Rhaetia, Helvetia, and Suevia, besidesseveral in Thuringia and on the left bank of the Rhine. Irelandwas then not only included in, but at the head of, the Europeanmovement; and yet that forms a period in her annals which as yethas scarcely been studied.

The religious zeal which was then so manifest in the islanditself burned likewise among many Continental nations, andlasted from the introduction of Christianity to the Danishinvasion. What contributed chiefly to make that ardor lastingwas, that every thing connected with religion made a part evenof their exterior life. Grace had taken entire possession ofthe national soul. This world was looked upon as a shadow,beautiful only in reflecting something of the beauty of heaven.

Hence were the Irish "the saints." So were they titled by all,and they accepted the title with a genuine and holy simplicitywhich betokened a truer modesty than the pretended denegationwhich we might expect. Thus they seemed above temptation. Thevirgins consecrated to God were as numerous at least as themonks. These had also their processions and pilgrimages; theywent forth from houses over-full to found others, not knowing orcalculating beforehand the spot where they might rest and"expect resurrection." Such was their language. Sometimes theyapplied at the doors of monasteries, and if there was no spot inthe neighborhood suitable for the sisters, the monks abandonedto them their abode, their buildings and cultivated fields wherethe crops were growing, taking with them naught save the sacredvessels and the books they might need in the new establishmentthey went forth to found elsewhere.

Who could imagine, then, that even a thought could enter theirminds beyond those of charity and kindness? Were they not deadutterly to worldly passions, and living only to God? It wouldhave been a sacrilege to have profaned the holy island, not onlywith an unlawful act but even with a worldly imagination. Hadnot many holy men and women seen angels constantly coming downfrom heaven, and the souls of the just at their departure goingstraight from Ireland to heaven? Both in perpetual communication! Had the eyes of all been as pure as those of the best amongthem, the truth would have been unveiled to all alike, and the"isle of saints" would have shown itself to them as what itreally was-a bright country where redemption was a great fact;where the souls of the great majority were truly and actuallyredeemed in the full sense of the word; where people might enjoya foretaste of heaven-the very space above their heads being tothem at all times a road connecting the heavenly mansions withthis sublunary world.

True is it that there were ever in the island a number of greatsinners who desecrated the holy spot they dwelt on by theirdeeds of blood. The Saviour predicted that there should be"tares among the wheat" everywhere until the day of judgment.

It was among the chieftains principally, almost entirely, thatsin prevailed. The clan-system, unfortunately, favored deadlyfeuds, which often drenched all parts of the island in blood.Family quarrels, being in themselves unnatural, led to the mostatrocious crimes. The old Greek drama furnishes frightfulexamples of it, and similar passions sometimes filled thebreasts of those leaders of Irish clans. Few of them died intheir beds. When carried away by passion, they respected nothingwhich men generally respect.

It would, however, be an exaggeration to suppose on this accounta distinct and complete antagonism to have existed between theclan and the Church, and to class all the princes on the side ofevil as opposed to the "saints," whom we have contemplatedleading a celestial life. We know from St. Aengus that one ofthe glories of Ireland is that many of her saints were ofprincely families, whereas among other nations generally theGospel was first accepted by the poor and lowly, and found itsenemies among the higher and educated classes. But in Irelandthe great, side by side with the least of their clansmen, bowedto the yoke of Christ, and the bards and learned men becamemonks and bishops from the very first preaching of the Word.

The fact is, a great number of kings and chieftains made theirstation doubly renowned by their virtues, and find place in thechronicle of Irish saints. Who can read, for instance, the storyof King Guaire without admiring his faith and true Christianspirit?

It is reported that as St. Caimine and St. Cumain Fota were oneday conversing on spiritual things with that holy king ofConnaught, Caimine said to Guaire, "O king, could this church befilled on a sudden with whatever thou shouldst wish, what wouldthy desire be?" "I should wish," replied the king, "to have allthe treasures that the church could hold, to devote them to thesalvation of souls, the erection of churches, and the wants ofChrist's poor." "And what wouldst thou ask?" said the king toFota. "I would," he replied, "have as many holy books as thechurch could contain, to give all who seek divine wisdom, tospread among the people the saving doctrine of Christ, andrescue souls from the bondage of Satan." Both then turned toCaimine. "For my part," said he, "were this church filled withmen afflicted with every form of suffering and disease, Ishould ask of God to vouchsafe to assemble in my wretched bodyall their evils, all their pains, and give me strength tosupport them patiently, for the love of the Saviour of the world."1 (1 This passage is given in Latin by Colgan (Acts SS.). Inthe original Irish, translated and published by Dr. Todd—LiberHymn—there are more details.)

Thus the most sublime and supernatural spirit of Christianitybecame natural to the Irish mind in the great as well as in thelowly, in the rich as well as in the poor. Women rivalled men inthat respect.

"Daria was blind from birth. Once, whilst conversing withBridget, she said: 'Bless my eyes that I may see the world, andgratify my longing.' The night was dark; it grew light for her,and the world appeared to her gaze. But when she had beheld it,she turned again to Bridget. 'Now close my eyes,' said she, 'forthe more one is absent from the world, the more present he isbefore God.'"

Even though one may express doubt as to the reality of thismiracle, one thing, at least, is beyond doubt: that the spiritof the words of Daria was congenial to the Irish mind at thetime, and that none but one who had first reached the highestpoint of supernatural life could conceive or give utterance tosuch a sentiment.

That more than human life and spirit elevated, ennobled, and, asit were, divinized, even the ordinary human and natural feelings,which not only ceased to become dangerous, but became,doubtless, highly pleasing to God and meritorious in his sight.An example may better explain our meaning:

"Ninnid was a young scholar, not over-reverent, whom theinfluence of Bridget one day suddenly overcame, so that heafterward appeared quite a different being. Bridget announced tohim that from his hand she should, for the last time, receivethe body and blood of our Lord. Ninnid resolved that his handshould remain pure for so high and holy an office. He enclosedit in an iron case, and wishing at the same time to postpone, asfar as lay in his power, the moment that was to take Bridgetfrom the world, he set out for Brittany, throwing the key of thebox into the sea. But the designs of God are immutable. WhenBridget's hour had come, Ninnid was driven by a storm on theIrish coast, and the key was miraculously given up by the deep."

Where, except in Ireland, could such friendship continue forlong years, without giving cause not only for the least scandal,but even for the remotest danger? In that island the naturalfeelings of the human heart were wholly absorbed by heavenlyemotions, in which nothing earthly could be found? Hence thecelebrated division of the "three orders of the Irish saints,"the first being so far above temptation that no regulation wasimposed on the Cenobites with respect to their intercourse withwomen.

"Women were welcome and cared for; they were admitted, so tospeak, to the sanctuary; it was shared with them, occupied incommon. Double, or even mixed monasteries, so near to each otheras to form but one, brought the two sexes together for mutualedification; men became instructors of women; women of men."

Nothing of the kind was ever witnessed elsewhere; nothing of thekind was to be seen ever after. Robert of Arbrissel establishedsomething similar in the order, of Fontevrault in France; butthere it was a strange and very uncommon exception; in Irelandfor two centuries it was the rule. This alone would show howcompletely the Christian spirit had taken possession of thewhole race from the first.

It is this which gives to Irish hagiology a peculiar character,making it appear strange even to the best men of other nations.The elevation of human feeling to such a height of perfection isso unusual that men cannot fail to be surprised wherever theymay meet it.

Yet far from appearing strange, almost inexplicable, it wouldhave been recognized as the natural result of the working of theChristian religion, if the spirit brought on earth by our Lordhad been more thoroughly diffused among men, if all had beenpenetrated by it to the same degree, if all had equallyunderstood the meaning of the Gospel preached to them.

But, unfortunately, so many and so great were the obstaclesopposed everywhere to the working of the Spirit of God in thesouls of men, that comparatively few were capable of beingaltogether transformed into beings of another nature.

The great mass lagged far behind in the race of perfection. Theywere admitted to the fold of Christ, and lived generally atleast in the practice of the commandments; but the objectproposed to himself by the Saviour of mankind was imperfectlycarried out on earth. The life of the world was far from beingimpregnated by the spirit which he brought from heaven.

In the "island of saints" we certainly see a great number openout at once to the fulness of that divine influence. Herein wehave the explanation of the deep faith which has ever since beenthe characteristic of the people. "Centuries have perpetuatedthe alliance of Catholicity and Ireland. Revolutions have failedto shake it; persecution has not broken it; it has gainedstrength in blood and tears, and we may believe, after thirteencenturies of trial, that the Roman faith will disappear fromIreland only with the name of Patrick and the last Irishman."

NOTE.-It is known that F. Colgan, a Franciscan, undertook topublish the "Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae." He edited only twovolumes: the first under the title of "Trias thaumaturga "containing the various lives of St. Patrick, St. Columba, and St.Bridget:-the second under the general title of "Acta SS."-Barnwall, an Irishman born and educated in France, published the"Histoire Legendaire d'Irlande," in which he collected, withoutmuch order, a number of passages of Colgan's "Acta," and Mr. J.G. Shea translated and published it. We have taken from thistranslation several facts contained in this chapter, the work ofthe Franciscan being not accessible to us.

Dr. Todd, from Irish MSS., has given a few pages showing theaccuracy of Colgan, although the good father did not scrupleoccasionally to condense and abridge, unless the MSS. he useddiffered from those of Dr. Todd. The whole is a rich mine ofinteresting anecdotes, and Montalembert has shown what a skilfulwriter can find in those pages forgotten since the sixteenthcentury. Mr. Froude himself has acknowledged that the eighth wasthe golden age of Ireland.

CHAPTER V.

THE CHRISTIAN IRISH AND THE PAGAN DANES.

For several centuries the Irish continued in the happy statedescribed in the last chapter. While the whole EuropeanContinent was convulsed by the irruptions of the Germanic tribes,and of the Huns, more savage still, the island was at peace,opened her schools to the youth of all countries—to Anglo-Saxons chiefly—and spread her name abroad as the happy and holyisle, the dwelling of the saints, the land of prodigies, themost blessed spot on the earth. No invading host troubled her;the various Teutonic nations knew less of the sea than the Celtsthemselves, and no vessel neared the Irish coast save thepeaceful curraghs which carried her monks and missionariesabroad, or her own sons in quest of food and adventure.

Providence would seem to have imposed upon the nation the loftymission of healing the wounds of other nations as they layhelpless in the throes of death, of keeping the doctrines of theGospel alive in Europe, after those terrible invasions, and ofleading into the fold of Christ many a shepherdless flock. Thepeaceful messengers who went forth from Ireland became ascelebrated as her home schools and monasteries; and well had itbeen for the Irish could such a national life as this havecontinued.

But God, who wished to prepare them for still greater things infuture ages, who proves by suffering all whom he wishes to useas his best instruments, allowed the fury of the storm to burstsuddenly upon them. It was but the beginning of their woes, thefirst step in that long road to Calvary, where they were to becrucified with him, to be crucified wellnigh to the death beforetheir final and almost miraculous resurrection. The Danes wereto be the first torturers of that happy and holy people; thehardy rovers of the northern seas were coming to inaugurate along era of woe.

The Scandinavian irruption which desolated Europe just as shewas beginning to recover from the effects of the first greatGermanic wave, may be said to have lasted from the eighth to thetwelfth century. Down from the North Sea came the shock; Irelandwas consequently one of the first to feel it, and we shall seehow she alone withstood and finally overcame it.

The better to understand the fierceness of the attack, let usfirst consider its origin:

The Baltic Sea and the various gulfs connected with it penetratedeeply the northern portion of the Continent of Europe. Itsindentations form two peninsulas: a large one, known under thename of Norway and Sweden, and a lesser one on the southwest,now called Denmark. The first was known to the Romans as Scania;the second was called by them the Cimbric Chersonesus. FromScania is derived the name Scandinavians, afterward given to theinhabitants of the whole country. Besides these two peninsulas,there are several islands scattered through the surrounding sea.

The frozen and barren land which this people inhabited obligedthem from time immemorial to depend on the ocean for theirsustenance: first, by fishing; later on, by piracy. They soonbecame expert navigators, though their ships were merely smallboats made of a few pieces of timber joined together, andcovered with the hide of the walrus and the seal.

It seems, from the Irish annals, that they belonged to twodistinct races of men: the Norwegians, fair-haired and of largestature; the Danes dark, and of smaller size. Hence the Irishdistinguished the first, whom they called Finn Galls, from thesecond, whom they named Dubh Galls. By no other European nationwas this distinction drawn, the Irish being more exact inobserving their foes.

It is the general opinion of modern writers that they belongedto the Teutonic family. The Goths, a Teutonic tribe, dwelt for along period on the larger peninsula. But whether the Goths wereof the same race as the Norwegians or Danes is a question.Certain it is that the various German nations which firstoverwhelmed the Roman Empire bore many characteristics differentfrom those of the Danes and Norwegians, though the language ofall indicated, to a certain extent, a common origin.

The Swedes, the inhabitants of the eastern coast of Scania, donot appear to have taken an important part in the Scandinavianinvasions; nor, indeed, have they ever been so fond of maritimeenterprises as the two other nations. Moreover, they were atthat time in bloody conflict with the Goths, and too busy athome to think of foreign conquest.

For a long time the Scandinavian pirates seem to have confinedthemselves to scouring their own seas, and plundering the coastsas far as the gulfs of Finland and Bothnia. At length,emboldened by success, they ventured out into the ocean,attacked the nations of Western and Southern Europe, and in thewest colonized the frozen shores of the Shetland and FaroeIslands, and soon after Iceland and Greenland.

For several centuries the harbors of Denmark and Norway becamethe storehouses of all the riches of Europe, and a large tradewas carried on between those northern peninsulas and the variousislands of the Northern and Arctic Seas, even with the coast ofAmerica, of which Greenland seems to form a part.

Those stern and mountainous countries and the restless oceanwhich divides them were for the Scandinavian pirates what theMediterranean and the coasts of Spain and Africa had long beforebeen for the Phoenicians and Carthaginians. These peoples wereclearly destined to introduce among modern nations the spirit ofcommerce and enterprise.

But here it is well to consider their religious and social statefrom which nations chiefly derive their noble or ignoblequalities. We shall find both made up of the rankest idolatry,of cruel manners and revolting customs.

Their system of worship, with its creed and rites, is much moreprecise in character and better known to us than that of theCelts. If we open the books which were written in Europe at thetime of the irruption of these Northmen, and the poems of thosesavage tribes preserved to our own days, and comprised under thename of Edda, besides the numerous sagas, or songs and ballads,which we still possess, we find mention of three superior godsand a number of inferior deities, which gave a peculiarcharacter to this Northern worship.

They were Thor, the god of the elements, of thunder chiefly;Wodan or Odin, the god of war; and Frigga, the goddess of lust;the long list of others it is unnecessary to give. Theirreligion, therefore, consisted mainly: 1. In battling with theelements, particularly on the sea, under the protection of Thor;2. In slaying their enemies, or being themselves slain, as Odinwilled —the giving or receiving death being apparently thegreat object of existence; 3. In abandoning themselves at thetime of victory to all the propensities of corrupt nature, whichthey took to be the express will of Frigga manifested in theirunbridled passions.

Such was Scandinavian mythology in its reality.

Modern investigators, principally in Germany and France, find inthe Edda a complete system of cosmogony and of a religion almostinspired, so beautiful do they make it. At least they have madeit appear as profound a philosophy as that of old Hindostan andfar-off Thibet. By grouping around those three great divinities,which are supposed to be emblematical of the superior naturalforces, their numerous progeny, that of Odin especially,together with an incredible number of malicious giants and good-natured ases—a kind of fairy—any skilful theorist, giftedwith the requisite imagination, may extract from the whole an almostperfect system of cosmogony and ethics. Then the disgusting legendsof the Edda and the sagas are straightway transformed intointeresting myths, offsprings of poetry and imagination, andconveying to the mind a philosophy only less than sublime, derived,as they say, from the religion of Zoroaster.

It is, as we said, in Germany and France chiefly that thesediscoveries have been made. The English, a more sober people,although of Scandinavian blood, do not set so high a value onwhat is, in the literal sense, so low.

Pity that such pleasing speculations should be mere theoreticalbubbles, unable to retain their lightness and their vivid colorsin the rude atmosphere of the arctic regions, bursting at thefirst breath of the north wind! How could sensible men, undersuch a complicated system of religion and physics, account forthe uncouth pirates of the Baltic?

As useless is it to say that they brought it from the place oftheir origin—Persia, as these theorists affirm. To a manuninfluenced by a preconceived or pet system, it is evident atfirst sight that no mythology of the East or of the South hasever given rise to that of Scandinavia. There is not theslightest resemblance between it and any other. It must haveoriginated with the Scandinavians themselves; and their longreligious tales were only the bloody dreams of their fancy, when,during their dreary winter evenings, they had nothing to do butrelate to each other what came uppermost in their gross minds.

Saxo Grammaticus, certainly a competent authority, and SnorrySturleson, the first to translate the Edda into Latin, who isstill considered one of the greatest antiquarians of the nation—both of whom lived in the times we speak of, when thisreligious system still flourished or was fresh in the minds ofall— solved the question ages ago, and demonstrated beforehandthe falsehood of those future theories by stating with old-timesimplicity that the abominable stories of the Edda and the sagaswere founded on real facts in the previous history of thosenations, and were consequently never intended by the writers asimaginative myths, representing, under a figurative and repulsiveexterior, some semblance of a spiritual and refined doctrine.

We must look to our own more enlightened times to find ingeniousinterpreters of rude old songs first flung to the breeze ninehundred years ago in the polar seas, and bellowed forth inboisterous and drunken chorus during the ninth and tenthcenturies by ferocious, but to modern eyes romantic, piratesreeking with the gore of their enemies.

Because it has pleased some modern pantheist to concoct systemsof religion in his cabinet, does it become at once clear thatthe mythic explanation of those songs is the only one to beadmitted, and that the odious facts which those legends expressought to be discarded altogether? At least we hope that, whenphilosophers come to be the real rulers of the world, they willnot give to their subtle and abstract ideas of religion the samepleasant turn and the same concrete expression in every-day lifethat the worshippers of Odin, Thor, and Frigga, found itagreeable to give when they were masters of the continent andrulers of the seas.

No! The only true meaning of this Northern worship is conveyedin the simple words of Adam of Bremen, when relating what stillexisted in his own time. (Descript. insularum Aquil., lib. iv.)He describes the solemn sacrifices of Upsala in Sweden thus:"This is their sacrifice; of each and all animals they offernine heads of the male gender, by whose blood it is their customto appease the gods. The dead bodies of the victims aresuspended in a grove which surrounds the temple. The place is intheir eyes invested with such a sacred character that the treesare believed to be divine on account of the blood and gore withwhich they are besmeared. With the animals, dogs, horses, etc.,they suspend likewise men; and a Christian of that country toldme that he had himself seen them with his own eyes mixed uptogether in the grove. But the senseless rites which accompanythe sacrifice and the sprinkling of blood are so many, and of sogross and immoral nature, that it is better not to speak of them."

We have here the naked truth, and no meaning whatever could beattached to such ceremonies other than that of the rankestidolatry. To complete the picture, it is proper to state thatThor, Odin, and Frigga, were frightful idols, as represented inthe Upsala temple, and the small statues carried by theScandinavian sailors on their expeditions and set in the placeof honor on board their ships, were but diminutive copies of thehideous originals. It is known, moreover, that Odin had existedas a leader of some of their migrations, so that their idolatryresolved itself into hero-worship.

Having spoken of their gods, we have only a word to add on theirbelief in a future state, for every one is acquainted with theirbrutal and shocking Walhalla. Yet, such as it was, admittance toits halls could only be aspired to by the warriors and heroes,the great among them; the common herd was not deemed worthy ofimmortality. Thus aristocratic pride showed itself at the verybottom of their religion.

Of their social state, their government, we know little. Theylived under a kind of rude monarchy, subject often to election,when they chose the most savage and the bravest for their ruler.But blood-relationship had little or nothing to do with theirsystem, so different from that of the Celts. The sons of achieftain could never form a sept, but at his death the eldestreplaced him; the younger brothers, deprived of their titles andgoods, were forced to separate and acquire a title to rank andhonor by piracy; and that right of primogeniture, which was theprimary cause of their sea invasions, stamped the feudal systemwith one of its chief characteristics, a system which probablyoriginated with them. Some, however, entertain a contraryopinion, and suppose that at the death of the father hischildren shared his inheritance equally.

Of their moral habits we may best judge by their religion. Allwe know of their history seems to prove that with them might wasright, and outlawry the only penalty of their laws.

A man guilty of murder was compelled to quit the country, unlesshis superior daring and the number of his friends and followersenabled him, by more atrocious and wholesale murders, still tobecome a great chieftain and even aspire to supreme power.Iceland was colonized by outlaws from Norway; and the frequentchanges of dynasty in pagan times prove that among them, asamong barbarous tribes generally, brute force was the chiefsource of law and authority.

That outlawry was not esteemed a stain on the character issufficiently demonstrated by the fact that the mere accident ofbirth made outlaws of all the children of chieftains with theexception of the eldest born; the necessity for the younger sonsabandoning their home and native country, and roaming the oceanin search of plunder, being exactly equivalent, according totheir opinion and customs, to criminal outlawry of whatevercharacter. This, at least, many authors assert withouthesitation.

Their domestic habits were fit consequences of such a state ofsociety. There could exist no real tie of kindred, no filial orbrotherly affection among men living under such a social system.The gratification of brutal passions and the most utterselfishness constituted the rule for all; and even the fear ofan inexorable judge after death could not restrain them duringlife, as might have been the case among other pagan nations,since the hope of reaching their Walhalla depended for itsfulfilment on murder or suicide.

With their system of warfare we are better acquainted than withany thing else belonging to them, as the main burden of theirsongs was the recital of their barbarous expeditions. It is,indeed, difficult for a modern reader to wade through the wholeof their Edda poems, or even their long sagas, so full is theirliterature of unimaginable cruelties. Yet a general view of itis necessary in order to understand the horror spread throughoutEurope by their inhuman warfare.

As soon as the warm breeze of an early spring thaws the ice onhis rivers and lakes, the Scandinavian Viking unfurls his sail,fills his rude boat with provisions, and trusts himself to themercy of the waves. Should he be alone, and not powerful enoughto have a fleet at his command, he looks out for a single boatof his own nation—there being no other in those seas. Urged bya mutual impulse, the two crews attack each other at sight; thesea reddens with blood; the savage bravery is equal on bothsides; accident alone can decide the contest. One of the crewsconquers by the death of all its opponents; the plunder istransferred to the victorious boat; the cup of strong drinkpasses round, and victory is crowned by drunkenness.

But if the two chieftains have contended from morning till nightwith equal valor and success, then, filled with admiration foreach other, they become friends, unite their forces, and,falling on the first spot where they can land, they pillage,slay, outrage women, and give full sway to their unbridledpassions. The more ferocious they are the braver they esteemthemselves. It is a positive fact, as we may gather from alltheir poems and songs, that the Scandinavians alone, probably,of all pagan nations, have had no measure of bravery andmilitary glory beyond the infliction of the most exquisitetorture and the most horrible of deaths.

Plunder, which was apparently the motive power of all theirexpeditions, was to them less attractive than blood; blood,therefore, is the chief burden of their poetry, if poetry it canbe called. It would seem as though they were destined by Natureto shed human blood in torrents—the noblest occupation,according to their ideas, in which a brave man could be engaged.

The figures of their rude literature consist for the most partof monstrous warriors and gods, each possessed of many arms tokill a greater number of enemies, or of giant stature toovercome all obstacles, or of enchanted swords which shore steelas easily as linen, and clave the body of an adversary as itwould the air.

Then, heated with blood, the Northman is also influenced withlust, for he worships Frigga as well as Odin. But this is notthe place to give even an idea of manners too revolting to bepresented to the imagination of the reader.

Cantu's Universal History will furnish all the authorities fromwhich the details we have given and many others of the same kindare derived.

We do not propose describing here the horrors of thedevastations committed by the Anglo-Saxons and Danes in England,by the Normans in France, Spain, and Italy. All these nations,even the first, were Scandinavians, and naturally fall under ourreview. The story is already known to those who are acquaintedwith the history of mediaeval Europe. The only thing which we donot wish to omit is the invariable system of warfare adopted bythis people when acting on a large scale.

Arrived on the coast they had determined to ravage, they soonfound that in stormy weather they were in a more dangerousposition than at sea. Hence they looked for a deep bay, or,better still, the mouth of a large river, and once on its placidbosom they felt themselves masters of the whole country. Theterror of the people, the lack of organization for defence, socharacteristic of Celtic or purely Germano-Franco society, thesavage bravery and reckless impetuosity of the invadersthemselves, increased their rashness, and urged them to enterfearlessly into the very heart of a country which lay prostratewith fear before them. All the cities on the river-banks wereplundered as they passed, people of whatever age, sex, orcondition, were murdered; the churches especially were despoiledof their riches, and the numerous and wealthy monasteries thenexisting were given to the flames, after the monks and all theinmates even to the schoolchildren, had been promiscuouslyslaughtered, if they had not escaped by flight.

But, although all were slaughtered promiscuously, a specialferocity was always displayed by the barbarous conqueror towardthe unarmed and defenceless ministers of religion. They took aparticular delight in their case in adding insult to cruelty;and not without reason did the Church at that time consider asmartyrs the priests and monks who were slain by the paganScandinavians. Their sanguinary and hideous idolatry showed itshatred of truth and holiness in always manifesting a peculiaratrocity when coming in contact with the Church of Christ andher ministers. And, our chief object in speaking of the standmade by the Irish against the pagan Danes is, to show how theclan-system became in truth the avenger of God's altars and thepreserver of the sacred edifices and numerous temples with which,as we have seen, the Island of Saints was so profusely studded,from total annihilation.

Knowing that, when their march of destruction had taken them agreat distance from the mouth of the river, the inhabitantsmight rise in sheer despair and cut them off on their return,the Scandinavian pirates, to guard against such a contingency,looked for some island or projecting rock, difficult of access,which they fortified, and, placing there the plunder whichloaded their boats, they left a portion of their forces to guardit, while the remainder continued their route of depredation. InIreland they found spots admirably adapted for their purpose inthe numerous loughs into which many of the rivers run.

This was their invariable system of warfare in the rivers ofEngland; in Germany along system Rhine; along the Seine, theLoire, and the Garonne, in France, as well as on the Tagus andGuadalquivir in Spain, where two at least of their largeexpeditions penetrated. This continued for several centuries,until at last they thought of occupying the country which theyhad devastated and depopulated, and they began to form permanentsettlements in England, Flanders, France, and even Sicily andNaples.

When that time had arrived, they showed that, hidden under theirferocious exterior, lay a deep and systematic mind, capable ofgreat thoughts and profound designs. Already in their own rudecountry they had organized commerce on an extensive scale, andtheir harbors teemed with richly-laden ships, coming from fardistances or preparing to start on long voyages. They had becomea great colonizing race, and, after establishing their sway inthe Hebrides, the Orkneys, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, andGreenland, they made England their own, first by the Jute andAnglo-Saxon tribes, then by the arms of Denmark, which was atthat time so powerful that England actually became a colony ofCopenhagen; and finally they thought of extending theirconquests farther south to the Mediterranean Sea, where theirships rode at anchor in the harbors of fair Sicily.

We know, from many chronicles written at the time, with whatcare they surveyed all the countries they occupied, confiscatingthe land after having destroyed or reduced its inhabitants toslavery; dividing it among themselves and establishing theirbarbarous laws and feudal customs wherever they went. Dudo of St. Quentin, among other writers, describes at length in his rudepoem the army of surveyors intrusted by Rollo, the first Duke ofNormandy, with the care of drawing up a map of their conquestsin France, for the purpose of dividing the whole among his roughfollowers and vassals.

Of this spirit of organization we intend to speak in the nextchapter, when we come to consider the Anglo-Norman invasion ofIreland; but we are not to conclude that the Northmen becamestraightway civilized, and that the spirit of refinement at onceshed its mild manners and gentle habits over their newly-constructed towns and castles. For a long time they remained asbarbarous as ever, with only a system more perfect and a methodmore scientific—if we may apply such expressions to the case—in their plunderings and murderous expeditions.

Of Hastings, their last pagan sea-kong, Dudo, the great admirerof Northmen and the sycophant of the first Norman dukes inFrance, has left the following terrible character, on readingwhich in full we scarcely know whether the poem was written inreproach or praise. We translate from the Latin

According to Dudo, he was—

"A wretch accursed and fierce of heart,
Unmatched in dark iniquities;
A scowling pest of deadly hate,
He throve on savage cruelties.

Blood-thirsty, stained with every crime,
An artful, cunning, deadly foe,
Lawless, vaunting, rash, inconstant,
True well-spring of unending woe!"

Hastings never yielded to the new religion, which he alwayshated and persecuted. But, even after their conversion toChristianity, his countrymen for a long time retained theirinborn love of bloodshed and tyranny; they were in this respect,as in many others, the very reverse of the Irish.

Of Rollo, the first Christian Duke of Normandy, Adhemar, acontemporary writer, says:

"On becoming Christian, he caused many captives to be beheadedin his presence, in honor of the gods whom he had worshipped.And he also distributed a vast amount of money to the Christianchurches in honor of the true God in whose name he had receivedbaptism;" which would seem to imply that this transactionoccurred on the very day of his baptism.

We may now compare the success which attended the arms of theseterrible invaders throughout the rest of Europe with theircomplete failure in Ireland. It will be seen that the deepattachment of the Irish Celts for their religion, its altars,shrines, and monuments, was the real cause of their finalvictory. We shall behold a truly Christian people battlingagainst paganism in its most revolting and audacious form.

But, first, how stood the case in England?

"It is not a little extraordinary," says a sagacious writer inthe Dublin Review (vol. xxxii., p. 203), "that the threesuccessive conquests of England by the Anglo-Saxons, Danes, andNormans, were in fact conquests made by the same people, and, inthe last two instances, over those who were not only descendedfrom the same stock, but who had immigrated from the very samelocalities. The Jutes, Angles, and Saxons, were for the mostpart Danes or of Danish origin. Their invasion of Englandcommenced by plunder and ended by conquest. These wereoverthrown by the Danes and Norwegians in precisely the samemanner.

"In the year 875, Roll or Rollo, having been expelled fromNorway by Harold Harfa*ger, adopted the profession of a sea-kong,and in the short space of sixteen years became Duke of Normandyand son-in-law of the French king, after having previouslyrepudiated his wife. The sixth duke in succession from Rollo wasWilliam, illegitimate son of Robert le Diable and Herleva, aconcubine. By the battle of Hastings, which William gained in1066, over King Harold, who was slain in it, the former becamesovereign of England, and instead of the appellation of 'theBastard,' by which he had been hitherto known, he now obtainedthe surname of 'the Conqueror.'

"Thus both the Saxon and Danish invaders were subdued by their
Norman brethren."

All the Scandinavian invasions of England were, therefore,successful, each in turn giving way before a new one; and it isnot a little remarkable that the very year in which Brian Borudealt a death-blow to the Danes at Clontarf witnessed thecomplete subjection of England by Canute.

The success of the Northmen in France is still more worthy ofattention. Their invasions began soon after the death ofCharlemagne. It is said that, before his demise, hearing of theappearance of one of their fleets not far from the mouth of theRhine, he shed tears, and foretold the innumerable evils itportended. He saw, no doubt, that the long and oft-repeatedefforts of his life to subdue and convert the northern Saxonswould fail to obtain for his successors the peace he had hopedto win by his sword, and, knowing from the Saxons themselves therelentless ferocity, audacity, and frightful cruelty, inoculatedin their Scandinavian blood, he could not but expect for hisempire the fierce attacks which were preparing in the arcticseas. All his life had he been a conqueror, and under his swaythe Franks, whom he had ever led to victory, acquired a namethrough Europe for military glory which, he dreaded, would nolonger remain untarnished. His forebodings, however, could notbe shared by any of those who surrounded him in his old age; hiseagle eye alone discerned the coming misfortunes.

Seven times had the great emperor subdued the Saxons. He hadcrushed them effectually, since he could not otherwise preventthem from disturbing his empire. The Franks, who formed his army,were therefore the real conquerors of Western Europe. Startingfrom the banks of the Rhine, they subjugated the north as far asthe Baltic Sea; they conquered Italy as far south as Beneventum,by their victories over the Lombards; by the subjugation ofAquitaine, they took possession of the whole of France; the onlycheck they had ever received was in the valley of Roncevaux,whence a part of one of their armies was compelled to retreat,without, however, losing Catalonia, which they had won.

Nevertheless, we see them a few years after powerless andstricken with terror at the very name of the Northmen, as soonas Hastings and Rollo appeared. Those sea-rovers establishedthemselves straightway in the very centre of the Frankishdominion; for it was at the mouth of the Rhine, in the island ofWalcheren, that they formed their first camp. From Walcherenthey swept both banks of the Rhine, and, after enrichingthemselves with the spoils of monasteries, cathedrals, andpalaces, they thought of other countries. Then began the longseries of spoliations which desolated the whole of France alongthe Seine, the Loire, and the Garonne.

Opposition they scarcely encountered. Paris alone, of all thegreat cities of France, sustained a long siege, and finallybought them off by tribute. The military power of the nation wasannihilated all at once, and of all French history this periodis undoubtedly the most humiliating to a native of the soil.

And now let us see how the Irish met the same piraticalinvasions.

We are already acquainted with the chief defect of theirpolitical system, namely, its want of centralization. The Ard-Righ was in fact but a nominal ruler, except in the smallprovince which acknowledged his chieftainship only. Throughoutthe rest of Ireland the provincial kings were independent savein name. Not only were they often reluctant to obey the Ard-Righ,but they were not seldom at open war with him. Nor are we tosuppose that, at least in the case of a serious attack fromwithout, their patriotism overcame their private differences,and made them combine together to show a common front against acommon foe. In a patriarchal state of government there isscarcely any other form of patriotism than that of theparticular sept to which each individual belongs. All the ideas,customs, prejudices, are opposed to united action.

Yet an invasion so formidable as that of the Scandinavian tribesshowed itself everywhere to be, would have required all theenergies and resources of the whole country united under onepowerful chief, particularly when it did not consist of onesingle fearful irruption.

During two centuries large fleets of dingy, hide-bound barksdischarge on the shores of Erin their successive cargoes ofhuman fiends, bent on rapine and carnage, and altogether proofa*gainst fear of even the most horrible death, since such deathwas to them the entry to the eternal realms of their Walhalla.

But, at the period of which we speak, the terrible evil of awant of centralization was greatly aggravated by a changeoccurring in the line which held the supreme power in the island.

The vigorous rule of a long succession of princes belonging tothe northern Hy-Niall line gave way to the ascendency of thesouthern branch of this great family; and the much more limitedpatrimony and alliances of this new quasi-dynasty rendered itspersonal power very inferior to that of the northern branch, andconsequently lessened the influence possessed by the rulingfamily in past times. In Ireland the connections, more or lessnumerous, by blood relationship with the great families, alwaysexercised a powerful influence over the body of the nation inrendering it docile and amenable to the will of the Ard-Righ.

Mullingar, in West Meath, was the abode of the southern Hy-Nialls, and Malachy of the Shannon, the first Ard-Righ of thisline, succeeded King Niall of Callan in 843. The Danes werealready in the country and had committed depredations. Theirfirst descent is mentioned by the Four Masters as taking placeat Rathlin on the coast of Antrim in the year 790.

But the country was soon aroused; and religious feelings, alwaysuppermost in the Irish heart, supplied the deficiencies of theconstitution of the state and the particularly unfavorablecirc*mstances of the period. The Danes, as usual, first attackedthe monasteries and churches, and this alone was enough tokindle in the breasts of the people the spirit of resistance andretaliation. Iona was laid waste in 797, and again in 801 and805. "To save from the rapacity of the Danes," says Montalembertin his Monks of the West, "a treasure which no pious liberalitycould replace, the body of S. Columba was carried to Ireland.And it is the unvarying tradition of Irish annals, that it wasdeposited finally at Down, in an episcopal monastery, not farfrom the eastern shore of the island, between the greatmonastery of Bangor in the North, and Dublin the future capitalof Ireland, in the South."

Ireland was first assailed by the Danes on the north immediatelyafter they had gained possession of the Hebrides; but the coastsof Germany, Belgium, and France had witnessed their attacks longbefore. Religion was the first to suffer; and as the Island ofSaints was at the time of their descent covered with churchesand monasteries, the Scandinavian barbarians found in these arich harvest which induced them to return again and again. Thefirst expedition consisted of only a few boats and a small bodyof men. Nevertheless, as their irruptions were unexpected, andthe people were unprepared for resistance, many holy edificessuffered from these attacks, and a great number of priests andmonks were murdered.

We read that Armagh with its cathedral and monasteries wasplundered four times in one month, and in Bangor nine hundredmonks were slaughtered in a single day. The majority of theinmates of those houses fled with their books and the relics oftheir saints at the approach of the invaders, but, returning totheir desecrated homes after the departure of the pirates, gavecause for those successive plunderings.

But the Irish did not always fly in dismay, as was the case inEngland and France. A force was generally mustered in theneighborhood to meet and repel the attack, and in numerousinstances the marauders were driven back with slaughter to theirships.

For the clans rallied to the defence of the Church. Though thechieftains and their clansmen might seem to have failed fully toimbibe the spirit of religion, though in their insane feuds theyoften turned a deaf ear to the remonstrances and reproaches ofthe bishops and monks, nevertheless Christianity reigned supremein their inmost hearts. And when they beheld pagans landed ontheir shores, to insult their faith and destroy the monuments oftheir religion, to shed the blood of holy men, of consecratedvirgins, and of innocent children, they turned that braverywhich they had so often used against themselves and for thesatisfaction of worthless contentions into a new and a morefitting channel—the defence of their altars and the punishmentof sacrilegious outrage.

The clan system was the very best adapted for this kind ofwarfare, so long as no large fleets came, and the pirates weretoo few in number and too sagacious in mind to think ofventuring far inland. When but a small number of boats arrived,the invaders found in the neighborhood a clan ready to receivethem. The clansmen speedily assembled, and, falling on theplundering crews, showed them how different were the free men ofa Celtic coast, who were inspired by a genuine love for theirfaith, from the degenerate sons of the Gallo-Romans.

So the annals of the country tell us that the "foreigners" weredestroyed in 812 by the men of Umhall in Mayo; by Corrach, lordof Killarney, in the same year; by the men of Ulidia and byCarbry with the men of Hy-Kinsella in 827; by the clansmen of Hy-Figeinte, near Limerick, in 834, and many more.

But the hydra had a thousand heads, and new expeditions werecontinually arriving. In the words of Mr. Worsaae, a Danishwriter of this century:

"From time immemorial Ireland was celebrated in the Scandinaviannorth, for its charming situation, its mild climate, and itsfertility and beauty. The Kongspell—mirror of Kings—which wascompiled in Norway about the year 1200, says that Ireland isalmost the best of the lands we are acquainted with although novines grow there. The Scandinavian Vikings and emigrants, whooften contented themselves with such poor countries as Greenlandand the islands in the north Atlantic, must, therefore, haveespecially turned their attention to the 'Emerald Isle,'particularly as it bordered closely upon their colonies inEngland and Scotland. But to make conquests in Ireland, and toacquire by the sword alone permanent settlements there, was noeasy task…. When we consider that neither the Romans nor theAnglo-Saxons ever obtained a footing in that country, althoughthey had conquered England, the adjacent isle, and when wefurther reflect upon the immense power exerted by the English inlater times in order to subdue the Celtic population of theisland, we cannot help being surprised at the very considerableScandinavian settlements which, as early as the ninth century,were formed in that country."

These are the words of a Dane. We shall see what the "veryconsiderable Scandinavian settlements" amounted to; thequotation is worthy of note, as presenting in a few words themotives of those who at any time invaded Ireland, and thestubborn resistance which they met.

The Irish were not dismayed by the constant arrivals of thosenorthern hordes. They met them one after another withoutconsidering their complexity and connection. They only saw atroop of fierce barbarians landed on their shores, chieflyintent upon plundering and burning the churches and holy houseswhich they had erected; they saw their island, hithertoprotected by the ocean from foreign attack, and resting in theenjoyment of a constant round of Christian festivals and joyfulfeasts, now desecrated by the presence and the fury of ferociouspagans; they armed for the defence of all that is dear to man;and though, perhaps, at first beaten and driven back, theymustered in force at a distance to fall on the victors with aswoop of noble birds who fly to the defence of their young.

This kind of contest continued for two hundred years, with theexception of the periods of larger invasions, when a single clanno longer sufficed to avenge the cause of God and humanity, andthe Ard-Righ was compelled to throw himself on the scene at thehead of the whole collective force of the nation in order tooppose the vast fleets and large armies of the Danes.

The country suffered undoubtedly; the cattle were slain; thefields devastated; the churches and houses burned; the poetssilenced or woke their song only to notes of woe; the harperstaught the national instrument the music of sadness; thenumerous schools were scattered, though never destroyed; ascenturies later, under the Saxon, the people took their books orwriting materials to their miserable cottages or hid them in themountain fastnesses, and thus, for the first time in theirhistory, the hedge school succeeded those of the largemonasteries. So the nation continued to live on, the energeticfire which burned in the hearts of the people could not bequenched. They rose and rose again, and often took a noblerevenge, never disheartened by the most utter disaster.

On three different occasions this bloody strife assumed a yetmore serious and dangerous aspect. It was not a few boats onlywhich came to the shores of the devoted island; but the mainpower of Scandinavia seemed to combine in order to crush allopposition at a single blow.

When the knowledge of the richness, fertility, and beauty of theisland had fully spread throughout Denmark and Norway, a largefleet gathered in the harbors of the Baltic and put to sea. Thefamous Turgesius or Turgeis—Thorgyl in the Norse—was theleader. The Edda and Sagas of Norway and Denmark have beenexamined with a view to elucidate this passage in Irish history,but thus far fruitlessly. It is known, however, that many Sagashave been lost which might have contained an account of it. TheIrish annals are too unanimous on the subject to leave anypossibility of doubt with regard to it; and, whatever may be theopinion of learned men on the early events in the history ofErin, the story of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries restsentirely on historical ground, as surely as if the facts hadhappened a few hundred years ago.

Turgesius landed with his fleet on the northeast coast of theisland, and straightway the scattered bands of Scandinaviansalready in the country acknowledged his leadership and flockedto his standard. McGeoghegan says that "he assumed in his ownhands the sovereignty of all the foreigners that were then inIreland."

From the north he marched southward; and, passing Armagh on hisroute, attacked and took it, and plundered its shrines,monasteries, and schools. There were then within its walls seventhousand students, according to an ancient roll which Keatingsays has been discovered at Oxford. These were slaughtered ordispersed, and the same fate attended the nine hundred monksresiding in its monasteries.

Foraanan, the primate, fled; and the pagan sea-kong, enteringthe cathedral, seated himself on the primatial throne, and hadhimself proclaimed archbishop.—(O'Curry.) He had shortly beforedevastated Clonmacnoise and made his wife supreme head of thatgreat ecclesiastical centre, celebrated for its many convents ofholy women. The tendency to add insult to outrage, when theobject of the outrage is the religion of Christ, is old in theblood of the northern barbarians; and Turgesius was merelysetting the example, in his own rude and honest fashion, to themore polished but no less ridiculous assumption ofecclesiastical authority, which was to be witnessed in England,on the part of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth.

The power of the invader was so superior to whatever forces theneighboring Irish clans could muster, that no opposition waseven attempted at first by the indignant witnesses of thosesacrileges. It is even said that at the very time when theNorthmen were pillaging and burning in the northeast of theisland, the men of Munster were similarly employed in Bregia;and Conor, the reigning monarch of Ireland, instead of defendingthe invaded territories, was himself hard at work plunderingLeinster to the banks of the river Liffey—(Haverty.) But,doubtless, none of those deluded Irish princes had yet heard ofthe pagan devastations and insults to their religion, and thusit was easy for the great sea-kong to strengthen and extend hispower. For the attainment of his object he employed two powerfulagents which would have effectually crushed Ireland forever, ifthe springs of vitality in the nation had not been more thanusually expansive and strong.

The political ability of the Danes began to show itself inIreland, as it did about the same period (830) in England, andlater on in France. Turgesius saw that, in order to subdue thenation, it was necessary to establish military stations in theinterior and fortify cities on the coast, where he could receivereinforcements from Scandinavia. These plans he was prompt toput into practice.

His military stations would have been too easily destroyed bythe bravery of the Irish, strengthened by the elasticity oftheir clan-system, if they were, planted on land. He, therefore,set them in the interior lakes which are so numerous in theisland, where his navy could repel all the attacks of thenatives, unused as they were to naval conflicts. He stationed apart of his fleet on Lough Lee in the upper Shannon, another inLough Neagh, south of Antrim, a third in Lough Lughmagh orDundalk bay. These various military positions were strongholdswhich secured the supremacy of the Scandinavians in the north ofthe island for a long time. In the south, Turgesius relied onthe various cities which his troops were successively to buildor enlarge, namely, Dublin, Limerick, Galway, Cork, Waterford,and Wexford. This first Scandinavian ruler could begin thatpolicy only by establishing his countrymen in Dublin, which theyseized in 836.

Up to that time the Irish had scarcely any city worthy of thename. A patriarchal people, they followed the mode of life ofthe old Eastern patriarchs, who abhorred dwelling in large towns.Until the invasion of the Danes, the island was covered withfarm-houses placed at some distance from each other. Here andthere large duns or raths, as they were called, formed thedwellings of their chieftains, and became places of refuge forthe clansmen in time of danger. Churches and monasteries arosein great numbers from the time of St. Patrick, which were firstbuilt in the woods, but soon grew into centres of population,corresponding in many respects to the idea of towns as generallyunderstood.

The Northmen brought with them into Ireland the ideas of cities,commerce, and municipal life, hitherto unknown. The introductionof these supposed a total change necessary in the customs of thenatives, and stringent regulations to which the people could notbut be radically opposed. And strange was their manner ofintroduction by these northern hordes. Keating tells us howTurgesius understood them. They were far worse than theimaginary laws of the Athenians as recorded in the "Birds" ofAristophanes. No more stringent rules could be devised, whetherfor municipal, rural, or social regulations; and, as theNorthmen are known to have been of a systematic mind, nostronger proof of this fact could be given.

Keating deplores in the following terms the fierce tyranny ofthe Danish sea-kong:

"The result of the heavy oppression of this thraldom of theGaels under the foreigner was, that great weariness thereof cameupon the men of Ireland, and the few of the clergy that survivedhad fled for safety to the forests and wildernesses, where theylived in misery, but passed their time piously and devoutly, andnow the same clergy prayed fervently to God to deliver them fromthat tyranny of Turgesius, and, moreover, they fasted againstthat tyrant, and they commanded every layman among the faithful,that still remained obedient to their voice, to fast against himlikewise. And God then heard their supplications in as far asthe delivering of Turgesius into the hands of the Gaels."

Thus in the ninth century the subsequent events of the sixteenthand seventeenth were foreshadowed. The judicious editor ofKeating, however, justly remarks, that this description, takenmainly from Cambrensis, is not supported in its entirety by thecontemporaneous annals of the island; that the power of theDanes never was as universal and oppressive as is here supposed;and that though each of the facts mentioned may have actuallytaken place in some part of the country, at some period of theDanish invasion, yet the whole, as representing the actual stateof the entire island at the time, is exaggerated and of toosweeping a nature.

It is clear, nevertheless, that the domination of the Northmencould not have been completely established in Ireland, togetherwith their notions of superiority of race, trade on a largescale, and a consequent agglomeration of men in large cities,without the total destruction of the existing social state ofthe Irish, and consequently something of the frightful tyrannyjust described.

But the people were too brave, too buoyant, and too ardent intheir nature, to bear so readily a yoke so heavy. They were toomuch attached to their religion, not to sacrifice their lives,if necessary, in order to put an end to the sacrilegioususurpations of a pagan king, profaning, by his audaciousassumptions, the noblest, highest, purest, and most sacreddignities of holy Church. A man, stained with the blood of somany prelates and priests, seated on the primatial throne of thecountry in sheer derision of their most profound feelings; hispagan wife ruling over the city which the virgins of Bridget,the spouses of Christ, had honored and sanctified so long; theirreligion insulted by those who tried to destroy it—how couldsuch a state of things be endured by the whole race, not yetreduced to the condition to which so many centuries ofoppression subsequently brought it down!

Hence Keating could write directly after the passage just quoted:"When the nobles of Ireland saw that Turgesius had broughtconfusion upon their country, and that he was assuming supremeauthority over themselves, and reducing them to thraldom andvassalage, they became inspired with a fortitude of mind, and aloftiness of spirit, and a hardihood and firmness of purpose,that urged them to work in right earnest, and to toil zealouslyin battle against him and his murdering hordes."

And hereupon the faithful historian gives a long list ofengagements in which the Irish were successful, ending with thevictory of Malachi at Glas Linni, where we know from the FourMasters that Turgesius himself was taken prisoner and afterwarddrowned in Lough Uair or Owell in West Meath, by order of theIrish king.

This prince, then monarch of the whole island, atoned for theapathy and the want of patriotism of his predecessors, Conor andthe Nialls. He was in truth a saviour of his country, and thedeath of the oppressor was the signal for a general onslaughtupon the "foreigners" in every part of the island.

"The people rose simultaneously, and either massacred them intheir towns, or defeated them in the fields, so that, with theexception of a few strongholds, like Dublin, the whole ofIreland was free from the Northmen. Wherever they could escape,they took refuge in their ships, but only to return in morenumerous swarms than before." - (M. Haverty.)

It is evident that their deep sense of religion was the chiefsource of the energy which the Irish then displayed. They hadnot yet been driven into a fierce resistance by being forciblydeprived of their lands; although the Danes, when they carriedtheir vexatious tyranny into all the details of private life -not allowing lords and ladies of the Irish race to wear richdresses and appear in a manner befitting their rank - when theywent so far as to refuse a bowl of milk to an infant, that arude soldier might quench his thirst with it - could havescarcely permitted the apparently conquered people to enjoy allthe advantages accruing to the owner from the possession of land.Yet in none of the chronicles of the time which we have seen isany mention made of open confiscation, and of the survey anddivision of the territory among the greedy followers of the sea-kong. We do not yet witness what happened shortly after inNormandy under Rollo, and what was to happen four hundred yearslater in Ireland. The Scandinavians had not yet attained thatdegree of civilization which makes men attach a paramountimportance to the possession of a fixed part of any territory,and call in surveys, title-deeds, charters, and all the writtendocuments necessitated by a captious and over-scrupulouslegislation. The Irish, consequently, did not perceive thattheir broad acres were passing into the control of a foreignrace, and were being taken piecemeal from them, thus bringingthem gradually down to the condition of mere serfs anddependants.

What they did see, beyond the possibility of mistake ordeception, was their religion outraged, their spiritual rulers,not merely no longer at liberty to practise the duties of theirsacred ministry, but hunted down and slaughtered or driven tothe mountains and the woods. They saw that pagans were actuallyruling their holy isle, and changing a paradise of sanctity intoa pandemonium of brutal passion, presided over by asuperstitious and cruel idolatry. For surely, although the Irishchronicles fail to speak of it, the minstrels and historiansbeing too full of their own misery to think of looking at thepagan rites of their enemies - those enemies worshipped Thor andOdin and Frigga, and as surely did they detest the Church whichthey were on a fair way to destroy utterly. This it was whichgave the Irish the courage of despair. For this cause chieflydid the whole island fly to arms, fall on their foes and bringdown on their heads a fearful retribution. This it was,doubtless, which breathed into the new monarch the energy whichhe displayed on the field of Glas Linni; and when he ordered thebarbarian, now a prisoner in his hands, to be drowned, it wasprincipally as a sign that he detested in him the blasphemer andthe persecutor of God's church.

Thus did the first national misfortunes of this Celtic peoplebecome the means of enkindling in their hearts a greater lovefor their religion, and a greater zeal for its preservation intheir midst.

Ireland was again free; and, although we have no detailsconcerning the short period of prosperity which followed theoverthrow of the tyranny we have touched upon, we have smalldoubt that the first object of the care of those who, under God,had worked their own deliverance, was to repair the ruins of thedesecrated sanctuaries and restore to religion the honor ofwhich it had been stripped.

The Danes themselves came to see that they had acted rashly instriving to deprive the Irish of a religion which was so dear totheir hearts; they resolved on a change of policy, as they werestill bent on taking possession of the island, which Mr. Worsaaehas told us they considered the best country in existence.

They resolved, therefore, to act with more prudence, and to makeuse of trade and the material blessings which it confers, inorder to entice the Irish to their destruction, by allowing theNorthmen to carry on business transactions with them and sogradually to dwell among them again. Father Keating tells thestory in his quaint and graphic style:

"The plan adopted by them on this occasion was to equip threecaptains, sprung from the noblest blood of Norway, and to sendthem with a fleet to Ireland, for the object of obtaining somestation for purpose of trade. And with them they accordinglyembarked many tempting wares, and many valuable jewels — withthe design of presenting them to the men of Ireland, in the hopeof thus securing their friendship; for they believed that theymight thus succeed in surreptitiously fixing a grasp upon theIrish soil, and might be enabled to oppress the Irish peopleagain . . . . The three captains, therefore, coming from theports of Norway, landed in Ireland with their followers, as iffor the purpose of demanding peace, and under the pretext ofestablishing a trade; and there, with the consent of the Irish,who were given to peace, they took possession of some sea-boardplaces, and built three cities thereon, to wit: Waterford,Dublin, and Limerick."

We see, then, the Scandinavians abandoning their first projectof conquering the North to fall on the South and confiningthemselves to a small number of fortified sea-ports.

The first result of this policy was a firmer hold than ever onDublin, once already occupied by them in 836. "Amlaf, or Olaf,or Olaus, came from Norway to Ireland in 851, so that all theforeign tribes in the island submitted to him, and theyextracted rent from the Gaels." - (Four Masters.)

From that time to the twelfth century Dublin became the chiefstronghold of the Scandinavians, and no fewer than thirty-fiveOstmen, or Danish kings, governed it. They made it an importantemporium, and such it continued even after the Scandinavianinvasion had ceased. McFirbis says that in his time - 1650 -most of the merchants of Dublin were the descendants of theNorwegian Irish king, Olaf Kwaran; and, to give a strongerimpulse to commerce, they were the first to coin money in thecountry.

The new Scandinavian policy carried out by Amlaf, who tried toestablish in Dublin the seat of a kingdom which was to extendover the whole island, resulted therefore only in theestablishment of five or six petty principalities, wherein theNorthmen, for some time masters, were gradually reduced to asecondary position, and finally confined themselves to theoperations of commerce.

Since the attempt of Turgesius to subvert the religion of thecountry, they never showed the slightest inclination to repeatit; hence they were left in quiet possession of the places whichthey occupied on the sea-board, and gradually came to embraceChristianity themselves.

Little is known of the circ*mstances which attended this changeof religion on their part; and it is certain that it did nottake place till late in the tenth century. Some pretend thatChristianity was brought to them from their own country, whereit had already been planted by several missionaries and bishops.But it is known that St. Ancharius, the first apostle of Denmark,could not establish himself permanently in that country, andhad to direct a few missionaries from Hamburgh, where he fixedhis see. It is known, moreover, that Denmark was only trulyconverted by Canute in the eleventh century, after his conquestof England. As to Norway, the first attempt at its conversion byKing Haquin, who had become a Christian at the court ofAthelstan in England, was a failure; and although his successor,Harold, appeared to succeed better for a time, paganism wasagain reestablished, and flourished as late as 995. It was, infact, Olaf the Holy who, coming from England, in 1017, with thepriests Sigefried, Budolf, and Bernard, succeeded in introducingChristianity permanently into Norway, and he made more use ofthe sword than of the word in his mission.

With regard to the conversion of the Danes in Ireland, it seemsthat, after all, it was the ever-present spectacle of theworkings of Christianity among the Irish which gradually openedtheir eyes and ears. They came to love the country and thepeople when they knew them thoroughly; they respected them fortheir bravery, which they had proved a thousand times; they feltattracted toward them on account of their geniality oftemperament and their warm social feelings; even their defectsof character and their impulsive nature were pleasing to them.They soon sought their company and relationship; they began tointermarry with them; and from this there was but a step toembracing their religion.

The Danes of Waterford, Cork, and Limerick were, however, thelast to abandon paganism, and they seem not to have done sountil after Clontarf.

It is very remarkable that, during all those conflicts of theIrish with the Danes, when the Northmen strewed the island withdead and ruins; when they seemed to be planting their dominationin the Orkneys, the Hebrides, and even the Isle of Man, on afirm footing; when the seas around England and Ireland swarmedwith pirates, and new expeditions started almost every springfrom the numerous harbors of the Baltic—the Irish colony of DalRiada in Scotland, which was literally surrounded by theinvaders, succeeded in wresting North Britain from the Picts,drove them into the Lowlands, and so completely rooted them out,that history never more speaks of them, so that to this day thehistorical problem stands unsolved— What became of the Picts?—various as are the explanations given of their disappearance.And, what is more remarkable still, is, that the Dal Riadacolony received constant help from their brothers in Erin, andthe first of the dynasty of Scottish kings, in the person ofKenneth McAlpine, was actually set on the throne of Scotland bythe arms of the Irish warriors, who, not satisfied apparentlywith their constant conflicts with the Danes on their own soil,passed over the Eastern Sea to the neighboring coast of GreatBritain.

During the last forty years of the tenth century the Danes livedin Ireland as though they belonged to the soil. If they wagedwar against some provincial king, they became the allies ofothers. When clan fought clan, Danes were often found on bothsides, or if on one only, they soon joined the other. They hadbeen brought to embrace the manners of the natives, and to adoptmany of their customs and habits. Yet there always remained alurking distrust, more or less marked, between the two races;and it was clear that Ireland could never be said to haveescaped the danger of subjugation until the Scandinavian elementshould be rendered powerless.

This antipathy on both sides existed very early even in Churchaffairs, the Christian natives being looked upon with a jealouseye by the Christian Danes; so that, toward the middle of thetenth century, the Danes of Dublin having succeeded in obtaininga bishop of their own nation, they sent him to England to beconsecrated by Lanfranc, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and for along time the see of Dublin was placed under the jurisdiction ofLanfranc's successors.

This grew into a serious difficulty for Ireland, as the capitalof Leinster began to be looked upon as depending, at leastspiritually, on England; and later on, at the time of theinvasion under Strongbow, the establishment of the English Palewas considerably facilitated by such an arrangement, to whichRome had consented only for the spiritual advantage of herScandinavian children in Ireland.

And the Irish were right in distrusting every thing foreign onthe soil, for, even after becoming Christians, the Danes couldnot resist the temptation of making a last effort for thesubjugation of the country.

Hence arose their last general effort, which resulted in theirfinal overthrow at Clontarf. It does not enter into our purposeto give the story of that great event, known in all its detailsto the student of Irish history. It is not for us to trace thevarious steps by which Brian Boru mounted to supreme power, andsuperseded Malachi, to relate the many partial victories he hadalready gained over the Northmen, nor to allude to his splendidadministration of the government, and the happiness of the Irishunder his sway.

But it is our duty to point out the persevering attempts of theScandinavian race, not only to keep its footing on Irish soil,but to try anew to conquer what it had so often failed toconquer. For, in describing their preparations for this lastattempt on a great scale, we but add another proof of that Irishsteadfastness which we have already had so many occasions toadmire.

In the chronicle of Adhemar, quoted by Lanigan from Labbe (NovaBibl., MSS., Tom. 2, p.177), it is said that "the Northmen cameat that time to Ireland, with an immense fleet, conveying eventheir wives and children, with a view of extirpating the Irishand occupying in their stead that very wealthy country in whichthere were twelve cities, with extensive bishopries and a king."

Labbe thinks the Chronicle was written before the year 1031, sothat in his opinion the writer was a contemporary of the factshe relates.

The Irish Annals state, on their side, that "the foreigners weregathered from all the west of Europe, envoys having beendespatched into Norway, the Orkneys, the Baltic islands, so thata great number of Vikings came from all parts of Scandinavia,with their families, for the purpose of a permanent settlement."

Similar efforts were made about the same time by the Danes forthe lasting conquest of England, which succeeded, Sweyn havingbeen proclaimed king in 1013, and Canute the Great becoming itsundisputed ruler in 1017.

It is well known how the attempt failed in Erin, an army oftwenty-one thousand freebooters being completely defeated nearDublin by Brian and his sons.

From that time the existence of the Scandinavian race on theIrish soil was a precarious one; they were merely permitted tooccupy the sea-ports for the purpose of trade, and soon Irishchieftains replaced their kings in Dublin, Limerick, Waterford,and Cork.

The reader may be curious to learn, in conclusion, what signsthe Danes left of their long sojourn on the island. If we listento mere popular rumor, the country is still full of the ruins ofbuildings occupied by them. The common people, in pointing outto strangers the remains of edifices, fortifications, raths,duns, even round-towers and churches, either more ancient ormore recent than the period of the Norse invasion, ascribe themto the Danes. It is clear that two hundred years of devastations,burnings, and horrors, have left a deep impression on the mindof the Irish; and, as they cannot suppose that such powerfulenemies could have remained so long in their midst withoutleaving wonderful traces of their passage, they often attributeto them the construction of the very edifices which theydestroyed. The general accuracy of their traditions seems hereat fault. For there is no nation on earth so exact as the Irishin keeping the true remembrance of facts of their past history.Not long ago all Irish peasants were perfectly acquainted withthe whole history of their neighborhood; they could tell whatclans had succeeded each other, the exact spots where such aparty had been overthrown and such another victorious; everyvillage had its sure traditions printed on the minds of itsinhabitants, and, by consulting the annals of the nation, thecoincidence was often remarkable. How is it, therefore, thatthey were so universally at fault with respect to the Danes?

A partial explanation has been given which is in itself a proofof the tenacity of Irish memory. It is known that the Tuatha deDanaan were not only skilful in medicine, in the working ofmetals and in magic, but many buildings are generally attributedto them by the best antiquarians; among others, the great moundof New Grange, on the banks of the Boyne, which is still inperfect preservation, although opened and pillaged by the Danes—a work reminding the beholder of some Egyptian monument. Thecoincidence of the name of the Tuatha de Danaan with that of theDanes may have induced many of the illiterate Irish to adopt theuniversal error into which they fell long ago, of attributingmost of the ancient monuments of their country to the Danes.

The fact is, that the ruins of a few unimportant castles andchurches are all the landmarks that remain of the Danishdomination in Ireland; and even these must have been the productof the latter part of it.

But a more curious proof of the extirpation of every thing
Danish in the island is afforded by Mr. Worsaae, whose object in
writing his account of the Danes and Norwegians in England,
Scotland, and Ireland, was to glorify his own country, Denmark.

He made a special study of the names of places and things, whichcan be traced to the Scandinavians respectively in the threegreat divisions of the British Isles; and certainly the languageof a conquering people always shows itself in many words of theconquered country, where the subjugation has been of sufficientduration.

In England, chiefly in the northern half of the kingdom, a verygreat number of Danish names appear and are still preserved inthe geography of the country. In Mr. Worsaae's book there is atabular view of 1,373 Danish and Norwegian names of places inEngland, and also a list of 100 Danish words, selected from thevulgar tongue, still in use among the people who dwell north ofWatling Street.

In Scotland, likewise—in the Highlands and even in the Lowlands--a considerable number of names, or at least of terminations,are still to be met in the geography of the country.

Three or four names of places around Dublin, and theterminations of the names of the cities of Waterford, Wexford,Longford, and a few others, are all that Mr. Worsaae could findin Ireland. So that the language of the Irish, not to speak oftheir government and laws, remained proof against the long andpersevering efforts made by a great and warlike Northern race toinvade the country, and substitute its social life for that ofthe natives.

As a whole, the Scandinavian irruptions were a complete failure.They did not succeed in impressing their own nationality orindividuality on any thing in the island, as they did in England,Holland, and the north of France. The few drops of blood whichthey left in the country have been long ago absorbed in thehealthful current of the pure Celtic stream; even the languageof the people was not affected by them.

As for the social character of the nation, it was not touched bythis fearful aggression. The customs of Scandinavia with respectto government, society, domestic affairs, could not influencethe Irish; they refused to admit the systematic thraldom whichthe sternness of the Northmen would engraft upon their character,and preserved their free manners in spite of all adverseattempts. In this country, Turgesius, Amlaf, Sitrick, and theircompeers, failed as signally as other Scandinavian chieftainssucceeded in Britain and Normandy.

The municipal system, which has won so much praise, wasscornfully abandoned by the Irish to the Danes of the sea porttowns, and they continued the agricultural life adapted to theirtastes. Towns and cities were not built in the interior tillmuch later by the English.

The clan territories continued to be governed as before. The"Book of Rights" extended its enactments even to the Danish Pale;and the Danes tried to convert it to their own advantage byintroducing into it false chapters. How the poem of the Gaels ofAth Cliath first found a place in the "Book of Rights" is stillunknown to the best Irish antiquarians. John O'Donovan concludesfrom a verse in it that it was composed in the tenth century,after the conversion of the Danes of Dublin to Christianity. Itproves certainly that the Scandinavians in Ireland, like theEnglish of the Pale later on, had become attached to Erin andErin's customs—had, in fact, become. Irishmen, to all intentsand purposes. Not succeeding in making Northmen of the Irish,they succumbed to the gentle influence of Irish manners andreligion.

As for the commercial spirit, the Irish could not be caught byit, even when confronted by the spectacle of the wealth itconferred on the "foreigners." It is stated openly in the annalsof the race that their greatest kings, both Malachi and BrianBoru, did not utterly expel the Danes from the country, in orderthat they might profit by the Scandinavian traders, and receivethrough them the wines, silks, and other commodities, which thelatter imported from the continent of Europe.

The same is true of the sea-faring life. The Irish could neverbe induced to adopt it as a profession, whatever may have beentheir fondness for short voyages in their curraghs.

The only baneful effects which the Norse invasion exercised onthe Irish were: 1. The interruption of studies on the large,even universal, scale on which, they had previously beenconducted; 2. The breaking up of the former constitution of themonarchy, by compelling the several clans which were attacked bythe "foreigners" to act independently of the Ard-Righ, so thatfrom that time irresponsible power was divided among a muchgreater number of chieftains.

But these unfortunate effects of the Norse irruptions affectedin no wise the Irish character, language, or institutions, which,in fact, finally triumphed over the character, language, andinstitutions of the pirates established among them for upward oftwo centuries.

CHAPTER VI.

THE IRISH FREE CLANS AND ANGLO-NORMAN FEUDALISM.

The Danes were subdued, and the Irish at liberty to go onweaving the threads of their history—though, in consequence ofthe local wars, they had lost the concentrating power of the Ard-Righ—when treachery in their own ranks opened up the way for afar more serious attack from another branch of the greatScandinavian family—the Anglo-Norman.

The manners of the people had been left unchanged; the clansystem had not been altered in the least; it had stood the testof previous revolutions; now it was to be confronted by a newsystem which had just conquered Europe, and spread itself roundabout the apparently doomed island. Of all places it had takendeep root in England, where it was destined to survive itsdestruction elsewhere in the convulsions of our modern history.That system, then in full vigor, was feudalism.

In order rightly to understand and form a correct judgment onthe question, and its mighty issues, we must state briefly whatthe chief characteristics of feudalism were in those countrieswhere it flourished.

The feudal system proceeded on the principle that landedproperty was all derived from the king, as the captain of aconquering army; that it had been distributed by him among hisfollowers on certain conditions, and that it was liable to beforfeited if those conditions were not fulfilled.

The feudal system, moreover, politically considered, supposedthe principle that all civil and political rights were derivedfrom the possession of land; that those who possessed no landcould possess neither civil nor political rights—were, in fact,not men, but villeins.

Consequently, it reduced nations to a small number of landowners,enjoying all the privileges of citizenship; the masses,deprived of all rights, having no share in the government, noopportunity of rising in the social scale, were forevercondemned to villeinage or serfdom.

Feudalism, in our opinion, came first from Scandinavia. Themajority of writers derive it from Germany. The question of itsorigin is too extensive to be included within our present limits,and indeed is unnecessary, as we deal principally with the factand not with its history.

When the sea-rover had conquered the boat of an enemy, ordestroyed a village, he distributed the spoils among his crew.Every thing was handed over to his followers in the form of agift, and in return these latter were bound to serve him withthe greatest ardor and devotedness. In course of time the ideaof settling down on some territory which they had devastated anddepopulated, presented itself to the minds of the rovers. Thesea-kong did by the land what he had been accustomed to do bythe plunder: he parcelled it out among his faithful followers—fideles—giving to each his share of the territory. This wascalled feoh by the Anglo-Saxons, who were the first to carry outthe system on British soil, as Dr. Lingard shows. Thus the wordfief was coined, which in due time took its place in all thelanguages of Europe.

The giver was considered the absolute owner of whatever he gave,as is the commander of a vessel at sea. It was a beneficiumconferred by him, to which certain indispensable conditions wereattached. Military duty was the first, but not the only one ofthese. Writers on feudalism mention a great number, thenonfulfilment of which incurred what was called forfeiture.

In countries where the pirates succeeded in establishingthemselves, all the native population was either destroyed bythem, as Dudo tells us was the case in Normandy, or, as morefrequently happened, the sword being unable to carry destructionso far, the inhabitants who survived were reduced to serfdom,and compelled to till the soil for the conquerors; they werethenceforth called villeins or ascripti glebae. It is clear thatsuch only as possessed land could claim civil and politicalrights in the new states thus called into existence. Hence theowning of land under feudal tenure was the great and onlyessential characteristic of mediaeval feudalism.

This system, which was first introduced into Britain by theAnglo-Saxons, was brought to a fixed and permanent state by theNormans—followers of William the Conqueror; and, when the timecame for treachery to summon the Norman knights to Irish soil,the devoted island found herself face to face with an ironsystem which at that period crushed and weighed down all Europe.

The Normans had now been settled in England for a hundred years;all the castles in the country were occupied by Norman lords;all bishopries filled by Norman bishops; all monasteries ruledby Norman abbots. At the head of the state stood the king, atthat time Henry II. Here, more than in any other country inEurope, was the king the key-stone to the feudal masonry. Not aninch of ground in England was owned save under his authority, asenjoying the supremum dominium. All the land had been granted byhis predecessors as fiefs, with the right of reversion to thecrown by forfeiture in case of the violation of feudalobligations. Here was no allodial property, no censitivehereditary domain, as in the rest of, otherwise, feudal Europe.All English lawyers were unanimous in the doctrine that the kingalone was the true master of the territory; that tenure underhim carried with it all the conditions of feudal tenure, andthat any deed or grant proceeding from his authority ought to beso understood.

The south-western portion of Wales was occupied by Norman lords,Flemings for the most part. Two of these, Robert Fitzstephensand Maurice Fitzgerald, sailed to the aid of the Irish King ofLeinster. They were the first to land, arriving a full yearbefore Strongbow.

Strongbow came at last. The conditions agreed on beforehandbetween himself and the Leinster king were fulfilled. He wasmarried to the daughter of Dermod McMurrough, chief of Leinster,acknowledged Righ Dahma, that is, successor to the crown, whilethe Irish, accustomed for ages to admire valor and bowsubmissively to the law of conquest, admitted the claim. TheEnglish adventurer they looked upon as one of themselves bymarriage. Election in such a case was unnecessary, or rather,understood, and Strongbow took the place which was his in theireyes by right of his wife, of head under McMurrough of all theclans of Leinster.

When, a little later, came Henry II. to be acknowledged byStrongbow as his suzerain, and to receive the homage of thepresumptive heir of Leinster, submission to him was, in theeyes of the Irish, merely a consequence of their own clan system.They understood the homage rendered to him in a very differentsense from that attached to it by feudal nations; and had theyhad an inkling of the real intentions of the new comers, not oneof them would have consented to live under and bow the neck tosuch a yoke.

In fact, on the small territory where those great events wereenacted, two worlds, utterly different from each other, stoodface to face. Cambrensis tells us that the English were struckwith wonder at what they saw. The imperialism of Rome had nevertouched Ireland. The Danes, opposed so strenuously from theoutset, and finally overcome, had never been able to introducethere their restrictive measures of oppression. The Englishfound the natives in exactly the same state as that in whichJulius Caesar found the Gauls twelve hundred years before,except as to religion—the race governed patriarchally bychieftains allied to their subordinates by blood relationship;no unity in the government, no common flag, no private andhereditary property, nothing to bind the tribes together exceptreligion. It was not a nation properly, but rather anagglomeration of small nations often at war each with each, yetall strongly attached to Erin— a mere name, including,nevertherless, the dear idea of country —the chieftainselective, bold, enterprising; the subordinates free, attached tothe chief as to a common father, throwing themselves with ardorinto all his quarrels, ready to die for him at any moment.Around chief and clansmen circled a large number of brehons,shanachies, poets, bards, and harpers—poetry, music, and warstrangely blended together. The religion of Christ spread overall a halo of purity and holiness; large monasteries filled withpious monks, and convents of devout and pure virgins abounded;bishops and priests in the churches chanting psalms, eachaccompanying himself with a many-stringed harp, gave forth sweetharmony, unheard at the time in any other part of the world.

A most important feature to be considered is their understandingof property. Hereditary right of land with respect toindividuals, and the transmission of property of any kind byright of primogeniture, were unknown among them. If a specifiedamount of territory was assigned to the chieftain, a smallerportion to the bishop, the shanachy, head poet, and other civilofficers each in his degree, such property was attached to theoffice and not to the man who filled it, but passed to hiselected successor and not to his own children; while the greatbulk of the territory belonged to the clan in common. No onepossessed the right to alienate a single rood of it, and, if attimes a portion was granted to exiles, to strangers, to acontiguous clan, the whole tribe was consulted on the subject.Over the common land large herds of cattle roamed—the propertyof individuals who could own nothing, except of a movable nature,beyond their small wooden houses.

This state of things had existed, according to their annals, forseveral thousand years. Their ancestors had lived happily undersuch social conditions, which they wished to abide in and handdown to their posterity.

Foreign trade was distasteful to them; in fact, they had noinclination for commerce. Lucre they despised, scarcely knowingthe use of money, which had been lately introduced among them.Yet, being refined in their tastes, fond of ornament, of wine attheir feasts, loving to adorn the persons of their wives anddaughters with silk and gems, they had allowed the Danes todwell in their seaports, to trade in those commodities, and toimport for their use what the land did not produce.

Those seaport towns had been fortified by the Northmen on theirfirst victories when they took possession of them. Throughoutthe rest of the island, a fortress or a large town was not to beseen. The people, being all agriculturists or graziers, loved todwell in the country; their houses were built of wattle and clay,yet comfortable and orderly.

The mansions of the chieftains were neither large architecturalpiles, nor frowning fortresses. They bore the name of raths whenused for dwellings; of duns when constructed with a view toresisting an attack. In both cases, they were, in part underground, in part above; the whole circular in form, builtsometimes of large stones, oftener of walls of sodded clay.

Instead of covering their limbs with coats of mail, like thewarriors of mediaeval Europe, they wore woollen garments even inwar, and for ornaments chains or plates of precious metal. TheNorman invaders, clad in heavy mail, were surprised, therefore,to find themselves face to face with men in their estimationunprotected and naked. More astonished were they still at thenatural boldness and readiness of the Irish in speaking beforetheir chieftains and princes, not understanding that all were ofthe same blood and cognizant of the fact.

Still less could they understand the freedom and familiarityexisting between the Irish nobility and the poorest of theirkinsmen, so different from the haughty bearing of an aristocracyof foreign extraction to the serfs and villeins of a people theyhad conquered.

The two nations now confronting each other had, therefore,nothing in common, unless, perhaps, an excessive pertinacity ofpurpose. The new comers belonged to a stern, unyielding,systematic stock, which was destined to give to Europe thatgreat character so superior in our times to that of southern oreastern nations. The natives possessed that strong attachment totheir time-honored customs, so peculiar to patriarchal tribes,in whose nature traditions and social habits are so stronglyintermingled, that they are ineradicable save by the utterextirpation of the people.

And now the characteristics of both races were to be brought outin strong contrast by the great question of property in the soil,which was at the bottom of the struggle between clanship andfeudalism. The Irish, as we have seen, knew nothing ofindividual property in land, nor of tenure, nor of rent, muchless of forfeiture. They were often called upon by theirchieftains to contribute to their support in ways not seldomoppressive enough, but the contributions were always in kind.

A new and very different system was to be attempted, to whichthe Irish at first appeared to consent, because they did notunderstand it, attaching, as they did, their own ideas to words,which, in the mouths of the invaders, had a very differentmeaning.

With the Irish "to do homage" meant to acknowledge thesuperiority of another, either on account of his lawfulauthority or his success in war; and the consequences of thisact were, either the fulfilment of the enactments contained inthe "Book of Rights," or submission to temporary conditionsguaranteed by hostages. But that the person doing homage becameby that act the liegeman of the suzerain for life andhereditarily in his posterity, subject to be deprived of allprivileges of citizenship, as well as to the possibility ofseeing all his lands forfeited, besides many minor penaltiesenjoined by the feudal code which often resolved itself intomere might—such a meaning of the word homage could by nopossibility enter the mind of an Irishman at that period.

Hence, when, after the atrocities committed by the firstinvaders, who respected neither treaties nor the dictates ofhumanity, not even the sanctuary and the sacredness of religioushouses, Henry II. came with an army, large and powerful for thattime, the Irish people and their chieftains, hoping that hewould put an end to the crying tyranny of the Fitzstephens,Fitzgeralds, De Lacys, and others, went to meet him andacknowledge his authority as head chieftain of Leinster throughStrongbow, and, perhaps, as the monarch who should restore peaceand happiness to the whole island. McCarthy, king of Desmond,was the first Irish prince to pay homage to Henry.

While the king was spending the Christmas festivities in Dublin,many other chieftains arrived; among them O'Carrol of Oriel andO'Rourke of Breffny. Roderic O'Connor of Connaught, till thenacknowledged by many as monarch of Ireland, thought at first offighting, but, as was his custom, he ended by a treaty, wherein,it is said, he acknowledged Henry as his suzerain, and thusplaced Ireland at his feet. Ulster alone had not seen theinvaders; but, as its inhabitants did not protest with arms intheir hands, the Normans pretended that from that moment theywere the rightful owners of the island.

Without a moment's delay they began to feudalize the country bydividing the land and building castles. These two operations,which we now turn to, opened the eyes of the Irish to thedeception which had been practised upon them, and were the realorigin of the momentous struggle which is still being wagedtoday.

Sir John Davies, the English attorney-general of James I., hasstated the whole case in a sentence: "All Ireland was by HenryII. cantonized among ten of the English nation; and, though theyhad not gained possession of one-third of the kingdom, yet intitle they were owners and lords of all, so as nothing was leftto be granted to the natives."

McCarthy, king of Desmond, had been the first to acknowledge theauthority of Henry II., yet McCarthy's lands were among thefirst, if not the first, bestowed by Henry on his minions. Thegrant may be seen in Ware, and it is worthy of perusal as asample of the many grants which followed it, whereby Henryattempted a total revolution in the tenure of land. The chartergiving Meath to De Lacy was the only one which by a clauseseemed to preserve the old customs of the country as toterritory; and yet it was in Meath that the greatest atrocitieswere committed.

Yet one difficulty presented itself to the invaders: theirrights were only on paper, whereas the Irish were still inpossession of the greatest part of the island, and once the realpurpose of the Normans showed itself, they were no longerdisposed to submit to Henry or to any of his appointed lords.The territory had to be wrested from them by force of arms.

The English claimed the whole island as their own. They were, infact, masters only of the portion occupied by their troops; theremainder was, therefore, to be conquered. And if in Desmond,where the whole strength of the English first fell, theypossessed only a little more than one-fourth of the soil, whatwas the case in the rest of the island, the most of which hadnot yet seen them?

Long years of war would evidently be required to subdue it, andthe systematic mind of the conquerors immediately set aboutdevising the best means for the attainment of their purpose. Thelessons gathered from their continental experience suggestedthese means immediately; they saw that by covering the countrywith feudal castles they could in the end conquer the moststubborn nation. A thorough revolution was intended. The twosystems were so entirely antagonistic to each other that thesuccess of the Norman project involved a change of land tenure,laws, customs, dress—every thing. Even the music of the bardswas to be silenced, the poetry of the files to be abolished, thepedigrees of families to be discontinued, the very games of thepeople to be interrupted and forbidden. A vast number of castleswas necessary. The project was a fearful one, cruel, barbarous,worthy of pagan antiquity. It was undertaken with a kind offerocious alacrity, and in a short time it appeared nearrealization. But in the long run it failed, and four hundredyears later, under the eighth Henry, it was as far fromcompletion as the day on which the second Henry left the islandin 1171.

To show the importance which the invaders attached to theirsystem, and the ardor with which they set about putting it inpractice, we have only to extract a few passages from the oldannals of the islands; they are wonderfully expressive in theirsimplicity:

"A.D. 1176. The English were driven from Limerick by Donnall
O'Brian. An English castle was in process of erection at Kells."-
-(Four Masters.)

"A.D. 1178. The English built and fortified a castle at Kenlis,the key of those parts of Meath, against the incursions of theUlster men."—(Ware's Antiquities.)

"A.D. 1180. Hugh De Lacy planted several colonies in Meath, andfortified the country with many castles, for the defence andsecurity of the English."—(Ibid.)

Such enumerations might be prolonged indefinitely; we concludewith the following entry taken from the Four Masters:

"A.D. 1186. Hugh De Lacy, the profaner and destroyer of manychurches, Lord of the English of Meath (the Irish cannot callhim their lord), Breffni, and Oirghialla, he who had conqueredthe greater part of Ireland for the English, and of whoseEnglish castles all Meath, from the Shannon to the sea, was full,after having finished the castle of Der Magh, set outaccompanied by three Englishmen to visit it . . . . One of themen of Tebtha, a youth named O'Miadhaigh, approached him, andwith an axe severed his head from his body."

So wide-reaching and comprehensive was the plan of the invadersfrom the beginning that they felt confident of holdingpossession of Ireland forever; and to effect this they mustcertainly have intended to destroy or drive out the native race,or at best to make slaves of as many of them as they chose tokeep. Thus they had prophecies manufactured for the purpose, andCambrensis, in his second book, chapter xxxiii., saysconfidently: "Prophecies promise a full victory to the Englishpeople. . . . and that the island of Hibernia shall be subjectedand fortified with castles—literally incastellated,incastellatam—throughout from sea to sea."

Meanwhile, together with the building of castles, the partitionof the territory was being carried out. The ten great lords,among whom, according to Sir John Davies, Henry II. hadcantonized Ireland, saw the necessity of giving a part of theirlarge estates to their followers that so they might occupy thewhole. McGeohegan compiles from Ware the best view of this veryinteresting and comparatively unexplored subject. Curiousdetails are found there, showing that, with the exception ofUlster, not only the geography, but even the most minutetopography of the country, had been well studied by those feudalchieftains. Their characteristic love for system runs allthrough these transactions.

But the Irish had now seen enough. The whole country was in ablaze. That kind of guerilla war peculiar to the Celtic clansbegan. The newly built castles were attacked and often capturedand destroyed. Strongbow was shut up and besieged in Water- ford,which fell into the hands of the Danes. The latter sidedeverywhere with the Irish. Limerick changed hands several times,until Donnall O'Brian, who was left in possession, set fire toit rather than see it fall again into the hands of the invaders.

In Meath, where the numerous castles of De Lacy were situated, awar to the knife was being waged. O'Melachlin first triedpersuasion, but in conference with De Lacy he dared inveighloudly against the King of England, and, as his words must haveexpressed the feelings of the great majority of the people, wegive them:

"Notwithstanding his promise of supporting me in the possessionof my wealth and dignities, he has sent robbers to invade mypatrimony. Avaricious and sparing of his own possessions, he islavish of those of others, and thus enriches libertines andprofligates who have consumed the patrimony of their fathers indebauchery."

This manly protest was answered by the stroke of a dagger fromthe hand of Raymond Legros, and, after being beheaded,0'Melachlin was buried feet upward as a rebel.

The monarch himself, Roderic O'Connor, finally appeared on thescene, beat the English at Thurles, and, marching into Meath,laid the country waste.

Henry at last saw the necessity of adopting a milder policy, andO'Connor dispatching to England Catholicus O'Duffy, Archbishopof Tuam, Lawrence O'Toole, of Dublin, and Concors, Abbot of St.Brendan, the Treaty of Windsor was concluded, which was really acompromise, and yet remained the true law of the land for fourhundred years. It may be seen in Rymer's "Foedera."

Sir John Davies justly remarks that by the treaty "the Irishlords only promised to become tributaries to King Henry II.; andsuch as pay only tribute, though they are placed by Bodin in thefirst degree of subjection, yet are not properly subjects, butsovereigns; for though they be less and inferior to the princesto whom they pay tribute, yet they hold all other points ofsovereignty.

"And, therefore, though King Henry had the title of SovereignLord over the Irish, yet did he not put those things inexecution, which are the true marks of sovereignty.

"For to give laws unto a people, to institute magistrates andofficers over them, to punish or pardon malefactors, to have thesole authority of making war or peace, are the true marks ofsovereignty, which King Henry II. had not in Ireland, but theIrish lords did still retain all those prerogatives tothemselves. For they governed their people by the Brehon law;they appointed their own magistrates and officers; . . . . theymade war and peace one with another, without control; and thisthey did not only during the reign of Henry II., but afterwardin all times, even until the reign of Queen Elizabeth."

By an article of the treaty the Irish were allowed to live inthe Pale if they chose; and even there they could enjoy theircustoms in peace, as far as the letter of the law went. Manyacts of Irish parliaments, it is true, were passed for thepurpose of depriving them of that right, but without success.

Edmund Spenser, himself living in the Pale in the reign ofElizabeth, speaks as an eye-witness of "having seen their meetontheir ancient accustomed hills, where they debated and settledmatters according to the Brehon laws, between family and family,township and township, assembling in large numbers, and going,according to their custom, all armed."

Stanihurst also, a contemporary of Spenser, had witnessed thebreaking up of those meetings, and seen "the crowds in longlines, coming down the hills in the wake of each chieftain, hethe proudest that could bring the largest company home to hisevening supper."

Here would be the proper place to speak of the Brehon law, whichremained thus in antagonism to feudal customs for severalcenturies. Up to recently, however, only vague notions could begiven of that code. But at this moment antiquarians are revisingand studying it preparatory to publishing the "Senchus Mor" inwhich the Irish law is contained. It is known that it existedprevious to the conversion of Ireland to Christianity, and thatthe laws of tanistry and of gavelkind, the customs of gossipredand of fostering, were of pagan origin. Patrick revised the codeand corrected what could not coincide with the Christianreligion. He also introduced into the island many principles ofthe Roman civil and canon law, which, without destroying thepeculiarities natural to the Irish character, invested theircode with a more modern and Christian aspect.

Edmund Campian, who afterward died a martyr under Elizabeth,says, in his "Account of Ireland," written in May, 1571: "They(the Irish) speak Latin like a vulgar language, learned in theircommon schools of leechcraft and law, whereat they beginchildren, and hold on sixteen or twenty years, conning by rotethe aphorisms of Hippocrates, and the Civil Institutes, and afew other parings of these two faculties. I have seen them wherethey kept school, ten in some one chamber, grovelling uponcouches of straw, their books at their noses, themselves lyingprostrate, and so to chant out their lessons by piecemeal, beingthe most part lusty fellows of twenty-five years and upward."

It was then after studies of from sixteen to twenty years thatthe Brehon judge—the great one of a whole sept, or the inferiorone of a single noble family—sat at certain appointed times, inthe open air, on a hill generally, having for his seat clods ofearth, to decide on the various subjects of difference amongneighbors.

Sir James Ware remarks that they were not acquainted with thelaws of England. He might have better said, they preferred theirown, as not coming from cold and pagan Scandinavia, but from thewarm south, the greatest of human law-givers, the jurisconsultsof Old Rome, and the holy expounders of the laws of ChristianRome.

What were those laws of England of which Ware speaks? There isno question here of the common law which came into use in timesposterior to Henry II., and which the English derived chieflyfrom the Christian civil and canon law; but of those feudalenactments, which the Anglo-Normans endeavored to introduce intoIreland, for the purpose of supplanting the old law and customsof the natives.

There was, first, the law of territory, if we may so call it, bywhich the supreme ruler became really owner of the integral soil,which he distributed among his great vassals, to beredistributed by them among inferior vassals.

There was the law of primogeniture, which even to this dayobtains in England, and has brought about in that country sincethe days of William the Conqueror, and in Ireland since theEnglish "plantations" of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,the state of things now so well known to Europe.

There was also the long list of feudal conditions to be observed,by the fulfilment of which the great barons and their followersheld their lands. For their tenure was liable to homage andfealty, as understood in the feudal sense, to wardships andimpediments to marriage, to fines for alienations, to whatEnglish legists call primer seizins, rents, reliefs, escheats,and, finally, forfeitures; this last was at all times morestrictly observed in England than in any other feudal country,and by its enactments so many noble families have, in the courseof ages, been reduced to beggary, and their chiefs often broughtto the block. English history is filled with such cases.

The law of wardship, by which no minor, heir, or heiress couldhave other guardian than the suzerain, and could not marrywithout his consent, was at all times a great source of wealthto the royal exchequer, and a correspondingly heavy tribute laidon the vassal. So profitable did the English kings find this law,that they speedily introduced it into Church affairs, everybishop's see or monastery being considered, at the death of theincumbent, as a minor, a ward, to be taken care of by thesovereign, who enjoyed the revenues without bothering himselfparticularly with the charges.

There were, finally, the hunting laws, which forbade any man tohunt or hawk even on his own estate.

Such were the laws of England, which Sir James Ware complainsthe Irish did not know.

In signing the treaty of Windsor, the English king hadapparently recognized in the person of Roderic O'Connor, and inthe Irish through him, the chief rights of sovereignty over thewhole island, except Leinster and, perhaps, Meath. But, at thesame time, a passage or two in the treaty concealed a meaningcertainly unperceived by the Irish, but fraught with mischiefand misfortune to their country.

First, Roderic O'Connor acknowledged himself and his successorsas liegemen of the kings of England; in a second place, theprivileges conceded to the Irish were to continue only so longas they remained faithful to their oath of allegiance. We seehere the same confusion of ideas, which we remarked on themeaning given to the word homage by either party. The natives ofthe island understood to be liegemen and under oath in a senseconformable to their usual ideas of subordination; the Englishinvested those words with the feudal meaning.

All the calamities of the four following centuries, and,consequently, all the horrors of the times subsequent to theProtestant Reformation, were to be the penalty of thatmisunderstanding.

Let us picture to ourselves two races of men so different as the
Milesian Celts on the one side, and the Scandinavian Norman
French on the other, having concluded such a treaty as that of
Windsor, each side resolved to push its own interpretation to
the bitter end.

The English are in possession of a territory clearly enoughdefined, but they are ever on the alert to seize any opportunityof a real or pretended violation of it, in order to extend theirlimits and subjugate the whole island. Yet they are bound toallow the Brehon Irish to live in their midst, governed by theirown customs and laws. Moreover, they acknowledge that the formergreat Irish lords of the very country which they occupy are notmere Irish, but of noble blood; for, from the beginning, theEnglish recognized five families of the country, known as the"five bloods," as pure and noble, in theory at least.

The Irish without the Pale are acknowledged as perfectlyindependent, completely beyond English control, with their ownmagistrates and laws, even that of war; subject only to tribute.But, at the same time, this independence is rendered absolutelyinsecure by the imposition of conditions, whose meaning is wellknown and perfectly understood in all the countries conquered bythe Scandinavians, but utterly beyond the comprehension of theIrish.

The consequence is clear: war began with the conclusion of thetreaty—a war which raged for four centuries, until a new andmore powerful incentive to slaughter and desolation showeditself in the Reformation, ushered in by Henry VIII.

First came a general rebellion. This is the word used byWare, when John, a boy of twelve years of age, was dispatched byhis father Henry, with the title of Lord of Ireland, to receivethe submission of various Irish lords at Waterford, where helanded. "The young English gentlemen," says Cambrensis, who wasa witness of the scene, "used the Irish chieftains with scorn,because," as he says, "their demeanor was rude and barbarous."The Irish naturally resented this treatment from a lad, as theywould have resented it from his father; and they retired inwrath to take up arms and raise the whole land to "rebellion."

This solemn protest was not without effect in Europe. At thebeginning of the reign of Richard I., Clement III., onappointing, by the king's request, William de Longchamps,Bishop of Ely, as his legate in England, Wales, and Ireland,took good care to limit the authority of this prelate to thoseparts of Ireland which lay under the jurisdiction of the Earlof Moreton— that is, of John, brother to Richard. He had powerto exercise his jurisdiction "in Anglia,, Wallia, et illisHiberniae partibus in quibus Joannes Moretonii Comes potestatemhabet et dominium."—(Matth. Paris.) It would seem, then, thatClement III. knew nothing of the bull of Adrian IV.

The war, as we said, was incessant. England finally so despairedof conquering the country, that some lords of the court of HenryVI. caused him to write letters to some of his "Irish enemies,"urging the latter to effect the conquest of the island in theking's name. This was assuredly a last resource, which historyhas never recorded of any other nation warring on a rival. Buteven in this England failed. Those lords—the "Irish enemies" ofKing Henry VI.—sent his letters to the Duke of York, then Lord-Lieutenant, "and published to the world the shame of England."—(Sir John Davies.)

The result was that, at the end of the reign of Henry VI., theIrish, in the words of the same author, "became victorious overall, without blood or sweat; only that little canton of land,called the English Pale, containing four small shires;maintained yet a bordering war with the Irish, and retained theform of English government."

Feudalism was thus reduced in Ireland to the small territorylying between the Boyne and the Liffey, subject to the constantannoyance of the O'Moores, O'Byrnes, and O'Cavanaghs. And thisstate of affairs continued until the period of the so-calledReformation in England.

Ireland proved itself then the only spot in Western Europe wherefeudal laws and feudal customs could take no root. Through allother nations of the Continent those laws spread by degrees,from the countries invaded by the Northmen, into the mostdistant parts, modified and mitigated in some instances by theinnate power of resistance left by former institutions. In thissmall island alone, where clanship still held its own, feudalismproved a complete failure. We merely record a fact, suggestive,indeed, of thought, which proves, if no more, at least that theCeltic nature is far more persevering and steady of purpose thanis generally supposed.

But a more interesting spectacle still awaits us—that of theEnglish themselves morally overcome and won over by the exampleof their antagonists, renouncing their feudal usages, andadopting manners which they had at first deemed rude andbarbarous.

The treaty of Windsor, which was subsequently confirmed by manydiplomatic enactments, obliged King Henry III. of England toaddress O'Brien of Thom*ond in the following words: "Rex regiThom*ond salutem." The same English monarch was compelled to giveO'Neill of Ulster the title of Rex, after having used,inadvertently perhaps, that of Regulus.—(Sir John Davies.) BothO'Brien and O'Neill lived in the midst of a thickly populatedIrish district, with a few great English lords shut up in theircastles on the borders of the respective territory of the clans.

The Norman lords in many parts of the country lived right in themidst of an Irish population, with its Brehon judges, shanachies,harpers, and other officers, attached to their customs ofgossipred, fostering, tanistry, gavelkind, and other usages,which the parliaments of Drogheda, Kilkenny, Dublin, Trim, andother places, were soon to declare lewd and barbarous. Thequestion of the moment was: Which of the two systems, clanshipor feudalism, brought thus into close contact and antagonism,was to prevail?

Ere long it began to appear that the aversion first felt by theEnglish lords at such strange customs was not entirelyinvincible, and many of them even went so far as to choose wivesfrom among the native families. In fact, there lay a greatexample before their eyes from the outset, in the marriage ofStrongbow with Eva, the daughter of McMurrough. Intermarriagesoon became the prevailing custom; so that the posterity of thefirst invaders was, after all, to have Celtic blood in its veins.

Hence, a distinction arose between the English by blood and theEnglish by birth. The first had, indeed, an English name; butthey were born in the island, and soon came to be known asdegenerate English.—That degeneracy was merely the moral effectof constant intercourse with the natives of their neighborhood. --The others were continually shifting, being always composed ofthe latest new-comers from England.

It is something well worthy of remark that a residence of ashort duration sufficed to blend in unison two natures soopposed as the Irish and the English. The latter, not contentwith wedding Irish wives, sent their own children to be fosteredby their Irish friends; and the children naturally came from thenursery more Irish than their fathers. They objected no longerto becoming gossips for each other at christenings, to adopt thedress of their foster-parents, whose language was in many casesthe only one which they brought from their foster-home.

Thus Ireland, even in districts which had been thoroughlydevastated by the first invaders, became the old Ireland again;and the song of the bard and the melody of the harper were heardin the English castle as well as in the Irish rath.1 (1 Theprocess of gaining over an Englishman to Irish manners isadmirably described in the "Moderate Cavalier," under Cromwell,quoted by Mr. J. P. Prendergast in his second edition of the"Cromwellian Settlement," p. 263. If this process were commonwith the Protestant officers of Cromwell, how much more so withCatholic Anglo-Normans!)

The nationalization of their kin, which received a powerfulimpetus from the fact that the English who lived without thePale escaped feudal exactions and penalties from theimpossibility of enforcing the feudal laws on Irish territory,alarmed the Anglo-Normans by birth, in whose hand rested theengine of the government; and, looking around for a remedy, theycould discover nothing better than acts of Parliament.

We have not been able to ascertain the precise epoch in whichthe first Irish Parliament was convened; indeed, to this day, itseems a debated question. The general belief, however, ascribesit to King John. The first mention of it by Ware is under theyear 1333, as late as Edward III., more than one hundred andfifty years after the Conquest. But the need of stringent rulesto keep the Irish at bay, and prevent the English from"degenerating," became so urgent that, in 1367, the famousParliament met at Kilkenny, and enacted the bill known as the"Statutes of Kilkenny," in which the matter was fully elaborated,and a new order of things set on foot in Ireland.

The Irish could recognize no other Parliament than their ancientFeis; and, these having been discontinued for several centuries,they showed their appreciation of the new English institution inthe manner described by Ware under the year 1413: "On the 11thof the calends of February, the morrow after St. Matthias day, aParliament began at Dublin, and continued for the space offifteen days; in which time the Irish burned all that stood intheir way, as their usual custom was in times of otherParliaments."

The reader who is acquainted with the enactments which go by thename of the "Statutes of Kilkenny" will scarcely wonder at thismode of proceeding.

Neither at that period, nor later on save once under Henry VIII.,was the Irish race represented in those assemblies. In thereign of Edward III. no Irish native nor old English residentassisted at the Parliament of Kilkenny, but only Englishmennewly arrived; for all its acts were directed against the Irishand the degenerate English—against the latter particularly. Howthe members composing these Parliaments were elected at thattime we do not know; but they were not summoned from more thantwelve counties, which number, first established by King John,gradually dwindled, until, in the reign of Henry VII., it wasreduced to four, so that the Irish Parliament came to becomposed of a few men, and those few representatives of purelyEnglish interests.

A true history of the times would demand an examination of thevarious enactments made by these so-called Irish Parliaments, assetting forth more distinctly than any thing else could do thepoints at variance between the two nations. Our space, however,and indeed our purpose, forbids this. In order to put the readerin possession of at least an idea of the difficulties on eitherside, we add a few extracts from the very famous "Statutes ofKilkenny."

The preamble sets forth "that already the English in Irelandwere mere Irish in their language, names, apparel, and theirmanner of living, and had rejected the English laws andsubmitted to the Irish, with whom they had many marriages andalliances, which tended to the utter ruin and destruction of thecommonwealth." And then the Statutes go on to enact —we cullfrom various chapters: "The English cannot any more make peaceor war with the Irish without special warrant; it is made penalto the English to permit the Irish to send their cattle to grazeupon their land; the Irish could not be presented by the Englishto any ecclesiastical benefice; they—the Irish—could not bereceived into any monasteries or religious houses; the Englishcould not entertain any of their bards, or poets, or shanachies," etc.

This extraordinary legislation proves beyond any amount of factsto what degree the posterity of the first Norman invaders ofIreland had adopted Irish customs, and made themselves one withthe natives.

The Irish, therefore, had, in this instance, morally conqueredtheir enemies, and feudalism was defeated. Another example wasgiven of the invariable invasions of the island. The enemy,however successful at the beginning, was compelled finally togive way to the force of resistance in this people; and the time-honored customs of an ancient race survived all attempts atviolent foreign innovations. The posterity of those proud nobles,who, with Giraldus Cambrensis, had found nothing but what wascontemptible in this nation, so strange to their eyes, wholooked upon them as an easy victim to be despoiled of their land,and that land to be occupied by them, that posterity adopted,within, comparatively speaking, a few years, the life andmanners of the mere Irish in their entirety. Feudalism theyrenounced for the clan. Each of the great English families thatfirst landed in the island had formed a new sept, and the clansof the Geraldines, De Courcys, and others, were admitted intofull copartnership with the old Milesian septs. This the twogreat families of the Burkes in Connaught called their chiefsMcWilllams Either and McWilliams Oughter. The Berminghams badbecome McYoris; the Dixons, McJordans; the Mangles, McCostellos.Other old English families were called McHubbard, McDavid, etc.;one of the Geraldine septs was known as McMorice, another asMcGibbon; the chief of Dunboyne's house became McPheris.

Meanwhile, "it was manifest," says Sir John Davies, "that thosewho had the government of Ireland under the crown of Englandintended to make a perpetual separation and enmity between theEnglish settled in Ireland and the Irish, in the expectationthat the English should in the end root out the Irish."

There is no doubt that, if these laws of Kilkenny could havebeen enforced and carried out, as they were meant to be, theeffect hoped for by these legislators might have been thenatural result. Yet even much later on, at a period, too, whenthe English power was considerably increased, under Henry VIII.,a very curious discussion of this possibility, which took placeat the time, did not by any means promise an easy realization.The following passage of the "State Papers," under the greatTudor, contains a rather sensible view of the subject, and isnot so sanguine of the success of the hopes cherished by theattorney-general of James I.:

"The lande is very large—by estimation as large as Englande—sothat, to enhabit the whole with new inhabiters, the number wouldbe so great that there is no prince christened that commodiouslymight spare so many subjects to depart out of his regions. . . .But to enterprise the whole extirpation and totall destructionof all the Irishmen of the lande, it would be a marvellous andsumptuous charge and great difficulty, considering both the lackof enhabitors, and the great hardness and misery these Irishmencan endure, both of hunger, colde, and thirst, and evill lodging,more than the inhabitants of any other lande."

There were, therefore, evidently difficulties in the way; yet itis certain that the question of the total extirpation of theIrish has been entertained for centuries by a class of Englishstatesmen, and confidently looked for by the English nation. SirJohn Davies, as we see, attributes no other object to theStatutes of Kilkenny.

But could those statutes be enforced? were they ever enforced?The same writer pretends that they were for "several years;" butthe sequel proves that they were not. The reason which heassigns for their execution—that for a certain time after thatParliament there was peace in the island—leads us to believethe contrary; for if, as he himself justly remarks before, theintention of the legislators was to create a perpetualseparation and enmity between the two races, the promulgationand strict execution of those statutes would have immediatelyenkindled a war which could have ended only with the totalextirpation of one race or the other.

And the further fact that it was thought necessary to reenactthose odious laws frequently in subsequent Irish Parliamentsproves that they were not carried into execution, since newlegislation on the subject was demanded.

It is true that events, transmitted to us either through theIrish annals or the English chronicles, show that severalattempts were made to enforce those acts of Kilkenny, chieflyagainst the Fitz-Thomases or Geraldines of Desmond, whopretended, even after their enactment, to be as independent ofthem as before, and refused to attend the Parliament whenconvoked, claiming the strange privilege "that the Earls ofDesmond should never come to any Parliament or Grand Council, orwithin any walled town, but at their will or pleasure." And theDesmonds continued in their persistent opposition to the Englishlaws until the reign of Elizabeth.

But it was against Churchmen chiefly that they were carried outin full; for we occasionally meet in the annals of the countrywith instances where some English prelate in Ireland had beenprosecuted for having conferred orders on mere Irishmen, andthat some Norman abbots had been deposed for having receivedmere Irishmen as monks into their monasteries.

With the exception of a few cases of this kind, no proof can befurnished that any material change was brought about in therelations of the old English settlers with their Irish neighbors.In fact, matters progressed so favorably in this friendlydirection, that at length the descendants of Strongbow and hisfollowers became, as is well known, "Hibernis Hiberniores," andthe judges sent from England could hold their circuit only inthe four counties between the Liffey and the Boyne; and the namegiven to the majority of the old English families was "Englishrebels," while the natives were called "Irish enemies."

Sir John Davies himself is forced to admit it: "When the civilgovernment grew so weak and so loose that the English lordswould not suffer the English laws to be executed within theirterritories and seigniories, but in place thereof both they andtheir people embraced the Irish customs, then the state ofthings, like a game at Irish, was so turned about, that theEnglish, who hoped to make a perfect conquest of the Irish, wereby them perfectly and absolutely conquered, because Victivictoribus leges dedere."

The truth could not be expressed in more explicit terms. Yet allhas not been said. The same persevering character, makingheadway against apparently insurmountable obstacles, showsitself conspicuously in the Irish, in the preservation of theirland, which, after all, was the great object of contentionbetween the two races.

The first Anglo-Norman invaders, including Henry II himself, hadno other object in view than gradually to occupy the wholeterritory, subject it to the feudal laws, give to Englishmen theposition of feudal lords, and reduce the Irish to that ofvilleins, if they could not succeed in rooting them out.

A few years later, by the Treaty of Windsor, the king seemed toconfine his pretensions to Leinster, and perhaps Meath, andexpressly allowed the natives to keep their lands in the otherdistricts of the island. Yet none of his former grants, by which"he had cantonned the whole island between ten Englishmen," wererecalled; the continued as part of and means to shape the policyof the invaders, and subsequent Parliaments always supposed thevalidity of those former grants made to Strongbow and hisfollowers.

It is true that those posterior Acts of Parliament did notmerely rely for their strength on the first documents, but onthe pretence that the Irish chieftains and people outside ofLeinster and Meath had justly forfeited their estates by notfulfilling the conditions virtually contained in the WindsorTreaty, in which they had professed homage and submission to theEnglish king. It is clear that, lawfully or unlawfully, theAnglo-Normans were determined to gain possession, sooner orlater, of the whole island.

To secure their end, they declared that the natives would not besubject to the English laws, but retain their Brehon laws, whichin their eyes were no laws at all, and which the Parliament ofKilkenny had declared to be "lewd customs." Henceforth, then,the natives were out of the pale of the law, could not claim itsprotection, but became subject to the crown of England, withoutpolitical, civil, or even human rights.

They were soon, by reason of the constant border wars all aroundthe Pale, declared "alien and enemies." And these expressionsbecame, in the eyes of the English lawyers, identical with theIrish race and the Irish nature; so that at all times, peace orwar, even when the Irish fought in the English ranks, aiding thePlantagenets in their furious contests with the Scotch or theFrench, they were still "Irish enemies;" "aliens" unworthy humanrights, villeins in whose veins no noble blood could flow, withthe exception of five families.

All the rest were not only ignoble, but not even men; nothingbut mere Irish, whom any one might kill, even though servingunder the English crown, at a risk of being fined five marks, tobe paid to the treasury of the King of England, for havingdeprived his majesty of a serviceable tool.

This (to modern eyes) astounding social state demands a closerexamination in order to see if, at least, it had the merit offinally procuring for the English the possession of the landthey coveted.

We find first that Henry II., John, and Henry III., would seemon several occasions to have extended the laws of England allover the island. But all English legists will tell us that thoselaws were only for the inhabitants of English blood. The mereIrish were always reputed aliens, or, rather, enemies to thecrown, so that it was, " by actual fact, often adjudged nofelony to kill a mere Irish in time of peace," as Sir JohnDavies expressly points out.

Five families alone were excepted from the general category andacknowledged to be of noble blood—the O'Neills of Ulster, theO'Melachlins of Meath, the O'Connors of Connaught, the O'Briensof Munster, and the McMurroughs of Leinster.

Those five families, numerous certainly, but forming only asmany septs, were, or appeared to be, acknowledged as having aright to their lands, and as able to bring or defend actions atlaw. We say, appeared to be, because they found themselves on somany occasions ranked as mere Irish, that individuals of thosesepts, induced by sheer necessity, were often driven, in spiteof an almost invincible repugnance, to apply for and acceptspecial charters of naturalization from the English kings. Thusin the reign of Edward IV., O'Neill, on the occasion of hismarriage with a daughter of the house of Kildare, was made anEnglish citizen by special act of Parliament.

In reality then, even the most illustrious members of the "fivebloods" were scarcely considered as enjoying the full rights ofthe lowest English vassals, although their ancestors had beenacknowledged kings by former Anglo-Norman monarchs in publicdocuments: "Rex Henricus regi O'Neill," etc.

But if there was some shadow of doubt with regard to thepolitical and social rights of those great families, such doubtdid not exist for the remainder of the Irish race. They wereabsolutely without rights. Depriving them of their lands,pillaging their houses, devastating their farms, outraging theirwives and daughters, killing them, could not subject the guiltyto any civil or criminal action at law. In fact, as we haveshown, such acts were in accordance with the spirit, even withthe letter of the law, so that the criminal, as we shouldconsider him, had but to plead that the man whom he had robbedor killed was a mere Irishman, and the proceedings wereimmediately stopped, if this all-important fact were proved; andin case of homicide the murderer escaped by the payment of thefine of five marks to the treasury.

To modern, even to English ears, all this may sound incredible.Many striking examples of the truth of it might be produced.They are to be found in all works which treat of the subject.Sir John Davies, that great Irish hater, evidently takes agenuine delight in depicting several such instances with alltheir aggravating details, scarcely expecting that every word hewrote would serve to brand forever with shame Anglo-NormanEngland.

Under such legislation it was clear that life on the borders ofthe Pale was not only insecure, but that the soil would remainin the grasp of the strongest. Any Anglo-Norman only requiredthe power in order to take possession of the land of hisneighbor.

But it is not in man's nature to submit to such galling thraldomas this, without at least an attempt at retaliation. Least ofall was it the nature of such a people to submit to suchmeasures—a nation, the most ancient in Europe, dating theirownership of the soil as far back as man's memory could go,civilized before Scandinavia became a nest of pirates,Christianized from the fifth century, and the spreader ofliterature, civilization, and the holy faith of Christ throughEngland, Scotland, Germany, France, and Northern Italy.

If we have dwelt a little, and only a little, upon the intensityof the contest waged for four hundred years previous to theadded atrocities introduced by the Reformation, we have done soadvisedly, since it has become a fashion of late to throw agloss over the past, to ignore it, to let the dead bury theirdead—all which would be very well, could it be done, and couldwriters forget to stamp the Irish as unsociable, barbarous, andbloodthirsty, because with arms in their hands, and a fireardent and sacred in their souls, they strove again and again toreconquer the territory which had been won from them by fraud,and because they thought it fair to kill in open fight the menwho avowed that they could kill them even in peace at a penaltyof five marks.

The contest, therefore, never ceased; how could it ? But, inthat endless conflict between the two races, the loss ofterritory leaned rather to the English side. If, with the helpof their castles, better discipline, and arms, the English atfirst gained on the natives and extended their possessionsbeyond the Pale, a reaction soon set in—the Irish had their dayof revenge, and entered again into possession of the land ofwhich they had been robbed. In order to repair their losses, theAnglo-Normans had recourse to acts of Parliament, which couldbind not only the English of the Pale, but also those of otherdistricts, who, enjoying the privileges of English law, werelikewise bound by its provisions.

In order rightly to understand the need and purposes of thoseenactments, we must return a moment to the days of the conquest.

The case of Strongbow will illustrate many others. He marriedEva, the daughter of McMurrough, and thus allied himself to thebest families of Leinster. On the death of his father-in-law, hereceived the whole kingdom as his inheritance. The greater partof his dominions, which he either would not or could not governhimself, he was compelled to distribute, in the usual style,among his followers. He distributed large estates as fiefsamong those who had followed his fortunes, but he could notforget his Irish relatives, to whom he had become stronglyattached. He secured, therefore, to many Irish families theterritory which was formerly theirs, and many of his Englishadherents, who, like himself, had married daughters of the soil,did the same in their more limited territories. This explainsfully why Irish families remained in Leinster after thesettlement of the Anglo-Normans there, who established theirPale in it, as also why they continued to possess their lands inthe midst of the English as they had formerly done in the midstof the Danes.

The same thing took place in the kingdom of Cork, on the bordersof Connaught, and around the seaports of Ulster, wherever theEnglish had established themselves and erected castles andfortifications.

But, over and above the Irish families, which, by their allianceby marriage and fosterage with the English, retained their landsand gradually increased them, many others, natives of the soil,reentered into possession of their former territory by thewithdrawal of the Anglo-Norman holders of fiefs. Constant borderwars, the necessary consequence of the English policy, could notbut discourage in course of time many Englishmen, who, owninglarge possessions also in England and Wales, preferred to returnto their own country rather than remain with their wives andchildren in a constant state of alarm, compelled to residewithin their castles, in dread of an attack at any moment fromtheir Irish neighbors.

Moreover, the vast majority of the Irish, who did not enjoy thebenefit of these special privileges, who, deprived of theirlands at the first invasion, had remained really outlaws, andnever entered into matrimonial or social alliance with theirenemies, these men could not consent to starve and perish ontheir own soil, in the island which they loved and from whichthey could not—had they so chosen—escape by emigration. Oneresource remained to them, and they grasped at it. They hadtheir own mountain fastnesses and bogs to fly to, and from thoserecesses they could harass the invader, and inch by inch winback their lawful inheritance.

They were often even encouraged in their attacks anddepredations by the English of the Pale and out of it, who,unwilling longer to submit to the grinding feudal laws andexactions, could prevent the English judges, sheriffs,escheators, and other king's officers from executing the lawagainst them, and thus they held out in their mountains, bogs,and rocky crags, in the midst of the invaders of their soil.

A necessity arose then, on the part of the English rulers, ofadopting measures calculated to prevent a further acquisition ofterritory by the Irish, if not to extend the English settlements.They saw no other remedy than acts of Parliament, which theythought would at least prevent the subjects of English bloodfrom assisting the Irish to reenter into possession, as was thenbeing done on so extensive a scale.

To effect this they revived the former statutes by which theIrish were placed without the protection of the law, weredeclared aliens and enemies, and were consequently denied theright of bringing actions in any of the English courts fortrespasses on their lands, or for violence done to their persons.

They soon advanced a step beyond this. The Irish were forbiddento purchase land, though the English were at liberty to occupyby force the landed property of the Irish, whenever they werestrong enough to do so. An Irishman could acquire neither bygift nor purchase a rood of land which was the property of anEnglishman. Thus, in every charter afterward granted to the fewIrishmen who applied for them, it was expressly stated that theycould purchase land for themselves and their heirs, which,without this special provision, they could not do; while for anEnglishman to dispose of his landed property by will, gift, orsale to an Irishman, was equivalent to forfeiting his estate tothe crown. The officers of the exchequer were directed by thoseacts of Parliament to hold inquisitions for the purpose ofobtaining returns of such deeds of conveyance, in order toenrich the king's treasury by confiscations and forfeitures; andthe statute-rolls, preserved to this day in Dublin and London,show that such prosecutions often took place, with theinvariable result of forfeiture.

The decision of the courts was always in favor of the crown,even in cases where the deed of conveyance or will was of nobenefit to the person in whose favor it was drawn, but simply atrust for a third person of English race. And the great numberof cases in which the inquisitions were set aside, as appearsfrom the Parliament-rolls, for the finding having been maliciousand untrue—the parties complained of not being Irish butEnglish— prove what we allege, namely, that an Irishman couldnot take land by conveyance from an Englishman.

Yet, as Mr. Prendergast justly says: "Notwithstanding theseprohibitions and laws of the Irish Parliament, the Irish grewand increased upon the English, and the Celtic customsoverspread the feudal, until at length the administration of thefeudal law was confined to little more than the few countieslying within the line of the Liffey and the Boyne."

Let us now glance, in conclusion, at the result of more thanfour centuries of feudal oppression.

Ireland rejected feudalism from the beginning, and this at atime when Europe had been compelled to adopt it, more or less,throughout.

The distinction between lords and villeins, so marked in allother countries, remained at the end as it was at the beginningof the contest, a thing unknown in the island. Even in the Pale,the presence of the O'Moores, O'Byrnes, O'Kavanaghs, and othersepts, protested against and openly denied, from moor and glenand mountain fastness, that outrage on humanity, which bestowson the few every thing meant for all. The Brehon law was in fullforce all over the island, and if the Irish allowed the Englishjudges to ride on their circuits within the four counties, itwas on the full understanding that they would administer theirjustice only to English subjects, and levy their feudal dues,and pronounce their forfeitures and confiscations on such onlyas acknowledged the king's right on the premises. The lawsenacted in the pretended Irish Parliament were only for such ascalled themselves English by birth; for even the English byblood, whose ancestors had long resided on the island,frequently refused to submit to the laws of Parliament, wherethey would not sit themselves, although possessing the right todo so.

In vain was the threat of compulsion held up again and againbefore the eyes of the great lords of Desmond, Thom*ond, andConnaught. If they chose, they went; if they chose not, theyremained at home; and obeyed or disobeyed at will the lawsthemselves, according as they were able or unable to set them atdefiance.

The castles which had been built all over the country by thefirst invaders, as a means of awing into subjection thesurrounding districts, were at the beginning of the fifteenthcentury no longer feudal castles. They had either beendestroyed and levelled to the ground by the Irish, or they wereoccupied by Irish chieftains; or, stranger still, if theirholders were English lords, they were of those who had been wonover to Irish manners. In their halls all the old customs ofErin were preserved. One saw therein groups of shanachies, andharpers, and Brehon lawyers, all conversing with their chieftainin the primitive language of the country. Hence were they calleddegenerate by the "foreigners" living in Dublin Castle. Themansions of the Desmonds, of the Burgos, of the Ormonds, werethe headquarters of their respective clans, not the inaccessiblefortresses of steel-clad warriors, who alone were possessed ofsocial and civil rights. If the master of the household heldsometimes the title of earl, or count, or baron, he was carefulnever to use it before his retainers, whom he called hisclansmen. When he went to Dublin or to London, he donned it withthe dress of a knight or a great feudal lord; on his return homehe threw it aside, resumed the cloak of the country, and wasIrish again.

The subject of feudal titles in Ireland has not beensufficiently studied and elucidated. A clearer light thrown onthis question would, we have no doubt, show more conclusivelythan long discussions with what stubbornness the Irish refusedto submit to the reality of feudalism, even when consenting toadmit its presence and phraseology. It is a fact notsufficiently dwelt upon, that the few Irishmen, who subsequentlyconsented to receive English titles from the king, were regardedby their countrymen with greater abhorrence than the Englishthemselves, though in most cases the titles were empty ones,which affected nothing in their mode of life. Yet were theylooked upon as apostates to their nation, and after theReformation such a step was often the first to apostasy ofreligion, the deepest stain on an Irish name.

Feudalism had also its mode of taxation which failed with therest in Ireland.

In feudal countries the lord imposed no tax on his villeins;these were mere chattels, ascripti gleboe, who tilled the landfor their masters, and, as good serfs, could own nothing but thefew utensils of their miserable hovels. They were just allowedwhat sufficed to support their own life and that of theirfamilies, and consequently they could bear no additional tax.But, in the complicated state of society brought about byfeudalism, the inferior lord was taxed by his superior, a systemthat ran down the whole feudal scale, and it would take a lawyerto explain aids, talliages, wardships, fines for alienation,seizins, rents, escheats, and finally forfeiture, the heaviestand most common of all in England.

The Irish fought valiantly against the imposition of thoseburdens, and aided the English settled among them to repudiatethem all in course of time.

It must be said, however, that they did not succeed inpreventing their own taxes, according to the Book of Rights,from becoming heavier under the ingenuity of the English whowere established among them and admitted to all the rights ofclanship. We see by documents which have been better studied oflate, that the great Anglo-Irish lords had succeeded inincreasing the burdens in the shape of exactions, which werenever complained of by the Irish.

On this subject Dr. O'Donovan, in the preface to his edition ofthe "Book of Rights," is worthy of perusal.

But it is chiefly in the very essence of feudalism that thefailure of the Anglo-Normans was most signal. Feudalism reallyconsisted in the status given to the land, the possession ofwhich determined and gave all rights, so that, according to it,man was made for the land rather than the land for man. He wasplaced on the land with the beasts of the field as far astillage and production went, until the system should round toperfection and finally bring to the surface the new principlesof social economy, according to which the greater the number ofcattle and the fewer the number of men, the more prosperous andhappy might the country be said to be.

The Irish staked their existence against those principles, andwon. So complete was their victory that the feudal barons whofirst came among them finally yielded to clanship, became thechiefs of new clans, and opened their territories to all whochose to send their horses and kine to graze in the chief'sdomains. In vain did Irish Parliaments issue writs of forfeitureagainst the English lords who acted thus, for between the lawand its execution the clans intervened, and no sheriff or judgecould step beyond the bounds of the four counties of the Pale toenforce those acts.

It is told of one of the Irish chieftains that on receivingintimation from a high English official of a sheriff's visit onthe next breach of some new law or ordinance, for the safety ofwhich sheriff he would be held responsible, he replied: "Youwill do well to let me know at the same time what will be theamount of his eric, in case of his murder, that I maybeforehand assess it on the clan."

This story may tend better than any thing else to give a clearreason for the failure of feudalism in Ireland.

CHAPTER VII.

IRELAND SEPARATED FROM EUROPE.-A TRIPLE EPISODE.

While the struggle described in the last chapter was raging,Ireland could have little or no intercourse with the rest ofEurope. Heaven alone was witness of the heroism displayed by thefree clans wrestling with feudal England. It was only during theinternecine wars of the Roses that Erin enjoyed a respite, andthen we read that Margaret of Offaly summoned to peacefulcontest the bards of the island, while the shrines of Rome andCompostella were thronged with pilgrims, chiefs, and princes,"paying their vows of faith from the Western Isle."

In the mean time Christendom had been witness of mighty eventsin which Ireland could take no part. The enthusiastic impulsewhich gave birth to the Crusades, the uprising of the communesagainst feudal thraldom, the mental activity of numerousuniversities, starting each day into life, form, among otherthings, the three great progressive waves in the moving ocean ofthe time:

I. When Europe in phalanx of steel hurled itself upon Asia andsaved Christendom from the yoke of Islam, when the Japhetic raceby a mighty effort asserted its right not merely to existence,but to a preponderance in the affairs of the world, Ireland, thenation Christian of Christians, had not a name among men. It wassupposed to be a dependency of England, and the envoys sentabroad to all parts by the Holy See to preach the Crusades,never touched her shores to deliver the cross to her warriors.The most chivalrous nation of Christendom was altogetherforgotten, and in its ecclesiastical annals no mention is madeof the Crusades even by name.

The holy wars, moreover, were set on foot and carried on by thefeudal chivalry of Europe, and in fact, wherever the Europeansestablished their power in the East, that power took the shapeof feudalism. But Ireland had rejected this system, andconsequently her sons could find no place in the ranks of theknights of Flaners, Normandy, Aquitaine, and England. Theirchivalry was of another stamp, and was employed at the time inwresting their social state and territory from the grasp ofruthless invaders.

Hence, not even St. Bernard, the ardent friend of St. Malachi,remembered them, when journeying through Europe to distributethe Cross to whole armies of warriors. Not only did he fail tocross the Channel for the purpose of rousing the Christianenthusiasm of a people ever ready to hearken to a call to armswhen a noble cause was at stake; he did not think even ofwriting a single letter to any bishop or abbot in Ireland,asking them to preach the holy war in his name.

Thus Ireland failed to participate in any of the benefits whichaccrued to the European nations from the Crusades, as she failedlikewise to participate in results less beneficial which alsoaccrued from that powerful agitation.

Among such results is one which has not met with all theattention it deserves. Historians speak at length of the manyand wide-spread heresies which infected Europe during the middleages; but their Eastern origin has not been thoroughlyinvestigated, and we have no doubt that, if it had been, many ofthem would be found to have come with a returning wave of theCrusades.

All these errors bear at the outset a very Oriental appearance.Paulicians, Petrobrusians, Albigensians, and kindred sects,all started from the principle of dualism, and even at thetime were openly accused of Manicheistic ideas. They allinvolved more or less immoral principles, and rejected, or atleast strove to weaken, the commonly-received ideas upon whichsociety, civil and religious, is founded. Had they succeeded inspreading their errors through Europe, it is possible that theinvasion would have been more fatal in its consequences thanthat of Islamism itself. And, even in their failure, they leftamong European societies the germ of secret associations whichhave existed from that time down, and which in our days haveburst forth undisguised to terrify nations, and cause them todread the coming of the last days.

To an attentive observer it is clear that the heresies of thetwelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries resemble more theerrors of our days than the Protestantism which intervened.Luther's first principles, if carried to their legitimateconclusion, would have inaugurated the socialism and communismof modern times; but he shrank from the consequences of his owndoctrines, and the necessity of his standing well with theGerman princes caused him, during the War of the Peasants,almost to retract his first utterances and take his standmidway between Catholic principles and the thorough nihilism oflater times. It is known that in the after-part of his life heendeavored to repair the ruins of every dogma, social andreligious, which he at first had tried to subvert and destroy.

The Manicheism of the middle ages was certainly not of soscientific and elaborate a nature as modern socialism; but itwould have been productive of like evil results to society hadit not been crushed down by the united power of the Church andthe state. If it had been successful, it is impossible toimagine what would have become of Europe.

Of its Eastern origin historians say little. We know, however,that, after a residence in the East, the most pious Christiansgrew lukewarm and less firm in their opposition to the dangerouserrors then prevalent in Asia. Tournefort remarked this in hisown time, during the reign of Louis XIV.

It is known also that the posterity of the first crusaders inPalestine formed a hybrid race, which, weakened by the influenceof the luxurious habits of Eastern countries, became corrupt,and under the name of Pulani practised a feeble Christianity,unfit to cope with the vigorous fanaticism of the Mussulman.Many Europeans came back from those wars wavering in faith, andno one knows how many with faith entirely lost.

It is not, therefore, too much to suppose that the Orientalerrors which suddenly burst forth at this time in Western Europefollowed in the wake of the returning pilgrims, and it is highlyprobable, if not absolutely certain, that, had there been noCrusades, Manicheism and the secret societies born of it wouldnever have been known in Italy and France. Hence, one of thefirst and greatest champions of the Church in controversy withthe Albigenses - Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny - at thevery beginning of the heresy, found no better means of opposingthe new errors than attacking every thing coming from the East.Thus, he wrote his long treatises against the Talmud and theKoran, so much had the Crusades already contributed tointroducing into Western Europe the seeds of Asiatic errors. Allhistorians agree in giving an Eastern origin to the Paulicians,Bulgarians, Albigenses, and others of those times.

Manicheism indeed had infested Europe long before. Some Romanemperors had published severe edicts against it. In the fifthcentury, the heresy still flourished in Italy and Africa, St.Augustine himself being an adept for several years, and by hiswritings he has made us acquainted with its strongest supportersin his day. He was followed, in his attacks on it, by a greatnumber of Fathers, both Greek and Latin.

But after the barbarian invasions we hear no more of theManichees for upward of five hundred years. The West hadentirely forgotten them. Arianism and Manicheism had apparentlyperished together. The tenth century is called a period ofdarkness and ignorance; it at least possessed the advantage ofbeing free from heresy; the dogmas of the Church wereunhesitatingly and universally accepted. Western Europe, thoughcut up by the new-born feudalism into a thousand fragments, wasat least one in faith, until that great and powerful unionhaving, in an outburst of enthusiasm, produced the Crusades, wesuddenly find Eastern theories and immoralities invading thecountries most faithful to the Church.

Raymond VI., Count of Toulouse, the great champion of theAlbigenses, was the near descendant of that great Raymond, oneof the chiefs of the first Crusade, who might have aspired tothe throne of Jerusalem, had not Godfrey de Bouillon won thesuffrages of the soldiers of the Cross by his ardent and purepiety. Raymond VI. dwelt in Languedoc, in all the luxurioussplendor of an Eastern emir; and he doubtless found thedoctrines of dualistic Manicheism more congenial to his tastefor pleasure than the stern tenets of the Christian religion.Ambition, it is true, was one of the chief motives whichprompted him to place himself at the head of the heretics; hehoped to enrich himself through them by the spoils of the Church;and thus the same power which later on moved the German princesto embrace Lutheranism was already acting on the aspiring Countof Toulouse at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Thus wefind him at the head of his troops, plundering churches,ravaging monasteries, outraging and profaning holy things, forthe purpose of filling his coffers.

Yet it is also certain that he, the chief of the sectarians, anda great number of the nobility of Southern France, were led toembrace the Albigensian error by the degrading habits which theyhad previously contracted.

We do not purpose entering into a lengthened discussion on thesubject; we merely wish to contrast, with the wide spread ofheresy in Western Europe, the great fact of a total absence ofit in Ireland; or rather, we should say, and by so saying weconfirm our reflection, that errors of a similar nature didinvade the Pale in Erin at this time, without touching in anywise the children of the soil.

For, it is a remarkable fact that, at the beginning of thefourteenth century, the name of heresy is mentioned for thefirst and last time in Catholic Ireland; the new doctrinesbearing a close resemblance to some of the errors of theAlbigenses, and their chief propagators being all lords of thePale.

In November of 1235, Pope Benedict XII. wrote a letter on thissubject to Edward III. of England, which may be read in F.Brenan's Ecclesiastical History.

It is clear from many things related by Ware in his"Antiquities" that the Vicar of Christ, unable to follow freelyhis inclinations with respect to the filling of the sees of Erin,and obliged to appoint to bishoprics, at least in many parts ofthe island, only men of English birth, selected for that purposemembers of the various religious orders then existing. Insteadof granting episcopal jurisdiction to the feudal nominees of thecourt, when unworthy, Rome appointed a Franciscan, or aDominican, a member of some religious community, who was born inEngland, but at least more independent of the court, of greatersympathy with the people, less swayed by worldly and selfishmotives, and consequently readier to obey the mandates of Rome,which were always on the side of justice and morality. Thus wefind that in the whole history of Ireland, as a general rule,the bishops chosen from religious orders were acceptable to thepeople, and true to their duty.

Such a man certainly was Richard Ledred, a Minorite, born inLondon, whom the Pope made Bishop of Ossory. But on that veryaccount he incurred the hatred of many English officials, andeven of worldly prelates, among whom Alexander Bicknor,Archbishop of Dublin, was the most conspicuous. Bieknor was notonly archbishop, but had been appointed Lord Justice of Irelandby the king, and later on Lord Deputy; later still he wasdispatched by the English Parliament as ambassador to France.

"It had been well," says F. Brenan, "for the archbishop himself,and for those immediately under his jurisdiction, had heabstained from mixing himself up with the state affairs of thosetimes. Ambition formed no inferior trait in the character ofAlexander, even long before he had been exalted to a highdignity in the Church. He advanced rapidly into power, steppingfrom one office into another, until at length he found himselfin the midst of the labyrinth, without being able to make hisway, unless by means of guides as inexperienced as they weretreacherous. It was by causes such as these that he broughthimself into serious difficulties, not only with the Archbishopof Armagh, on account of the primacy, but also with his ownsuffragans, and particularly with the Bishop of Ossory."

Under these circ*mstances it was that the prelate last mentioned,on visiting his diocese, found unmistakable signs of the spreadof heresy among his flock. His diocese at that time formed apart of the English Pale, and Kilkenny, where he had hiscathedral, was often the seat of Parliament.

Among those most active for the propagation of the new doctrineswere found, the Seneschal of Kilkenny, the Treasurer of Ireland,and the Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas—all English of thePale. The zealous bishop, fearless of the consequences, openlydenounced them, and publicly excommunicated the Treasurer. Atonce a terrible storm was raised among their English abettors,and, in order to screen the guilty parties, they recriminatedagainst the prelate, and accused him of being a sharer in thecrime of Thomas Fitzgilbert, who had burned the castle of MoyCahir, and killed its owner, Hugh Le Poer. The temporalities ofLedred having been already sequestrated for his boldness indenouncing heretics, he was compelled finally to leave hisdiocese and fly to Avignon, where he remained in exile for nineyears.

The Archbishop of Dublin had been one of his bitterest enemies,and, although not actually accused of heresy himself, he wascertainly the abettor of heretics, and had done all in his powerto have Ledred arrested for his supposed crimes.

Ware, in his lives of Bicknor and Ledred, is evidently apartisan of the first and an enemy of the second. He pretendsthat Ledred tacitly acknowledged his guilt in the affair of LePoer, since he sued for pardon to the king, as though readers ofEnglish history did not constantly meet with instances ofinnocent men compelled to sue for pardon of crimes which theyhad never committed.

We have fortunately better judges of the characters of bothprelates in the two popes, Benedict XII. and Clement VI.: thefirst believing in the existence of the heresy denounced byLedred; the second exempting the Bishop of Ossory from thesuperior jurisdiction of Bicknor, on account of the unjustanimosity displayed toward him by this worldly prelate.

The absence of all historical documents in reference to the caseleaves us at a loss to know the effect produced on Edward III.by the letter of the Pontiff. It is highly probable that theking preferred to believe Bicknor rather than the Pope, anddisregarded the advice of the latter.

In such an event, how was the heresy put down? Simply by thegood sense and spirit of faith of the people, or rather by thedeep Christian feeling of the native Irish, who were alwaysopposed to innovation, and who remained firm in the traditionalbelief inherent in the nation by the grace of God. Schism andheresy seem impossible among the children of Erin. If at anytime certain novelties have appeared among them, they havespeedily vanished like empty vapor. They heard that, in otherparts of the Church, in the East chiefly, heresiarchs had arisenand led away into error large numbers of people formingsometimes formidable sects, which threatened the very existenceof the religion of Christ; but the face of a heretic they hadnever beheld. Soon, indeed, they were to be at the mercy of awhole swarm of them, to see a pretended church leagued with thestate to bring about their perversion; but as yet they had hadno experience of the kind.

Only a few heretics were pointed out to them by the finger ofone of their bishops, and his denunciations were confirmed bythe judgment of the Holy See. Hence, according to F. Brenan,"the sensation which pervaded all classes became vehement andfrightful. The bishop and his clergy came forward, and by solidargument, by the strength and power of truth, opposed anddiscomfited the enemies of religion."

The feeling here expressed is a natural one for a true Christianat the very mention of heresy. Yet how few nations haveexperienced a sensation "vehement and frightful" at theappearance of positive error among them! But, at all periods oftheir history, such has been the feeling of the Irish people.

Fortunately for them, the number of sectarians was so small asto become insignificant; the English of the Pale were always fewin comparison with the natives, and heresy had been, adopted byonly a small body.

Error, therefore, could not cause in the island the social andpolitical convulsions which it had produced in France about thesame time. There was no need of a second Albigensian war to putit down. There was no need even of the Inquisition, as anecclesiastical tribunal. The sentence of the bishop, the decreeof excommunication pronounced from the foot of the altar, wasall that was required.

When we compare this single fact of Irish ecclesiastical historywith what was then transpiring in Europe—the most insidiouserrors spreading throughout; the faith of many becomingunsettled, a general preparation for the social deluge which wasimpending and so soon to fall—we cannot but conclude thatIreland, in the midst of her misfortunes, was happy in beingseparated from the rest of the world. The breath of noveltycould breathe no contagion on her shores. Happy even was she innot seeing her sons enlist in the army of the Cross, if theresult of their victories was, to bring back from the Holy Landthe Eastern corruption and the many heresies nestling there andsettled, even around the sepulchre of our Lord, during so manyages of separation from the West and open communication with allthe wild vagaries of Arabian, Persian, and Indian philosophies.

Even in the midst of such a trial we believe that Ireland wouldhave held steadfast to her faith, as she did later on whenheresy came to her with compulsion or death; and this firmnessof purpose, which the Irish have always manifested when thequestion was a change of religion, is worthy our consideration.For the facility with which some nations have, in the course ofa*ges, yielded to the spirit of novelty, and the sturdyresistance opposed to it by others, is a subject that wouldrepay investigation, but which we can only slightly touch upon.

In ancient times the Greek mind, accustomed from the beginningto subtlety of argument, and easily carried away by arationalism which was innate, offers a striking contrast to thesteady traditional spirit of the Latin races in general. ExceptPelagiaism and its cognate errors, all the great heresies whichafflicted the Church during the first ten centuries, originatedin the East; and the various sects catalogued by several of theGreek Fathers, as early as the second and third centuries,astonish the modern reader by the slender web on which theiroften ridiculous systems are spun, of texture strong enough,however, at the time to form the groundwork for making adisastrous impression on a large number of adherents. Theinfinity almost of philosophical systems in pagan Greece hadprepared the way for the subsequent vagaries of heresy, and wemust look to our own times, so prolific of absurd theories, inorder to find a parallel to the incredible variety of dogmaticassertions among the Greek heresiarchs of early times.

But, at the outbreak of Protestantism, in the sixteenth century,the world witnessed a still more striking example of diversityin the various branches of the Japhetic family - the nationsbelonging to the Teutonic and Scandinavian stocks chieflyembracing the error at once with a wonderful spontaneity. Thevarious remnants of the Celtic race and the totality of theLatin nations remained, on the whole, obedient to the guidingvoice of the Church of Christ. It is customary with modernwriters, when imbued with what are called liberal ideas, toascribe this difference to the steady, systematic mind ofnorthern nations, and to their innate love of liberty, whichcould not brook the yoke of spiritual despotism imposed by theChurch of Rome. But all this is mere supposition, inadequate toaccounting for the fact. The Teutonic and Scandinavian mind iscertainly more systematic and apparently more steady than theCeltic; but it is far less so than the Latin. No nation in thewhole history of mankind has ever displayed more steadiness andsystem than the Romans, and the Latin family has inherited thosecharacteristics from Rome. The Spanish race has no equal insteadiness (in the sense here intended of steadfastness), andthe French certainly none in system, which it often carried tothe verge of absurdity.

As for love of liberty, as distinct from love of license, it hadabsolutely nothing to do with the great revolution which hasbeen called the Reformation. No nation can relish despotism, andthe whole history of Ireland is a living example that her sonsare steadily opposed to it to the death. And it is now too lateto pretend that the cause of true liberty has been served by thespread of Protestantism over a large portion of Europe. Balmezand others have proved the falsehood of such pretensions. If anymodern writers, such as Mr. Bancroft, for instance, menotherwise of sound mind and great ability, continue to assertthis, the assertion must proceed from prejudice deeply ingrained,which reflection has not yet succeeded in eradicating, andtheir opinions on the subject are necessarily confined to boldassertions, of a character which in others they themselves wouldstigmatize as empty and unfounded.

The reason of the difference lies deeper in the constitution ofthe human mind, in the Celtic and Latin races on the one side,in the Teutonic and Scandinavian families on the other. Any onewho has studied the Irish character in our days—a characterwhich was the same in former ages—will easily see something ofthat great and happy cause.

The difference lies first in the good sense which enables themto perceive instinctively that the eternal should be preferredto the temporal. If all men kept that distinct perception everpresent to their minds, they would not only accept at all timesthe truths of faith, since faith, according to St. Paul, is "thesubstance of the things hoped for," but they would remain everfaithful to the moral code given us by God. The Celt indeed willat times lose sight of the eternal in the presence of a temporaltemptation; but he is never blind to the knowledge that faith isthe groundwork of salvation, and that hope remains as long asthat is not surrendered. Therefore he will never surrender it.The need of reviving his faith is rarely called for, when, aftera life of sin, the shadow of death reminds him of the duty heowes his own soul. The great truth that, after all, the ETERNALis every thing, remains always deeply impressed on his mind; andhalf his labor is spared to the minister of God, when bringingsuch a man back to a life of virtue. There is scarcely any needof asking an Irishman, "Do you believe?" For, every word thatpasses his lips, every look and gesture, every expression offeeling, is in fact an act of faith. How easy after this is thework of regeneration!

0 happy race, to whom this life is in truth a shadow thatpasseth away! to whom the unseen is ever present, or comes backso vividly and so readily!

This supposes, as we have said, a sound, good sense, which ischaracteristic of the race. We may say that this nationpossesses the wisdom of Sir Thomas More, who esteemed it follyto lose eternity for a life of twenty years of ease and honors.Is not this, at bottom, the thought which has sustained thenation in that dread martyrdom of three centuries, whoseterrible story we have still to tell? Have they not, as a nation,one after another, generation upon generation, lived and passedtheir lives in contempt, in want, in frightful misery, to die intorments or hidden sufferings, without a gleam of hope from thisworld for their race, their families, their children, their veryname, because they would not surrender their religion, that isto say, truth, which alone could secure the eternal welfare oftheir souls?

Speak to us, after this, of a steady and systematic mind! Prateto us of the love of liberty, of self-dignity! Where are suchthings to be found in their reality, on their trial, if not inthe scenes and the nation we have just pictured?

A second reason, no less effective, perhaps, than the first, andcertainly as remarkable, is the very composition of the Celticmind, which naturally tends to firm belief, because it is givenexclusively to traditions, past events, narratives of poets,historians, and genealogists. Had the Irish at any time turnedthemselves to criticise, to doubt, to argue, their veryexistence, as a people, would have ceased. They must go onbelieving, or all reality vanishes from their minds, accustomedfor so many ages to take in that solid knowledge founded, it istrue, on hearsay; but how else can truth reach us save byhearsay? Hence, their simple and artless acquiescence in anything they hear from trustworthy lips - acquiescence everrefused to a known enemy, never to a well-tried friend, evenwhen the facts ascertained are strange, mysterious, unaccountedfor, and incredible to minds differently constituted.

Thus, when we read their "Acta Sanctorum," we at once findourselves in a world so different from our every-day world - aregion of wonders, mysteries, of heavenly and supernatural deeds,unequalled in any story of marvellous travel or fable ofimaginative romance. Yet, who will say that the writers doubteda single phrase of what they wrote? Is it not clear, from thevery words they use, that they would have held it sacrilege toutter a falsehood, when speaking of the blessed saints? And, canthe lives of the saints be like those of common mortals? What isthere strange in considering that the earth was mysterious andheavenly, when heavenly beings walked upon it? Read the Litanyand Festology of Aengus, and doubt if the holy man did notbelieve all therein contained. Say, if it can be possible, thatit is not all true, though apparently incredible. Who can doubtwhat is asserted with such vehemence of belief? How can thatfail to be true which holy men and women have themselvesbelieved, and given to the world to be believed?

This thoroughly explains the simplicity of faith which stilldistinguishes the Irish people. It explains why no heretic couldbe found among them, and their intense horror of heresy as soonas known. Nor is it their mind alone which bears the impress offaith: their very exterior is a witness to it. Go into any largecity where dwell a number of Irish inhabitants; walk through thepublic streets, where they walk among the children of otherraces, and you will easily distinguish them, not only by themodesty of their women and the simple bearing of their men, butby the look of confidence and contentedness stamped on theirfeatures. Whoever has a settled faith, is no longer an inquirer,no longer troubled with the anxiety and restlessness of a manplunged in doubt and uncertainty; all the lineaments of the face,all the gestures and attitudes of the body, speak of quietudeand repose.

We might render this discussion more effective by the study ofthe contrary phenomena, by showing how easily races, differentlygifted, endowed with the spirit of criticism and argument, severfrom the faith and follow the lead of deceptive teachers. Ourobject here was to describe the Irish, and not to enter into astudy of the physiology of other minds; but a word on Germanicand Scandinavian tribes and peoples may not be amiss.

There is no doubt that these races place their "good sense" in avery different line from the Irish; that they are, also, muchmore given to criticism, what they call "grumbling," and absenceof repose.

With regard to the first point - their "good sense" - it is easyto remark their tendency to prefer the temporal to the eternal.For their "good sense" consists in enjoying the things of thislife without troubling themselves over-much about another. And,in this observation, there is nothing which can possibly offendthem, for such is their open profession and estimate of truewisdom. Hence result their love of comfort, their thrift, theirshrewdness in all material and worldly affairs; hence, theirconstant boasting about their civilization, understanding,thereby, what is pleasing to the senses; hence, also, theirsuccess in a life wherein they set their whole happiness. Howcould they be expected to remain steadfast to a faith whichdeclares war to pleasure, and speaks only of contempt for thisworld? It is not matter of surprise, then, that their greatargument, to prove that theirs is the better and the rightreligion, is to compare their physical well-being with theinferiority in that regard of Catholic nations.

With regard to the spirit of criticism and argumentation,nothing is so opposed to the spirit of faith; and it is as clearas day that the northern races possess this in an eminent degree.What question, religious or philosophical, can rest intact whenbrought under the microscopic vision of a German philosopher oran English rationalist? A few years more of criticism, as nowunderstood and practised by them, would leave absolutely nothingwhich the mind of man could respect and believe.

An attentive observer will surely conclude, after a seriousexamination of the subject, that it is from petty causes of thischaracter that these races have so easily surrendered theirfaith, rather than from their systematic minds and love ofliberty.

II. The rising of the communes, one of the greatest features ofmediaeval Europe, did not extend to Ireland, separated as itthen was from the Continent. But, by reason of this veryseparation, the island remained forever free from the futurepolitical commotions of what is known as "the third estate." Afew remarks on this subject are requisite, because of theobjection brought against the Irish, that they have never knownmunicipal government, and also on account of the falseassertions of some philosophical historians, who allege that theDanes and Anglo-Normans, in turn, wrought a great good toIreland by bringing with them the boon of citizen rights.

What were the causes of the rising of the communes in theeleventh and following centuries? The universality of the factargues identity of motives, since, without common understandingamong various nations, the risings showed themselves at aboutthe same time in Italy, France, Germany, Spain, and England.

In ancient cities, which existed prior to the Germanic invasions,the population, after the scourge had passed, was composedprincipally of three elements: 1. Free men of the conqueringraces, who were poor, and had embraced some mechanical pursuit;2. The remnants of the Roman population, who followed sometrade; 3. Freedmen from the rural districts, who, unable to gaina livelihood in the country, had come to reside in the cities,where they could more easily subsist.

Thus, besides the feudal lords and the class of villeins, therewas formed everywhere a third class, that of arts and trades.

The juridical power being restricted to the lords, whose rightsextended only to the land and the men attached to it, the classof artisans found themselves destitute of legal rights, withouta recognition or place even in the jurisprudence, as thenexisting, consequently in a practically anarchical state. Hence,they formed among themselves their own associations, electedtheir own magistrates, enacted their own by-laws.

In the cities we have mentioned, the bishop alone held socialrelations with the lords, whether the feudal chieftain of thevicinity, or the Count of the city. Thus, the bishop often actedas the mediator between the citizens and the privileged classwhich surrounded them. The great object of the citizens was toobtain a charter of rights from the suzerain, who alone couldact with justice and impartiality toward those disfranchisedburghers. To this was owed the immense number of chartersgranted at that time, many of which, lately published, tendbetter than any thing else to give us an insight into the originof municipal life in mediaeval Europe.

New cities, either founded by the invaders or springing up ofthemselves around feudal castles and monasteries, soonexperienced the necessity of similar favors, which, as soon asobtained, invested them with a social status unenjoyed before.

The number of freemen, reduced to poverty, or of recent freedmen- freed by the emancipation everywhere set on foot andencouraged by the Church - extended the spread of communes evento the rural districts. Thus, many villages or small towns grewinto corporations, and a social state arose, hitherto totallyunknown in Europe.

The question has been much discussed, whether those newmunicipal corporations owed their origin to the municipal systemof the Romans, or were altogether disconnected with it. Theopinion commonly now accepted is, that the two systems wereutterly distinct. In some few instances, a particular Romanmunicipal city may have passed into a mediaeval corporate townunder a new charter and with extended rights; but this wascertainly the exception. In the great majority of cases, thenewly-chartered cities had never before enjoyed municipal rights.

These few words suffice to show that the communes, wherever theyarose, presupposed the existence of feudalism, and the slaveryonce so widely extended, passing gradually into serfdom.

But neither feudalism nor slavery, in the old pagan sense of theword, nor even serfdom, properly so called, as the doom of theascripti glebae, ever existed in Ireland. There was, therefore,no need among the Irish for the rising of communes.

Nevertheless, we do find communes existing in Ireland andcharters granted to Irish cities by English kings. But they weremerely English institutions for the special benefit of theEnglish of the Pale, which were always refused to "the Irishenemy," and which the "Irish enemy," with the exception of a fewindividual cases, never demanded. Consequently the fact standsalmost universally true that the rising of the communes neverextended to Ireland, and that, if the Irish never enjoyed thebenefit of them, as little did they share in the evilconsequences resulting from them.

All those evil consequences had their root in a feeling ofbitter hostility between the higher or noble classes, and notonly the villeins, whom they ground between them, but also themiddle classes, who were dwelling in the cities, emancipatingthemselves by slow degrees, and forming in course of time the"third estate."

The workings of that hostility form a great part of the historyof Europe from the twelfth century down to the present day, andmany social convulsions, recorded in the annals of the six agespreceding our own, may be traced to it. The frightful FrenchRevolution was certainly a result of it, although it must begranted that several secondary causes contributed to render thecatastrophe more destructive, the chief among which was thespread of infidel doctrines among the higher and middle classes.

But our days witness a still more awful spectacle, thepersistent array of the poor against the rich in all countriesonce Christian, and this may be traced directly to theirmediaeval origin now under our consideration; and, the evilspreparing for mankind therefrom, future history alone will beable to tell.

In Ireland, this has never been the danger. In the earlierconstitution of the nation, there could be no rivalry, nohostility of class with class, as there never existed any socialdistinction between them; and if, in our days, the poor there aselsewhere seem arrayed against the rich, it is not as classagainst class, but as the spoiled against the spoiler, thevictim against the robber, against the holders of the soil byright of confiscation—a soil upon which the old owners stilllive, with all the traditions of their history, which have neverbeen completely effaced, and which in our days are springinginto new life under the studies of patriotic antiquarians. Thisfact cannot be denied.

The case of Ireland is so different in this respect from that ofother nations, that in no other country have the people beenreduced to such a degrading state of pauperism, yet in no othercountry is the same submission to the existing order of societyfound among the lower classes. No communism, no socialism hasever been preached there, and, were it preached, it would onlybe to deaf ears. Until the last two or three centuries, no seedof animosity between high and low, rich and poor, had been sowedin Ireland. The reason of this we have seen in a previouschapter. And if, since the wholesale confiscations of theseventeenth century, the country has been divided into twohostile camps, the fault has never laid with the poor, thedespoiled; they have always been the victims, and never utteredopen threats of destruction against their oppressors. If in thefuture men look to great calamities, Ireland is the only quarterfrom which nothing of the kind is to be feared, and theimpending revolution by which she may profit will look to herfor no assistance in the subversion of society.

We now leave the reader to appreciate to its full extent thereal value of the opinion of modern writers who would justifythe successive invasions of the Danes and Anglo-Normans, andalso, we suppose, of the Puritans, as praiseworthy attempts tointroduce into Ireland the municipal system, so productive ofgood elsewhere throughout Europe.

There is no doubt that municipal rights have been of immenseadvantage to European society, as constituted at the time oftheir introduction. They formed the germ of a new class,destined to be the ruling class of the world, by whom humanrights were first to be understood and proclaimed, and thenecessary amount of freedom granted to all and secured by justlaws justly administered. Christianity is the true source of allthose rights, as Christian morality ought to be their standard.

But what an amount of human misery was first required, in orderthat such blessed results might follow, merely because religion,which was and ever had been steadily working to the same end,was altogether set aside, and its assistance even despised inthe mighty change! And after all—we might say in consequence—how limited has the boon practically become! How few are thenations, even in our days, which understand impartiality,moderation, justice! How soon will mankind become sufficientlyenlightened to settle down peacefully in the enjoyment of thoseblessings of civil liberty proclaimed and trumpeted to the fourwinds of heaven, yet in no place rightly understood andequitably shared?

Ireland never knew those municipal rights from which have flowedso many evils, side by side with so few blessings, because theiressential elements were never found there. What the future maydevelop, no man can say. It is time, however, for all to seethat the nation is equal to any rights to which men are said tobe entitled.

III. The great intellectual movement set on foot in Europeduring the middle ages, by the numerous universities whichsprang up everywhere, under the fostering care of Popes orChristian monarchs, failed to reach the island, in consequenceof its exclusion from the European family; yet even this was notfor her an unmitigated evil, though certainly the greatest lossshe sustained. While Europe, during the eighth and ninthcenturies, was in total darkness, Ireland alone basked in thelight of science, whose lustre, shining in her numerous schools,attracted thither by its brightness the youth of all nations,whom she received with a generosity unbounded. Not content withthis, she sent forth her learned and holy men to spread thelight abroad and dispel the thick darkness, to establish seatsof learning as focuses whence should radiate the light of truthon a world buried in barbarism.

And when the warm sunshine, created or kept alive by her, shedsits rays on Italy, on France, on Germany, and England itself,all her own schools are closed, her once great universitiesdestroyed. Clonard, Clonfert, Armagh, Bangor, Clonmacnoise, aredesolate, and the wealthy Anglo-Norman prelates find theirpurses empty when the question arises of restoring or forming asingle centre of intellectual development. The naturalconsequences should have been darkness, barbarism, grossignorance. Ireland never fell to that depth of spiritualdesolation. Her sons, though deprived of all exterior help,would still feed for centuries on their own literary treasures.All the way down to the Stuart dynasty, the nation preserved,not only her clans, her princes, and her brehon laws, but alsoher shanachies, her books, her ancient literature and traditions.These the feudal barons could not rob her of; and if they wouldnot repay her, in some measure, for what they took away, byflooding her with the new methods of thought, of knowledge, ofscientific investigation, at least they could not destroy herold manuscripts, wipe out from her memory the old songs, snatchthe immortal harp from the hands of her bards, nor silence thelips of her priests from giving vent to those bursts ofimpassioned eloquence which are natural to them and must out.Hence there was no tenth century of darkness for her—let usbear this in mind—light never deserted her, but continued toshine on her from within, despite the refusal of her masters tounlock for her the floodgates of knowledge.

For this reason was it not to her an unmitigated loss; but thereis another and, perhaps, a stronger still.

We should be careful not to attribute to what is good the abusemade of it by men; yet the good is sometimes the occasion ofevil; and so it was with those great, admirable, and much-to-be-regretted universities.

They imparted to the mind of man an impulse which the pride andambition of man turned to his intellectual ruin. What wasintended for the spread of true knowledge and faith became inthe end the source of spiritual pride, the natural fosterer ofdoubt and negation. Modern science, so called, that incarnationof vanity, sophistry, error, and delusion, comes indirectly fromthose universities of the middle ages; and it was chiefly at thetime of what is called the revival of learning, that the greatrevolution in science came about, which changed the intellectualgold into dross, the once divine ambrosia of knowledge, servedto happy mortals in mediaeval times, into poison.

That pretended "revival of learning" can never be mentioned inconnection with Ireland; and the "idolatry of art," andcorruption of morals, never crossed the channel which God setbetween Great Britain and the Island of Saints.

Another revival, though of a very different character, was,however, actually taking place in Erin at that very period, whenthe Wars of the Roses gave her breathing-time, which we relatein the words of a modern Irish writer, as a conclusion to thereflections we have indulged in:

"Within this period lived Margaret of Offaly, the beautiful andaccomplished queen of O'Carrol, King of Ely. She and her husbandwere munificent patrons of literature, art, and, science. OnQueen Margaret's special invitation, the literati of Ireland andScotland, to the number of nearly three thousand, held a"session" for the furtherance of literary and scientificinterests at her palace near Killeagh, in Offaly, the entireassemblage being the guests of the king and queen during theirstay.

"The nave of the great church of Da Sinchell was converted forthe occasion into a banqueting-hall, where Margaret herselfinaugurated the proceedings by placing two massive chalices ofgold, as offerings, on the high altar, and committing two orphanchildren to the custody of nurses to be fostered at her charge.Robed in cloth of gold, this illustrious lady, who was asdistinguished for her beauty as for her generosity, sat inqueenly state m one of the galleries of the church, surroundedby the clergy, the brehons, and her private friends, shedding alustre on the scene which was passing below, while her husband,who had often encountered England's greatest generals in battle,remained mounted on a charger outside the church, to bid theguests welcome and see that order was preserved. The invitationswere issued, and the guests arranged according to a listprepared by 0'Carrol's chief brehon; and the secondentertainment, which took place at Rathangan, was a supplementalone, to embrace such men of learning as had not been broughttogether at the former feast."—(A.M. 0'Sullivan.)

Such was the true "revival of learning" in Ireland—a return toher old traditional teaching. If this peaceful time had been oflonger duration, there is no doubt that her old schools wouldhave flourished anew, and men in subsequent ages might havecompared the results of the two systems: the one producing withtrue enlightenment, peace, concord, faith, and piety, thoughconfined to the insignificant compass of one small island; theother resulting in the mental anarchy so rife to-day, andspreading all over the rest of Europe.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE IRISH AND THE TUDORS.—HENRY VIII.

By losing the only bond of unity—the power vested in the Ard-Righ—which held the various parts of the island together,Ireland lost all power of exercising any combined action. Thenations were as numerous as the clans, and the interests asdiverse as the families. They possessed, it is true, the samereligion, and in the observance of its precepts and practicesthey often found a remedy for their social evils; but religion,not encountering any opposition from any quarter, with theexception of the minor differences existing between the nativeclergy and the English dignitaries, was generally considered asout of the question in their wranglings and contentions. Weshall see how the blows struck at it by the English monarchswelded into one that people, were the cause of that union now soremarkable among them, and really constituted the only bond thatever linked them together.

Before dwelling on these considerations, let us glance a momentat the state of the country prior to the attempt of introducingProtestantism there.

The English Pale was reduced at this period to one half of fivecounties in Leinster and Meath; and even within those boundariesthe 0'Kavanaghs, O'Byrnes, O'Moores and others, retained theircustoms, their brehon laws, their language and traditions, oftenmaking raids into the very neighborhood of the capital, andparading their gallowglasses and kerns within twenty miles ofDublin.

The nobility and the people were in precisely the same statewhich they had known for centuries. The few Englishmen who hadlong ago settled in the country had become identified with thenatives, had adopted their manners, language, and laws, sooffensive at first to the supercilious Anglo-Normans.

But a revolution was impending, owing chiefly to the changelately introduced into the religion of England, by Henry Tudor.It is important to study the first attempt of the kind inIreland; not only because it became the occasion of establishingfor a lengthy period a real unanimity among the people—givingbirth to the nation as it were—but also for the rightunderstanding of the word "rebellion," which had been so freelyused before toward the natives, and which was now about toreceive a new interpretation.

The English had once deceived the Irish, exacting theirsubmissionin the twelfth century by foisting upon them the word homage:they would deceive Europe by a constant use, or rather misuse,of the words "rebel" and "rebellion." By the enactment of newlaws they pronounce the simple attachment to the old religion ofthe country a denial of sovereign right, and consequently an actof overt treason; and the Irish shall be butchered mercilesslyfor the sake of the religion of Christ without winning the name,though they do the crown, of martyrdom; for Europe is to be soeffectually deceived, that even the Church will hesitate toproclaim those religious heroes, saints of God.

But the great fact of the birth of a nation, in the midst ofthose throes of anguish, will lessen their atrocity in the mindof the reader, and explain to some extent the wonderful designsof Providence.

From an English state paper, published by M. Haverty, we learnthat, in 1515, a few years before the revolt of Luther, theisland was divided into more than sixty separate states, or"regions," "some as big as a shire, some more, some less."

Had it not been for this division and the constant feuds itengendered, in the north between the O'Neills and O'Donnells, inthe south between the Geraldines (Desmonds and Kildares) and theButlers (Ormonds), the authority of the English king would havebeen easily shaken off. The policy so constantly adopted byEngland in after-times—a policy well expressed by the Latinadage, Divide et impera—preserved the English power in Ireland,and finally brought the island into outward subjection at least,to Great Britain—a subjection which the Irish conscience andthe Irish voice and Irish arms yet did not cease to protestagainst and deny. But the nation was divided, and it requiredsome great and general calamity to unite them together and makeof them one people.

That, even spite of those divisions, they were at the time onthe point of driving the English out of the island, we need nobetter proofs than the words of the English themselves. TheArchbishop of Dublin, John Allen, the creature of Wolsey, whowas employed by the crafty cardinal to begin the work of thespoliation of convents in the island, and oppose the great Earlof Kildare, dispatched his relative, the secretary of the DublinCouncil, to England, to report that "the English laws, manners,and language in Ireland were confined within the narrow compassof twenty miles;" and that, unless the laws were duly enforced,"the little place," as the Pale was called, "would be reduced tothe same condition as the remainder of the kingdom;" that is tosay, the Pale itself, which had been brought to suchinsignificant limits, would belong exclusively to the Irish.

It was while affairs were at this pass that the revolt of"silken Thomas" excited the wrath of Henry VIII., and broughtabout the destruction of almost the whole Kildare family.

It was about this time, also, that Wolsey fell, and Cromwell,having replaced him as Chancellor of England, with Cranmer asArchbishop of Canterbury, the Reformation began in England withthe divorce of the king, who shortly after assumed supremacy inspirituals as a prerogative of the crown, and made Parliament —in those days himself—supreme law-giver in Church and state.

Cromwell, known in history as the creature and friend of Cranmer,like his protector a secret pervert to the Protestant doctrinesof Germany, and the first arch-plotter for the destruction ofCatholicity in the British Isles, undertook to save the Englishpower in Ireland by forcing on that country the supremacy of theking in religious matters, knowing well that such a step woulddrive the Irish into resistance, but believing that he couldeasily subdue them and make the island English.

Having been appointed, not only Chancellor of England, but alsoking's vicar-general in temporals and spirituals, Cromwellinquired of his English agents in Ireland the best means ofattaining his object—the subjection of the country. Theirreport is preserved among the state papers, and some of theirsuggestions deserve our attentive consideration. If Henry VIII.had consented to follow their advice, he would have himselfinaugurated the bloody policy so well carried out long after byanother Cromwell, the celebrated "Protector."

The report sets forth that the most efficient mode of proceedingwas to exterminate the people; but Henry thought it sufficientto gain the nobility over—the people being beneath his notice.

The agents of the vicar-general were right in their atrociousproposal. They knew the Irish nation well, and that the only wayto separate Ireland from the See of Peter was to make thecountry a desert.

Their means of bringing about the destruction of the people wasstarvation. The corn was to be destroyed systematically, and thecattle killed or driven away. Their operations, it is true, werelimited to the borders of the Pale. The gentle Spenser, at alater period, proposed to extend them to all Munster, and it wasa special glory reserved for the "Protector" to carry out thispolicy through almost the whole of the island.

"The very living of the Irishry," says the report, "doth clearlyconsist in two things: take away the same from them, and theyare passed for ever to recover, or yet to annoy any subjectIreland. Take first from them their corn, and as much as cannotbe husbanded, and had into the hands of such as shall dwell andinhabit in their lands, to burn and destroy the same, so as theIrishry shall not live thereupon; and then to have their cattleand beasts, which shall be most hardest to come by, and yet,with guides and policy, they may be oft had and taken."

The report goes on to point out, most elaborately andingeniously, every artifice and plan for carrying this policyinto effect. But here we have, condensed, as it were, in anutshell, and coolly and carefully set forth, the system whichwas adopted later on, and almost crowned with a fiendish success.But the moment for the execution of this barbarous scheme hadnot yet come, and we find no positive results followingimmediately.

This project, complete as it was, was far from being the only
one proposed at that time for "rooting out the Irish" from
Ireland. Mr. Prendergast, in his "Introduction to the
Cromwellian Settlement," says:

"The Irish were never deceived as to the purport of the English,and, though the Pale had not been extended for two hundred andforty years, their firm persuasion in the reign of Henry VIII.was, that the original design was not abandoned. 'Irishmen areof opinion among themselves,' said Justice Cusack to the king,'that Englishmen will one day banish them from their landsforever.'"

In fact, project after project was then proposed for clearingIreland of Irish to the Shannon. Some went so far as already tocontemplate their utter extirpation; but "there was no precedentfor it found in the chronicles of the conquest. Add to this thedifficulty of finding people to reinhabit it if suddenlyunpeopled.

"The chiefs and gentlemen of the Irish only were to be drivenfrom their properties," according to some of those projects,"and they only were to be driven into exile, while their landsshould be given to Englishmen."

"The king, however, seems to have been satisfied withconfiscating the estates of the Earl of Kildare and of hisfamily. Fierce and bloody though he was, there was somethinglion-like in his nature; notwithstanding all those promptings,he left to the Irish and old English their possessions, andseemed even anxious to secure them, but failed to do so for wantof time."

We think Mr. Prendergast's judgment of Henry VIII. too favorable.Generosity did not prompt him to spare the people and thenobles, with the exception of the Kildares. We believe that henever contemplated the extirpation of the people, because such apolitical element could not enter into his mind. As for thenobles, he wished to gain them over, because of the long wars heforesaw necessary to bring about their utter extinction or exile.

He adopted, accordingly, a plan of his own, holding firm to hisdesign of having his new title of "Head of the Church"acknowledged in Ireland as well as in England.

Cromwell commenced his work by two measures which had met withperfect success in the latter country, but which were destinedto fire the sister isle from end to end, and make "the people,"in course of time, really one. These measures were acts ofParliament: 1. Establishing 'the king's spiritual supremacy; 2.Suppressing, at once, all the monasteries existing in thecountry, and giving their property to the nobles who werewilling to apostatize.

The necessity of convening Parliament resulted from the failureof the first attempt, already made, to establish the king'ssupremacy. Browne, the successor of Allen in the See of Dublin,a rank Lutheran at heart, had been commissioned by the king andby Cranmer, his consecrator, to establish the new doctrine atonce. His want of success, is thoroughly explained in a letterto Cromwell, which is still preserved, and which remains one ofthe proudest monuments of the steadfastness of the Irish intheir religion.

He complains that not only the clergy, but the "common people,"were "more zealous in their blindness than the saints andmartyrs in truth, in the beginning of the Gospel," and "such wastheir hostility against him that his life was in danger."

And all this in Dublin, in the heart of the Pale, where thechief antagonist of the new doctrine, "the leader of the people"against this first attempt at schism, was Cromer, the Archbishopof Armagh, an Englishman himself! So that those prelates ofEngland, who, with the exception of the noble Fisher, had allyielded without a murmur of opposition to the will of Henry,could find no followers, not even of their own nation, inIreland, so much had their faith been strengthened by contactwith that of "the common people."

A Parliament was needed, therefore, and that one which was to bethe instrument of introducing the great English measure, met forthe first time in Dublin, on the 1st of May, 1536; but, beingprorogued, it met again in 1537, and did not complete its workuntil once more summoned in 1541, when the old Irish element wasfor the first and last time introduced at its sitting, in order,if possible, to consecrate the new doctrine by having itsolemnly accepted by the old race.

This Parliament, which was first convened in Dublin, McGeoghegansays, "adjourned to Kilkenny, thence to Cashel, after ward toLimerick, and lastly to Dublin again." The chief cause of theseinterruptions was the difficulty of bringing an Irish Parliament,even when composed of Englishmen, as was the case up to 1541,to pass the decrees of supremacy, denial of Roman authority, etc.,which had been so readily accepted in England.

The Irish Parliaments, as far back as we can see, were composednot only of lords, spiritual and temporal, and of deputies ofthe Commons, but each diocese possessed also the right to sendthere three ecclesiastical proctors, who, by reason of theiroffice, owned neither benefice nor fief, and were therefore atliberty to vote, fearless of attainder and confiscation, inaccordance with their conscience and their sense of right.

This feature of the Irish assemblies, even when norepresentative of the native race sat in them, was a fatalobstacle to the success of the scheme devised by Browne andexecuted by Cromwell. Accordingly, we are not astonished to findthat, by an act of despotism not uncommon during the reign ofHenry VIII., the proctors were excluded from Parliament, whichthus became an obedient tool in the hands of the government.

Not only, therefore, were several state measures carried inaccordance with the wish of the king, but the great objectproposed by the meeting of this assembly was finally obtained;and, lowing the lead of the English Parliament, Henry VIII. andhis successors were confirmed in the title of "Supreme Head ofthe Church in Ireland," with power of reforming and correctingerrors in religion. All appeals to Rome were prohibited, and thePope's authority declared a usurpation.

Henry, however, foreseeing that all these favorite measures ofhis policy, being carried by English votes in a purely Englishassembly, though on Irish soil, would meet with universalopposition from all the native lords, conceived the idea ofsummoning the great Irish chieftains to a new meeting ofParliament, from which he expected that a moral revolution wouldbe effected in the island. Sir Anthony St. Leger, created deputyin August, 1540, was thought a likely man to be intrusted withso delicate a mission. He conducted it with political prudence,that is to say, with a judicious mixture of kindness and fraud,which succeeded beyond all expectations.

In order to prepare the way for hoodwinking the Irish chieftains,favors of every kind were showered upon them, to wit, titlesand estates, chiefly those of suppressed monasteries; and St.Leger, by an alternate use of force and diplomacy, at lengtheffected that the Irish should consent to accept titles. ConO'Neill, the head of the house of Tyrone, went to England,accompanied by O'Kervellan, Bishop of Ologher, and was admittedto an audience by the king. Henry adopted toward those proudIrishmen a policy utterly different from that he had used withthe English lords. These latter were merely threatened with hisdispleasure, and with the feudal penalties he knew so well howto inflict; the others were received at court as favorites anddear friends; a royal courtesy, kind expressions, a smiling face--such were the arms he employed against the "barbarous Irish."

Tyrone, O'Donnell, and others, were not proof against hiscunning. The first renounced his title of prince and theglorious name of O'Neill, to receive in return that of Earl ofTyrone. Manus O'Donnell was made Earl of Tyrconnel. Bothreceived back the lands which they had offered to the king, andtheir example was followed by a great number of inferior lords.Among them, two Magenisses were dubbed knights; Murrough O'Brien,of North Munster, was made Earl of Thom*ond and Baron ofInchiquin; De Burgo, or McWilliams, was created Earl ofClanricard, and a host of others submitted in like manner, andreceived the new titles which henceforth became conspicuous inIrish history.

This was the beginning of the gradual suppression of the clans.Many of these nobles, unfortunately, not content with receivingback, at the hands of the king, the lands which had come intotheir possession from a long line of ancestors, and which reallybelonged not to them personally, but to the clans whose headsthey were, greedily snatched at the estates of religious orders,whose suppression was the first consequence of the schism inIreland, which will soon occupy our attention.

The Irish chieftains had already seen Wolsey, a cardinal in fullcommunion with Rome, suppress forty monasteries in the island.They might therefore imagine that the confiscation of a stillgreater number on the part of the king was a thing notaltogether incompatible with the religion of the monarch, andthat the fact of their sharing in the plunder was not entirelyopposed to their titles of Catholics and subjects of Rome. Suchis human conscience when blinded by self-interest.

The king thought that he had gained over the nobility,—whichwas all he wished- -and the last session of the previousParliament of 1536 and the following years might now be held inorder to consecrate the unholy work.

"On the 12th of June, 1541," says Mr. Haverty, "a Parliament washeld in Dublin, at which the novel sight was witnessed of Irishchieftains sitting for the first time with English lords.O'Brien appeared there by his procurators and attorneys, andKavanagh, O'More, O'Reilly, McWilliams, and others, took theirseats in person, the addresses of the Speaker and of the Lord-Chancellor being interpreted to them in Irish by the Earl ofOrmond. An act was unanimously passed, conferring on Henry VIII.and his successors the title of King of Ireland, instead of thatof Lord of Ireland, which the English kings, sincethe days of John, had hitherto borne. This act was hailed withgreat rejoicings in Dublin, and on the following Sunday, thelords and gentlemen of Parliament went in procession to St.Patrick's Cathedral, where solemn high mass was sung byArchbishop Browne, after which the law was proclaimed and a TeDeum chanted."

It is worthy of remark that in the session of 1541, at whichalone the Irish chieftains appeared, not a word was said of thesupremacy of the king in spirituals. Sir James Ware, who givesthe various decrees with more detail than usual, makes nomention of this pet measure of the king and of the LutheranArchbishop Browne, but it was only part and parcel of theParliament of 1536, prorogued successively to Kilkenny, Cashel,Limerick, and finally again to Dublin. At its first sitting thelaw of supremacy was passed and proclaimed as law of Ireland.Nothing was said of it in the various sessions that followed,including that of 1541; and yet the Irish chieftains weresupposed to have sanctioned it, inasmach as it was a measurepreviously passed in the same Parliament: and the suppression ofvarious abbeys and monasteries having been openly decreed in thefinal session, as a result of the king's supremacy—Rome nothaving been consulted, of course—all the signers of the lastdecree were supposed to have thereby sanctioned and adopted theprevious ones. Thus O'Neill, O'Reilly, O'More, and the rest,without being aware of the fact, became schismatics, though manyof them, perhaps all, did not see the connection between thevarious sessions of that long Parliament. Certainly, if, onleaving the Dublin Cathedral, where they had heard thearchbishop's mass and assisted at that solemn Te Deum, they hadbeen told that that act was intended to consecrate the surrenderof the religion of their ancestors, and the commencement of afrightful revolution, which would end in the destruction oftheir national existence, almost of their very race, they wouldhave incredulously laughed to scorn the unwelcome prophet.

But even if, as we may well believe, those Irish lords hadreally been the victims of deception, and had not, as a body,been corrupted by the sacrilegious gift of suppressedmonasteries, the people, their clansmen, prompted by the vividimpressions and unerring instincts of religious faith andpatriotic nationality, which were ever living in their breasts,resented the weakness of their chieftains as a nationaldefection and a real apostasy, and took immediate steps to bringthe lords to their senses, and to prevent the spread of Englishcorruption.

All who had received titles from Henry, and surrendered to himthe deeds of their lands, as if those lands belonged to thempersonally, and not to the clans collectively, all those,particularly, who had enriched themselves by the plunder ofreligious houses, and who had taken any part in the destructionof the religious orders so dear to the Irish heart, were soonmade to feel the indignation which those events had excitedamong the native clansmen, north and south. And those of thechieftains who had really been deceived, and had preserved intheir hearts all through a strong love for their religion andcountry, were recalled to a sense of their error, and broughtback to a sense of their duty by the unmistakable voice of the"people."

While the nobles were still in England, feted by Henry in hisroyal palace of Greenwich, renouncing their Irish names tobecome English earls and barons, the Ulster chief, protestingthat he would never again take the name of O'Neill, but contenthimself with the title of Earl of Tyrone; while O'Brien wasbeing created Earl of Thom*ond; McWilliams, Earl of Clanricard;O'Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell; Kavanagh, Baron of Ballyann; andFitzpatrick, Baron of Ossory; the clans at home, hearing in duetime of those real treasons, were concerting plans for makingtheir lords repent of their weakness or treachery, and foradministering to them due punishment on their return.

O'Neill, "the first of his race who had accepted an Englishtitle," on landing in Ireland, learned that, his people haddeposed him, and elected in his stead his son John the Proud,better known as Shane O'Neill; O'Donnell, on his arrival, metmost, of his clan, headed by his son, up in arms against him;the new Earl of Clanricard had already been deposed by hispeople and another McWilliams, with a Gaelic name, elected inhis place; and so with the rest.

But, unfortunately, the Government of England was strong enoughto support its favorite chieftains, and it found some Irishtools ready at hand to form the nucleus of an Irish party intheir favor. Thus, unanimity no longer marked the decisions ofthe clans; two parties were formed in each of them, the onenational, comprising the great bulk of the people, the real,true people; the other English, composed of a few apostateIrishmen, backed by the power of England. Thus, henceforth wehear of the O'Reilly, and the king's O'Reilly, etc.

Henry VIII. seemed, therefore, with the help of his minister, St.Leger, to have succeeded in breaking up the clans, after theIrish national government had been broken up long before.Confusion of titles, property, and traditions became worseconfounded. How could the shanachies, bards, and brehons, anylonger agree in their pedigrees, songs, and legal decisions?England had thus early adopted in Ireland the stern andcoldhearted policy which, centuries later, she used to destroythe native and Mohammedan dynasties in Hindostan. It was not yetdivide et impera on a large scale, but the division was pushedas far as lay in the power England, to the very last elements ofthe social system.

From this time forward, then, we must not be surprised to findEngland welcoming to her bosom unworthy sons of Ireland, whomshe wished to make her tools. There was always, either in Dublinor London, a sufficient supply of materials out of which crown'schiefs might be manufactured; the government made it part of itspolicy to hold in its hands and train to its purposes certainmembers of each of the ruling families—of the O'Neills,O'Reillys, O'Donnells, O'Connors, and others.

It was no longer, therefore, the rooting out and exterminatingpolicy which prevailed, but one as fatal in its results, whichwould have utterly destroyed Irish national feeling, to set upin its place, not only English manners, language, and customs,but also English schism, heresy, philosophical speculations —asthe Four Masters have it —finally, materialism and nihilism.

But, in real sober fact, the scheme proved almost an utterfailure, owing to the far-seeing good sense of the people. Thenational spirit revived among the upper classes, both native andof English descent—owing to the decided stand taken by theinferior clansmen.

The Desmonds and Kildares, in the south, the O'Donnells,Maguires, and others, in the north, soon showed themselvesanimated by a new spirit of ardent Catholicism; created, in fact,a new nation, quite apart from, or rather embracing, clanship,well-nigh destroyed the English power, kept Elizabeth, duringthe whole of her reign, in constant agitation and fear, andwould have succeeded in recovering their independence, andsecuring freedom of worship, had not their good-nature beenimposed upon by the hypocrisy and faithlessness of the Stuarts,to whom they always looked for freedom in the practice of theirreligion, without ever obtaining it.

Thus did the people, the Irish race, thwart the policy of Henry,who sought to gain over the nobility. Their stubborn resistanceto the vastly-increased and constantly-increasing English power,grew at last to such proportions, and became so discouraging totheir oppressors, that the old policy of utter extermination wasresumed by Cromwell and the Orange party of the following age.

The refusal of the people, that is to say, of the bulk of thenation, to submit to the policy of their chieftains, and thedetermination to repudiate that policy by deposing itssupporters and choosing others in their stead, was most happy inits effect on their whole future history.

The leaders, by accepting the new titles bestowed on them by theEnglish kings, by taking their seats in Parliament, andconcurring in the various measures there passed, subjectedthemselves to a foreign rule, surrendered to this rule the tribe-lands, which it was not in their power to surrender ofthemselves, gave up, in fact, their nationality, and becameEnglish subjects. The action of the clansmen reversed all thefatal consequences resulting from those acts. They remained anation distinct from the English, whose laws they had nevereither admitted or accepted. And, as the clan spirit declined,under the policy of England, it only made way for a new and agreater spirit—religious feeling, the bond of a common religionassaulted—which, henceforth, lay at the bottom of the wholestruggle—which, for the first time in their history, blendedinto one whole the broken clans, gave them a unity and aconsistency never known till then, and thus the real nation wasborn.

They might boast, therefore, not only of not having lost theirautonomy, but of being more firmly than ever knit together; theycould conclude treaties of alliance with foreign powers, withoutcommitting treason, and they soon began to use that power; theycould even declare war against England, and it was not rebellion.The successors of Henry VIII. acted constantly as though theIrish nation had really subjected itself to English kings andEnglish rule, as though the acceptance of a few titles by a fewchieftains (who were deposed by their people as soon as the factwas known) signified an acknowledgment on the part of the Irishpeople of their absorption by the English feudal system; theyappeared "horrified" when they saw the successors of thosechieftains reject those titles and resume their own names; andthey called the Irish "rebels" and "traitors" for going to warwith England—a country they had never acknowledged as theirruler—and introducing into their country Spanish, Italian, andFrench troops as allies.

The explanation of the whole mystery consisted in the simplefact that the people, the nation, had steadily refused tosanction the act of their leaders; and all the pretensions ofEnglish kings, statesmen, and lawyers, were valueless. ThoseIrishmen who subsequently entered into the various Geraldine andUlster confederacies, and summoned foreign armies to their aid,were neither rebels nor traitors, but citizens of an independentstate, possessing their international rights as citizens of anyindependent country. This we have seen in a previous chapter,and Sir John Davies has been obliged to confess its truth,admitting the difference between a tributary and a subjectnation.

A glance shows us the importance of the almost unanimous outcryof the clansmen of Tyrone, Tyrconnell, and of other parts ofIreland. Owing to the patriotic feeling of these, nothingremained for the English but to punish the Irish people fortheir resolve of holding to their religion, and to declare areligious war against them, though they called them all the timerebels and traitors. This is the view an impartial historianshould take of those mighty events.

But, it is well to look more closely at this new element, whichthen showed itself for the first time in Irish national life,the people, irrespective of clanship; the people, as influencingthe leaders, and thus becoming a living—nay, a ruling power inthe state. And, lest any of our readers should not be convincedthat such really was the case, we mention here a fact, whichwill come more prominently before us in the next chapter, that,at the end of Elizabeth's reign, the efforts of all her largearmies and her tortuous policy for changing the religion of thecountry, resulted in the grand total of sixty converts toProtestantism from the noble class, not one of the clansmenturning apostate!

Bridget of Kildare would not have been surprised at this, tojudge by what we have previously heard from her.

In order to find the explanation of this wonderful fact, we mustcompare the Irish people with other nationalities, and we maythen easily distinguish its peculiar features, so persistent, soenduring, we may say, indestructible. We shall find that whatthis people was three hundred years ago, it is to this day, witha greater unity of feeling, devotedness to principle, and higheraims than any people of modern times.

In antiquity, the people, in the Christian sense of the word,never appeared in the field of history. In the despoticcountries of Asia and Africa, there was and could be no questionof such a thing; it was an inert mass used at will by the despot.The Phoenician states, and Carthage in particular, were mereoligarchies, with commerce for their chief object, and slavesfor mercantile or warlike purposes. In the republics of Greeceand Italy, the aristocracy ruled, and when, after centuries ofbloody struggles and revolutions, the subjects of Rome werefinally granted the rights of citizenship, the despotism of theempire suddenly appeared, crushing both plebs and patricians.

Whenever in those ancient governments we find the lower classesunable longer to bear the heavy yoke imposed upon them,revolting against a despotism which had grown insupportable, andclaiming their natural rights, it was merely a surging of wavesraised to mountain-height by the fury of a sudden storm, butsoon allayed and subdued beneath the inflexible will of sternrulers. The people was a mere mob, whose violence, whensuccessful, fatally carried destruction with it; and, though itis seemingly full of a terrible power which nothing can resist,its power lasts but for a very short time. Could it only outlastthe destruction of all superior rulers, it would end bydestroying itself.

If we would meet with the people, such as we conceive it to bein accordance with our Christian ideas, we must come down tothat period of time which followed close upon the organizationof Christendom, namely, to the much-abused middle ages.Feudalism, it is true, withstood its expansion for a long time,kept alive the remnants of slavery which it had found in Europeat its birth, or at best invented serfdom as a somewhat mildersubstitute for the former degradation of man. But feudalismitself was not strong enough to prevent the natural consequencesof the vigorous Christianity which at that time prevailed; andkings, dukes, and feudal bishops, were compelled to grantcharters which insured the freedom of the subject. Then thepeople appeared, in the cities first, afterward in the country,where, however, the peasants had still to drag on for a wearytime the chains of secular serfdom.

Thus the people lived in Spain, where they fought valiantlyunder their lords for centuries against the Crescent, so that insome provinces all classes were ennobled, and not a singleplebeian was to be found, which simply means that the whole massof the citizens formed the people. Thus the people had an earlyexistence in Italy, where every city almost became a centre offreedom and activity, notwithstanding strife and continual feuds.Thus the people had its life in France, where the learned menof Catholic universities determined with precision the limits ofkingly power, and where the outburst of the Crusades brought allclasses together to fight for Christ, forming but one bodyengaged alike throughout in a holy cause. Thus, finally, thepeople had its life even in Germany and England, where realliberty, though of later birth, afterward remained more deeplyrooted in social life.

In all those countries, it was called populus Christianus; ithad its associations, its guilds, its Christian customs, itsprivileges, its rights. Its existence was acknowledged by law,and it possessed everywhere either Christian codes, or at leastlocal customs for its safeguards. It gradually grew into a greatpower, and took the name of the "Third Estate," ranking directlyafter the clergy, and nobility. Its members knew and respectedthe gradations of the social hierarchy as then existing. Themonarchs in most countries, in France chiefly, sided with itwhenever the nobles sought to oppress it, and its deputies wereheard in the Parliaments of the various nations of Christendom.

How many millions of human beings lived happily during severalcenturies under these great institutions of mediaeval times! Andif the members of the people at that time could seldom riseabove their order, except through the Church, this unfortunateinability often prevented dangerous and subversive ambitions,and was thus really the source and cause of, happiness to all.Governments at that period lasted for thousands of years; mencould rely on the stability of things, and great enterprisescould be undertaken and carried to a successful termination.

But throughout all Europe, with the single exception of Ireland,the people had to contend against the feudal power; and it wasonly very gradually, and step by step, that it could creep up toits rights. In Ireland, as we have seen, feudalism had failed tostrike root; so that the clansmen who represented there what thepeople did elsewhere, never having been subject to slavery orserfdom, possessed all the liberties which the ordinary class ofmen can claim. They had always borne their share in the affairsof their own territory, at least by the willing help theyafforded to their leaders, during the Danish wars chiefly, andafterward throughout the four hundred years of struggle with theAnglo-Normans. The people were the real conquerors under thelead of their chieftains, and the perpetual enjoyment of theirbeloved customs was the privilege of the least among them asmuch as of the proudest of their nobles. They themselves werewell aware of this, and to their own efforts no less than to theheads of the clans they attributed the advantages which they hadgained.

Thus, when the conduct of their chieftain was not in accordancewith what the clansmen considered the right, they were ready toexpress their disapproval of his actions by deposing him, andplacing their allegiance at the service of the man of theirchoice.

But though this course of action is true of the whole period oftheir history, more especially from the date of their becomingChristian up to the time when the blows of religious persecutionwelded them into one people, yet they were divided and often atwar among themselves. But no sooner did the work of perversionmake itself felt among them, than we behold the clansmenexhibiting a unity of feeling on many points which never markedthem before. So that thenceforth the separated clans graduallybegan to merge into Irishmen.

This unity of feeling showed itself, above all, in the deep lovefor their religion, which at once became universal and all-pervading. This love had undoubtedly existed before, as it couldscarcely have originated and swollen to such proportions all atonce; but as the stroke of the hammer reveals the spark, so theforce of opposition enkindled the flame and caused it to burstforth into view. At the first blow it showed itself throughoutthe island, and thus the people became once and forever united.

This unity of feeling was displayed likewise in an ardent lovefor their country in contradistinction to the special localityof the tribe. Thus arose a true fraternal union with all theircountrymen of whatever county or city. The old antagonismbetween family and family only appeared at fitful and unguardedintervals; but in general each one grasped the hand of anotheronly as a Catholic and an Irishman.

This is clearly attributable to their religion. Catholicityknows no place; its very name is opposed to restrictions of thischaracter. Could it carry out its purpose, which is that of itsDivine founder, it would make one of all nations; and, to acertain extent, it has achieved this task. Differences ofcharacter, which are deeply impressed in the nature of variousbranches of the human family, are indeed never totallyobliterated by it; but such differences disappear when kneelingat the same altar and receiving the same sacraments. TheCatholic religion is the only one which is, has ever been, andmust ever claim to be, universal; the religions of antiquitywere purely local.

Since the coming of our Lord, no heresy, no schism has everpretended to the reality of a catholic existence, and, if theword is self-applied by certain sects, the world laughs at it asa meaningless thing. The Catholic Church alone has truly claimedand possessed such a character.

But if of all men it makes one family with respect to spiritualmatters, what unanimity of feeling must it not create in asingle nation truly imbued with its spirit, which is attackedfor its sake? Until the reign of Henry VIII., the Irish, intheir struggle with England, could summon no religious thoughtto their aid, since England was Catholic also, and the Normannobles established among them followed the same calendar,possessed the same churches, the same creed, the same sacraments.But as soon as the English power was stamped with heresy, theopposition to that power assumed a religious aspect, and nolonger restricted itself to the clans immediately attacked, butspread throughout the whole nation.

To bring the case down to some particular point, in order torender our meaning more clear, a priest or monk, who was hunteddown, was no longer sure of refuge in his own district, andamong men of his own sept merely, but he was equally welcomed inthe castle of the chieftain or the hut of the peasant throughthe length and breadth of the land. Any Irishman, subject tofine, imprisonment, or torture, for the sake of his religion,did not find sympathy restricted to his own circle of friends oracquaintances, but, even if tried and prosecuted in a corner ofthe island, far away from his own home, he could count upon thesympathy of as many friends as there were Irish Catholics towitness his sufferings. This state of things was certainlyunknown before.

Religion, when deep, is the strongest feeling of the human heart,and endows the nation steeped in it with an unconquerablestrength. To judge of the intensity of religious feeling in theIrish, it should be remembered that it was the only legacy leftthem after every thing else had been taken away, and, though itwas the special object of attack, they were to be stripped oneby one of their old customs, their own chieftains, their housesof study and of prayer, their religious and secular teachers,nay, of the chance even of educating their children, of theright to possess not merely their own soil, but even tocultivate a few acres of it, nay, of their very language itself,in a word, of all that makes a country dear to man. For ageswere they destined to remain outcasts and strangers on the soilwhich was their own; abject and ignorant paupers, without thefaintest possibility of rising in the social scale.

One thing only did they keep in their hearts, their faith,though stripped of all the exterior circ*mstances which adorn it,and reduced to its simplest elements. But at least it was theirreligion, to deprive them of which, all the wealth, resources,armies, laws of a powerful nation, were to be strained to theutmost during long ages. How, then, could they fail to love andcherish it, to cling fast to it, as to an inestimable treasure,the only real one indeed they could possess on earth, where allelse passes away?

Here, then, always presupposing the paramount influence of thegrace of God, lay the secret of that indestructible strength andunwearied energy manifested by Irishmen, from the middle of thesixteenth century down, and we are enabled thus to appreciatethe value of that unity which persecution alone fastened uponthem.

To the love of religion, which was the origin of that unity,love of country was soon added, and by love of country we hereunderstand the love of the whole island, not merely of theparticular sept to which the individual belonged, or of theparticular spot in which he happened to be born. Such had beenthe divisions among the people and the chieftains hitherto, thatEngland could attack one sept without fearing the revolt of theothers, nay, was often assisted by an adverse clan. And sothoroughly had the Anglo-Normans adopted the native manners,that the Kildares were frequently at war with the Desmonds,though both belonged to the same Geraldine family; and theOrmonds kept up a constant feud with both the Geraldine branches.When Henry VIII. almost destroyed the Kildares, we do not findthat the Desmonds felt their loss at first; perhaps they evenrejoiced at it.

It was the same with the natives, particularly with the 0'Neillsand the O'Donnells, in the north. The whole island and itsgeneral interests seemed the concern of no one, so taken up werethey by the affairs of their own particular locality. And thisstate of feeling had existed from the beginning, even among holymen. The songs of Columba, of Cormac McCullinan, even of theFenian heroes of old, all celebrated the victories of one septover another, or the beauties of some one spot in the island, inpreference to all others.

Nay, so prevalent was this clannish spirit, even at thebeginning of the religious troubles, that Henry VIII., andElizabeth after him, gained their successes by directing theirattacks against particular places, so certain were they that theother districts would not come to the rescue.

The feeling of nationality, of what we call patriotism, wrestledalong time in the throes of birth, before coming forth, and itwas only during the latter half of Elizabeth's reign that thoseconfederacies were formed, which included the whole country andcalled in even foreign aid.

But this feeling began to appear as soon as religion wasattacked; and therefore do we call this epoch the true birth ofa people.

And as it is with the people chiefly that we are concerned, itis to our purpose to remark here that they gradually lost sightof their petty quarrels and local prejudices in losing theirchieftains; they began to look for leaders among themselves, and,understanding at last that the whole island was threatened bythe invading policy of England, they were to fight for the whole,and not for any special district.

Then, for the first time, did Ireland become a reality to them,an existing personality, a desolate queen weeping over the fateof her children, calling, with the voice of a stricken mother,those who survived to her aid, and worthy, by her beauty andmisfortunes, of their most heroic and disinterested efforts.

Religious feeling, then, first made the Irish a nation, and gavethem that unity of thought which they now exhibit everywhere,even in the remotest quarters of the globe, wherever they maychoose their place of exile. And if there still exists amongthem something of that former predilection for the place wherethey first saw the light, the other parts of Erin are at leastincluded in their deep love, and they would shed their blood fortheir country, irrespective of prejudice of place.

Thus have they come at last to love each other as men of noother nation ever did. In order to understand this thoroughly,we must remember that for ages they, as a people, have beenoppressed and held in bondage by a stern and powerful nation.They had to defend themselves in turn against the most open andthe most insidious attacks. Bereft in many cases of all themeans of defence, they had nothing left them, save theirreligion, and the support they could afford each other.

If, by any stretch of imagination, we could place ourselves intheir position, understand their language when they met eachother in their huts, in their morasses and bogs, in theirmountain fastnesses and desolate moors, could we only enter intotheir feelings and see the working of their minds, we mightcatch a faint conception of the affection which they must havefelt for brothers waging the deadly fight against the sameenemies, and contending in a seemingly endless and hopelessstruggle against the same terrible odds. Union, affection,devotedness, are words too weak to serve here.

For this reason, also, do we find the Irish people stamped withpeculiarities which we find in no others. In antiquity, as wehave said, the people could never rise to any thing greater thana mob; in modern times such has also often been the case. Withthe Irish it is not, and could not be so. Their aim has alwaysbeen too lofty, their struggle of too long duration, theirmorality too genuine and too pure. For their aim has constantlybeen to rescue their country; their struggle has lasted nearlythree hundred years; their morality has ever been directed bythe sweetest religion. Extreme cases of oppression such astheirs may have occasionally given rise to violent outbreaksinevitable in human despair; but, on the whole, it may to theirhonor be fearlessly said, that they have preserved, almostthroughout, a due regard for social hierarchy and all kinds ofrights. Many of them have died of hunger, rather than touch theproperty of a rich and hostile neighbor. Where else can we findsuch an example?

This union of the people, which was thus brought about byreligious persecution, included not only the natives of the oldrace, but the Anglo-Irish themselves, who were brought bydegrees to a unanimity of feeling which they had never knownbefore, although they had previously adopted Irish manners - aunanimity which the Lutheran Archbishop Browne had foreseen andopenly denounced beforehand. This was the man who hadunwittingly borne testimony to the Irish that "the common peopleof this isle are more zealous in their blindness than the saintsand martyrs were in the truth at the beginning of the Gospel;"the same George Browne, of Dublin, had also been the first toperceive that the religious question was beginning, even underHenry VIII., to unite the native Irish and the descendants ofStrongbow's followers, until that time bitterly opposed to eachother.

In a letter, dated "Dublin, May, 1538," to the Lord Privy Seal,he said: "It is observed that, ever since his Highness'sancestors had this nation in possession, the old natives havebeen craving foreign powers to assist and raise them; and nowboth English race and Irish begin to oppose your lordship'sorders" (about supremacy), "and do lay aside their national oldquarrels, which, I fear, if any thing will cause a foreigner toinvade this nation, that will."

This man, who was altogether worldly and without faith,displayed in this a keen political foresight far above that ofthe ordinary counsellors of England's king. He openly announcedwhat actually came to pass only toward the middle of Elizabeth'sreign, and what the horrors of the Cromwellian wars were tocomplete - the thorough fusion of Irish and Anglo-NormanCatholics, both transplanted to Connaught, perishing under thesword of the soldier, the rope of the hangman, or dying ofstarvation in the recesses of their mountains - united foreverin the bonds of martyrdom.

The "birth of the Irish people" was to be insured by anothermeasure of the English Government - the suppression of religioushouses. We must, in conclusion, turn to this.

In the annals of the Four Masters, under the year 1537, we read:"A heresy and a new error broke out in England, the effect ofpride, vainglory, avarice, sensual desire, and the prevalence ofa variety of scientific and philosophical speculations, so thatthe people of England went into opposition to the Pope and toRome.

"At the same time, they followed a variety of opinions; and,adopting the old law of Moses, after the manner of the Jewishpeople, they gave the title of Head of the Church of God, duringhis reign, to the king. They ruined the orders who werepermitted to hold worldly possessions, namely, monks, canonsregular, nuns, and Brethren of the Cross, etc . . . . They brokeinto the monasteries, they sold their roofs and bells; so thatthere was not a monastery from Arran of the Saints to the IccianSea that was not broken and scattered, except only a few inIreland."

And, under 1540, they say: "The English, in every placethroughout Ireland, where they established their power,persecuted and banished the nine religious orders, andparticularly they destroyed the monastery of Monaghan, andbeheaded the guardian and a number of friars."

We may add that, at the restoration of the old faith under Queen
Mary, nothing had to be restored in Ireland save the monasteries.
These establishments had, almost without exception, been
ruthlessly destroyed.

In our previous considerations, we have spoken of no otherreligious houses in Ireland, save those of the old Columbianorder of monks, as it was called, which was a growth of thecountry, and bore so many marks of Irish peculiarities. Thiscontinued until, communications with Rome becoming more frequent,the various orders established in the West were successivelyintroduced into Ireland. Our purpose is not to write a historyof monasticism, and therefore we do not intend entering intodetails on this point, interesting though they are. But we mayadd that, gradually, the old monasteries - from the Normaninvasion chiefly - as well as the new ones which wereestablished, were placed under the rule of the variouscongregations, acknowledged by the Holy See. It seems that themonasteries founded by St. Columba himself afterward submittedto the rule of St. Benedict, the others, for the most part,embracing that of the canons regular of St. Augustine; but theprecise epoch of these changes is not known. It is certain,however, that the Benedictines, Cistercians, and Bernardines,were introduced into the country at a very early date, togetherwith the four mendicant orders of Franciscans, Dominicans,Carmelites, and Augustinians.

The pretext for their destruction was, of course, the same inEngland as in all the other countries of Europe - their need ofreformation; but it does not appear that even this pretence wasput forward in the case of the Irish monasteries. The fact was,the breath of suspicion could not rest upon those stainlessestablishments in the Isle of Saints. In the idea of the natives,their very names had ever been synonymous with holiness and allChristian virtues, and so they continued to enjoy the mostunbounded popularity. The fact of the English Governmentselecting them as a special point of attack is in itselfsufficient to vindicate their character from any aspersion. Twomeasures were deemed necessary and sufficient for the purpose ofdetaching Ireland from its allegiance to the Holy See, and ofintroducing schism, if not heresy, into the country. One, andcertainly the most efficacious of these, was thought to be thedestruction of convents for both sexes. This, we affirm, isample apology for their inmates.

But this general reflection is not enough for our purpose, whichis, to delineate and bring out the true character of the nation.It is, therefore, fitting to give an idea of the extent to whichthe monastic influence prevailed, and of the nature of thepeople who cherished, loved, and accepted it at all times.

It may be said that the Christian Church, as established in theisland by St. Patrick, rested mainly for its support on thereligious orders. In many cases the abbots of monasteries weresuperior to bishops, and, as a general rule, the hierarchy ofthe Church was, as it were, subordinate to monasticestablishments.1 (1 Vide Montalembert's "Monks of the West:Bollandists, Oct.," tome xii., p. 888.) At the time we speak of,indeed, such was no longer the case; but the previously-existingstate of reciprocal subordination between abbots and bishopsduring several centuries, in Ireland,, had left deep traces inthe nature of the institutions and of the people itself. It maybe said that in the mind of an Irishman the existence ofChristianity almost presupposed a numerous array of convents andreligious houses. And this idea of theirs can scarcely be calleda wrong one, nor did they exaggerate the value of religiousorders, since their estimate of them was no higher than that ofChrist himself and his Church.

If with justice it was said that the French monarchy wasestablished by bishops, with equal justice may it be said thatthe Irish people had been educated, nay, created by monks. Themonks had taken the place left vacant by the Druids, and thusthey became for the Christian what the others had been for thepagan Irish. For a long period the Irish monks formed a veryconsiderable portion of the population. In their body wereconcentrated the gifts of science, art, holiness, even miracleswithout number, unless we are to suppose that the hagiography ofthe island was intrusted to the care of idiots incapable ofascertaining current facts. The vast literature of the island,greater indeed than that of any other Christian country at thetime, was either the product of monastic intellect and learning,or at least had been translated and preserved by monks. Thegifted Eugene O'Curry could fill numbers of the pages of hisgreat work with the bare titles of the books which are known tohave issued from the Irish monasteries, of which but a fewfragments remain; and no sensible man who has read his book canaffect to despise establishments which could produce so manyproofs of fancy, intellect, and erudition. The scatteredfragments of that rich literature, which had escaped the fury ofthe Scandinavian, the ignorance and rapacity of the early Anglo-Norman, the blind fanaticism of the Puritan, could still in theseventeenth century furnish materials enough for the immensecompilations of the Four Masters, Ward, Wadding, Lynch, andColgan.

What we have here stated is the simple, unvarnished truth; yetit is but yesterday that the subject has really begun to bestudied.

But what is chiefly worthy our attention is, that themonasteries were not only the seats of learning and literaturein Ireland, but they constituted and comprised in themselvesevery thing of value which the nation possessed. As they werefound everywhere, there was not room for much else in thedepartment they filled in the island. Take them away, and thecountry is a blank. So well were the crafty counsellors of HenryVIII. and Elizabeth satisfied of this, that they insisted on thedestruction of the monasteries, and turned all their efforts tocarry their purpose into effect.

Feudalism had failed in its endeavor to cover the country withcastles; the native royalty and inferior chieftainship beingengaged in constant bickerings with each other and with thecommon foe, had been unable to enrich the country with monumentsof art and wealthy palaces; the Church alone had accomplishedwhatever had been effected in this way, and in the Church themonks rather than the bishops had for a long time exercised thepreponderating influence. Hence, it may be truly said thatIreland was essentially a monastic country, more so than anyother nation of Christendom.

This fact explains how it happened that the monasticinstitutions could not be destroyed. The convent-walls might bebattered down, the more valuable edifices might be convertedinto dwellings for the new Protestant aristocracy, theirproperty might go to enrich upstarts, and feed the rapacity ofgreedy conquerors, but the institution itself could not perish.

It is true that in all Catholic countries this seems also to bethe case; but wide is the difference with regard to Ireland. Inall places religious establishments have frequently been theobject of anti-Christian fury and rage. They have often beendestroyed, and seem to have utterly disappeared, when the worldhas been surprised by their speedy resurrection. The fact is,the Church needs them, and the practice of evangelical counselsmust forever be in a state of active operation upon earth, sincethe grace of God always inspires with it a number of selectsouls. God is the source; consequently the stream must flow,since the life-spring is eternal and ever-running.

But in other countries besides the one under our considerationreligious houses and institutions have sometimes beeneffectually rooted out, at least for a time. When the FrenchConstituent Assembly, by one of its destructive decrees, closedthose establishments all over France, such of them as by theirlaxity deserved to die, ceased at once to exist, and pouredforth their inmates to swell the ranks of a corrupt society, andadd religious degradation to the immoral filth of the world.Those religious houses, within whose walls the spirit of God hadnot ceased to dwell, were indeed closed and emptied; but theirinmates endeavored to live their lives of religion in someunknown and obscure spot, until the madness of the Convention,and the Reign of Terror which soon followed, rendered thecontinuation of the holy exercises of any community absolutelyimpossible. But mark this well: the holy aims of the monks andnuns found no response in the nation, and, finding themselvesalmost entirely rejected by a faithless people, with no resting-place in the whole extent of the country, a sudden and totalinterruption of religious ascetic life in the once most Catholicnation of Europe was the result.

The same may soon come to pass in our days in Italy and Spain,until better times return to those now distracted countries, andthe extremities of evil bring them back to something of theirprimitive faith.

Not so in Ireland: the communities could continue to exist evenwhen turned out-of-doors, because the nation wanted them, andcould afford them asylum and peace in the worst periods ofpersecution. And this great fact of the mutual love betweenmonks, priests, and people, contributed also in no small degreeto that union among all, which henceforth became thecharacteristic feature of a people hitherto split up intohostile clans. Nothing probably tended so much toward effectingthe birth of the nation as the deep attachment existing betweenthe Irish and their religious orders. The latter had alwayspreached peace and often reconciled enemies, and brought furiousmen to the practice of Christian charity and forbearance.

We have seen instances of this when the clans were all powerfuland the chieftains thought of nothing but of "preyings," as theycalled them, compelling their enemies to give "hostages" anddevastating the territories of hostile clans. Then the voice ofthe monk came to be heard in the midst of contending passions,and real miracles were often performed by them in changing intolambs men who resembled roaring lions or devouring wolves; buttheir action became much more efficacious when nothing was leftto the people save their religion and the "friars." These, it istrue, could no longer reside within the walls of their convents,but on that very account their life became more truly one withthat of the people.

Sometimes they found refuge in the large, hospitable dwellingsof the native nobility, where, during the latter part of thereign of Henry VIII. and the whole of that of Elizabeth, thealmost independent power of the chieftains could still affordthem succor. Sometimes also the humbler dwelling of the farmeror the peasant offered them a sure asylum, wherein they couldpractise their ministry in almost perfect freedom, owing to thesure and inviolable secrecy of the inmates and neighbors. For agreat distance around, the Catholics knew of their abode, wereoften visited by them, even without mach danger of the factbecoming known to spies and informers. And this brings naturallybefore us a new feature of the Irish character.

Their nature, which was so expansive and passionate on all othersubjects, so that to keep a secret was an impossible feat tothem, wore another character when danger to their religion orits ministers required of them to set a seal on their lips. Foryears frequently, large numbers of priests and religious couldnot only exist, but move and work among them, without theirplace of abode becoming known to the swarms of enemies whosurrounded them. The nation was trained to prudence anddiscretion by centuries of oppression and tyranny. Many facts ofthis nature are known and recorded in the dark annals of thosetimes; but how many more will be known never!

Thus, in the year 1588, during the worst part of Elizabeth'sreign, "John O'Malloy, Cornelius Dogherty, and Walfried Ferral,of the order of St. Francis, fell finally victims to the maliceof the heretics. They had spent eight years in administering theconsolations of religion throughout the mountainous districts ofLeinster. Many families of Carlow, Wicklow, and Wexford, hadbeen compelled to take a refuge in the mountains from the furyof the English troops. The good Franciscans shared in all theirperils, travelling about from place to place, by night; theyvisited the sick, consoled the dying, and offered up the sacredmysteries for all. Oftentimes the hard rock was their only bed;but they willingly embraced nakedness, and hunger, and cold, toconsole their afflicted brethren." - (Moran's Archbishops ofDublin.)

In these few words, we have a picture of the mountain monastery.During those eight years, how many Irish were consoled andcomforted by those few laborers, who, driven from their holyhome, had chosen to live in the wilderness, and practise theirrule among the wandering people of three large counties,receiving in return the substance, the love, and loving secrecyof their flock! We have only to figure to ourselves this scene,or similar, repeated in every corner of the land, and we maythen easily understand how the Irish people were brought to theunanimous resolve of standing by each other, and how, from thestate of complete division which formerly prevailed, theelements of a compact, solid, and indestructible body, began toform.

We attribute this "birth of a nation" to Henry VIII., becausethe change which he tried to introduce into the religion of theisland constituted the occasion and origin of it; and, althoughhis reign never witnessed that perfect union of the people whichcame later on, nevertheless, it is true that then it surelybegan, and its origin was the attempt to establish his spiritualsupremacy in Ireland.

This feeling of union and strength in love went on growing, andshowed itself more and more, wring the two centuries whichfollowed, when so many scenes similar to the one described wereenacted in the remotest parts of the island. God, in his mercy,provided it with many high mountains, difficult of access, whosepaths were known only to the natives. In these fastnesses, theholy men, who had been driven from their dwellings and theirchurches, could rest in peace and attend to the duties of theiroffice. They could even recruit their shattered forces, admitnovices, and train them up; and thus their rule continued to beobserved, and their existence as a body protracted, long aftertheir enemies imagined that they had perished utterly. As soonas quiet was restored, when persecution abated, and breathing-time was given them, so that they could show themselves, withsome safety, more openly, they visited their old abodes, oftenfound some portions of the ruins which admitted of repair, anddwelt again in security where their predecessors had dwelt forcenturies.

The peasant's hut would also often afford them shelter; somesolitary farm-house on the borders of a lake, or near a deepmorass, took the name of their monastery; some cranogue in thelake, or dry spot in the thick of the morass, which they couldreach by paths known to themselves only, was their asylum intimes of extraordinary danger. In ordinary times, the farm-house,to which they had given the name of their lost monastery, wastheir convent. It was thus the brothers O'Cleary, and theircompanions, lived for years, editing the work of the "FourMasters," until, at length, they succeeded in publishing theirextraordinary "Annals." The manuscripts which, in spite of theraging persecution, and the "penal laws," they traversed thewhole island to collect, were preserved, with a reverend care,in a poor Irish hut. Literary treasures which have sinceunfortunately perished, but which they saved for a time from thereach of the enemy, and which they perpetuated by having themprinted, filled the poor presses and the old furniture of theirasylum, and, owing purely to the friendly help of those who hadgiven them shelter, they were enabled to enrich the world withtheir marvellous compilation.

From the mountain and the hut, on the river-side, the monks weresometimes allowed to move to their former dwellings, at the risk,nevertheless, of their liberty and lives. What their ancestorshad done during the Scandinavian invasions, when the monasterieswere so often destroyed and rebuilt, that did the monks of thesixteenth and seventeenth centuries likewise in many parts ofthe island.

Thus, Father Mooney, a Franciscan, relates that his monastery -that of Multifarnham - having been totally destroyed by SirFrancis Shean, and many monks having been killed, he, with a fewothers, after long and extraordinary adventures, came back tothe spot, then abandoned by the enemy, and "before the feast ofthe Nativity of our Lord, we built up a little house on the siteof the monastery, and there we dwelt who were left after theflight . . . . . Afterward, Father Nehemias Gregan, the fatherguardian, began to build a church, and to repair the monastery,and for this purpose caused much wood to be cut in the territoryof Deabhna McLochlain; and when they had roofed a chapel andsome other buildings, there came the soldiers of another SirFrancis Ringtia, and they burned down the monastery again, andcarried off some of the brethren captive to Dublin."

This convent of Multifarnham was raised a third time; and, infact, remained in possession of the Franciscans throughout thepersecution, so that to this day the old church has been restoredby them, and the modern house, which now forms their convent,is built on the site of the old monastery.

Such for a long time was the case with many other religiousestablishments; for the same Father Mooney, writing as late as1624, says: "When Queen Elizabeth strove to make all Irelandfall away from the Catholic faith, and a law was passedproscribing all the members of the religious orders, and givingtheir monasteries and possessions to the treasury, while all theothers took to flight, or at least quitted their houses, and,for safety's sake, lived privately and singly among theirfriends, and receiving no novices, the order of St. Francisalone ever remained, as it were, unshaken. For, though they wereviolently driven out of some convents to the great towns, andthe convents were profanely turned into dwellings for seculars,and some of the fathers suffered violence, and even death; yet,in the country and other remote places, they ever remained inthe convents, celebrating the divine office according to thecustom of religious, their preachers preaching to the people andperforming their other functions, training up novices andpreserving the conventual buildings, holding it sinful to layaside, or even hide, their religious habit, though for an hour,through any human fear. And, every three years, they held theirregular provincial chapters in the woods of the neighborhood,and observed the rule as it is kept in provinces that are inpeace."

Thus, when the Cromwellian persecution began, the religiousorders were again flourishing in Ireland. They had obtained fromthe Stuarts some relaxation in the execution of the laws, and,as all at the time were fighting for Charles I. against theParliamentarians, it was only natural that the authorities didnot carry out the barbarous laws to their full extent in theisland.

It is no matter of great surprise, therefore, that, in 1641,more than one hundred years after the decree of Henry VIII., theFranciscan order still possessed sixty-two flourishing houses inIreland, each with a numerous community, besides ten convents ofnuns of the order of St. Clare. The acts of the General Chapterof the Dominicans, held in Rome in 1656, referring to the samepersecution of Cromwell, state that, when it began, there wereforty-three convents of the order, containing about six hundredinmates, of whom only one-fourth survived the calamity. TheJesuits were eighty in number, in 1641, of whom only seventeenremained when the storm had passed away. From a petitionpresented to the Sacred Congregation, in 1654, we learn that allthe Capuchins had been banished, except a few who remained onthe island, where they lived as "shepherds," "herdsmen," or"tillers of the soil."

All the decrees of the Parliaments of Henry VIII. and Elizabethhad not succeeded, in the space of a century, in destroyingmonasticism; the Cromwellian war alone seemed to have done so,as it left the entire nation almost at the last gasp, on theverge of annihilation. Nevertheless, a few years saw the ordersagain revive and prepare to start their holy work anew. HenryVIII. then, and his vicar, Cromwell, deceived themselves inthinking that they had put an end to monasticism in the landwhich had been the cradle of so many families of religious. Theysucceeded only in intensifying the determination of Irishmen notto allow their nationality to be absorbed in that of England. Ifany thing was calculated to nourish and keep alive thatsentiment in their hearts, it was their daily communing with theholy men who shared their distress, their mountain-retreats,their poverty in the bogs, their wretchedness in the woods andglens. If monasticism had created and nurtured the nation on itsfirst becoming Christian, it gave to the people a second birthholier than the first, because consecrated by martyrdom.Henceforth, divided clans and antagonistic septs were to beunknown among them: only Catholic Irishmen were to remain rankedaround the successors of "the saints" of old, all determined tobe what they were, or die. But as laws, edicts, and measures offanatic frenzy cannot destroy a nation, the new people wasdestined to survive for better and brighter days.

We have anticipated the course of events somewhat, in order topass in review the chief facts connected with the designs of theEnglish Government upon the religious orders. These few wordswill suffice to give the reader an idea of the new characterwhich such events impressed upon the Irish nation. Every day sawit more compact; every day the resolve to fight to the death forGod's cause, grew stronger; the old occasions of division grewless and less, and that unanimity, which suffering for a noblecause naturally gives rise to in the human heart, showed itselfmore and more. A nation, in truth, was being born in the throesof a wide-spread and long-continued calamity; but long ages werein store in times to come to reward it for the misfortunes ofthe past.

It is a remarkable thing that, when England, through fear ofcivil war, was compelled to grant Catholic emancipation in 1829,when Irish agitators succeeded in wrenching it from the enemy,and obtaining it, not only for themselves, but likewise fortheir English Catholic brethren, the British statesmen, whofinally consented to such a tardy measure of justice, steadilyrefused, nevertheless, to extend the boon to the religiousorders. These remained under the ban, and so they remain still.The "penal laws" were never repealed for them, and, even to thisday, they are, according to law, strictly prohibited from"receiving novices" under all the barbarous penalties formerlyenacted and never abrogated.

But the nation has constantly considered this exception as notto be taken into account. The religious orders now existing areunder the protection of the people, and England has never daredto use even a threat against the open violation of these "laws."Dr. Madden, in his interesting work on "Penal Laws," givesprominence to this fact by warmly taking up the old theme ofthorough-going Irish Catholicity, by asserting, with force, that"religious orders are necessary to the Church," and that to denytheir right to exist, even though it be only on paper in thestatute-book, is none the less an outrage against so thoroughlyCatholic a nation as the Irish.

The only fact which appears to clash with our reflections is theone well ascertained and mentioned by us, that some native Irishlords occupied certain monasteries and took their share in thesacrilegious plunder. But a few chieftains cannot be said toconstitute the nation, and doubtless many of those who yieldedto the temptation, listened later to the reproving voice oftheir conscience, as in the following case, given by MilesO'Reilly, in his "Irish Martyrs:"

"Gelasius O'Cullenan, born of a noble family in Connaught . . .joined the Cistercian order. Having competed his studies inParis, the monastery of Boyle was destined as the field of hislabors. On his arrival in Ireland, he found that the monastery,with its property, had been seized on by one of the neighboringgentry, who was sheltered in his usurpation by the edict ofElizabeth. The abbot . . . went boldly to the usurping nobleman,admonishing him of the guilt he had incurred; and themalediction of Heaven, which he would assuredly draw down uponhis family. Moved by his exhortations, the nobleman restored tohim the full possession of the monastery and lands; and, sometime after, contemplating the holy life of its inmates, . . . he,too, renounced the world and joined the religious institute."

CHAPTER IX.

THE IRISH AND THE TUDORS.—ELIZABETH.—THE UNDAUNTED NOBILITY.—THE SUFFERING CHURCH.

On January 12, 1559, in the second year of the reign of
Elizabeth, a Parliament was convened in Dublin to pass the Act
of Supremacy; that is to say, to establish Lutheranism in
Ireland, as had already been done in England, under the garb of
Episcopalianism.

But the attempt was fated to encounter a more determinedopposition in Dublin than it had in London.

Sir James Ware says, in reference to it: "At the very beginningof this Parliament, her Majestie's well-wishers found that mostof the nobility and Commons—they were all English by blood orbirth—were divided in opinion about the ecclesiasticalgovernment, which caused the Earl of Sussex (Lord Deputy) todissolve them, and to go over to England to confer with herMajesty about the affairs of this kingdom.

"These differences were occasioned by the several alterationswhich had happened in ecclesiastical matters within the compassof twelve years.

"1. King Henry VIII. held the ecclesiastical supremacy with thefirst-fruits and tenths, maintaining the seven sacraments, withobits and mass for the living and the dead.

"2. King Edward abolished the mass, authorizing the book ofcommon prayers, and the consecration of the bread and wine inthe English tongue, and establishing only two sacraments.

"3. Queen Mary, after King Edward's decease, brought all backagain to the Church of Rome, and the papal obedience.

"4. Queen Elizabeth, on her first Parliament in England, tookaway the Pope's supremacy, reserving the tenths and first-fruitsto her heirs and successors. She put down the mass, and, for ageneral uniformity of worship in her dominions, as well inEngland as in Ireland, she established the book of commonprayers, and forbade the use of popish ceremonies."

Such is the very lucid sketch furnished by Ware of the changeswhich had taken place in religion in England within the briefspace of twelve years.

The members of the Irish Parliament, although of English descent,could not so easily reconcile themselves to these rapid changesas their fellows in England had done; in fact, they laid claimto a conscience—a thing seemingly unknown to the Englishmembers, or, if known at all, of an exceedingly elastic andslippery nature. Here lay the difficulty: how was it to beovercome? The conversation between Elizabeth and Sussex musthave been of a very interesting character.

Returning with private instructions from the queen, the Earl ofSussex again convened the Parliament, which only consisted ofthe so called representatives of ten counties—Dublin, Meath,West Meath, Louth, Kildare, Carlow, Kilkenny, Waterford,Tipperary, and Wexford. We see that the almost total extinctionof the Kildare branch of the Geraldines had extended the EnglishPale. The other deputies were citizens and burgesses of thosetowns in which the royal authority predominated. "With such anassembly," says Leland, "it is little wonder that, in despite ofclamor and opposition, in a session of a few weeks, the wholeecclesiastical system of Queen Mary was entirely reversed." Itis needless to remark that the people had nothing whatever to dowith this reversal; it merely looked on, or was alreadyorganizing for resistance.

Nevertheless, even in that assembly the queen's agents wereobliged to have recourse to fraud and deception, in order tocarry her measures, and it cannot be said that they obtained amajority.

"The proceedings," according to Mr. Haverty, "are involved inmystery, and the principal measures are believed to have beencarried by means fraudulent and clandestine." And, in a note, headds: "It is said that the Earl of Sussex, to calm the protestswhich were made in Parliament, when it was found that the lawhad been passed by a few members assembled privately, pledgedhimself solemnly that this statute would not be enforcedgenerally on laymen during the reign of Elizabeth."1 (1 Dr.Curry, in his "Civil Wars," has collected some curious facts inillustration of this point.)

Whatever the means adopted to introduce and carry out the newpolicy, it was certainly enacted that "the queen was the head ofthe Church of Ireland, the reformed worship was reestablished asunder Edward VI., and the book of common prayers, with furtheralterations, was reintroduced. A fine of twelve pence wasimposed on every person who should not attend the new service,for each offence; bishops were to be appointed only by the queen,and consecrated at her bidding. All officers and ministers,ecclesiastical or lay, were bound to take the oath of supremacy,under pain of forfeiture or incapacity; and any one whomaintained the spiritual supremacy of the Pope was to forfeit,for his first offence, all his estates, real and personal, or beimprisoned for one year, if not worth twenty pounds; for thesecond offence, to be liable to praemunire; and for the third,to be guilty of high-treason."

It was understood that those laws would be strictly enforcedagainst all priests and friars, though left generallyinoperative for lay people; and, with certain exceptions,mentioned by Dr. Curry, such was the rule observed. Thus, thereign of Elizabeth, which was such a cruel one for ecclesiastics,produced few martyrs among the laity in Ireland. And, for thisreason, Sir James Ware is able to boast that, in all the"rebellions" of the Irish against Elizabeth; they falselycomplained that their freedom of worship was curtailed, asthough they could worship without either priests or churches.

But the law was passed which made it "high-treason" to assert,three times in succession, the spiritual supremacy of the Pope;and, henceforth, whoever should suffer in defence of thatCatholic dogma, was to be a traitor and not a martyr.

The woman, seated on the English throne, speedily discoveredthat it was not so easy a matter to change the religion of theIrish as it had been to subvert completely that of her ownpeople.

Deprived of religious houses and means of instruction, deprivedof priests and churches, no communication with Rome save bystealth, the Irish still showed their oppressors that theirconsciences were free, and that no acts of Parliament orsentences of iniquitous tribunals could prevent their remainingCatholics.

By promising to deal as lightly with the laity as severely withthe clergy, Elizabeth felt confident that the Catholic religionwould soon perish in Ireland, and that, with the disappearanceof the priests, the churches, sacraments, instruction, and opencommunion with Rome, would also disappear. To all seeming, hersurmises were correct; but the people were silently gatheringand uniting together as they had never done before.

The whole of Elizabeth's Irish policy may be comprised under twoheadings: 1. Her policy toward the nobles, apparently one ofcompromise and toleration, but really one of destruction, and sorightly did they understand it that they rose and called inforeign aid to their assistance; 2. Her church policy, one ofblood and total overthrow, which priests and people, now unitedforever in the same great cause, resisted from the outset, andfinally defeated; and the decrees of high-treason, which werecarried out with frightful barbarity, only served to confirm theIrish people in that unanimity which the wily dealings of HenryVIII. had originated.

I. With the nobility Elizabeth hoped to succeed by flattery,cunning, deceit, finally by treachery, and sowing dissensionamong them; but all her efforts only served to knit them morefirmly one to another, and to revive among them the true spiritof nationality and patriotism.

She did not state to them that her great object was to destroythe Catholic Church; neverthless they should have felt andresented it from the beginning; above all, ought they to havegiven expression to the contempt they entertained for the baitheld out to them that the "laws" would not be executed againstthem, but against Churchmen only. Had they been truly animatedby the feelings which already possessed the hearts of the people,they would have scornfuly rejected the compromise proposed.

But she appeared to allow them perfect freedom in religiousmatters; she subjected them to no oath, as in England; the newlaws were a dead letter as far as regarded the native lords, wholived under other laws and remained silent, as with the lords ofthe Pale. Yet nothing was of such importance in her eyes as theenforcement of those decrees; consequently, she could onlyaccomplish her designs by deceit. George Browne, the firstProtestant Archbishop of Dublin, had predicted that the oldIrish race and the Anglo-Irish chieftains would unite andcombine with Continental powers in order to establish theirindependence. The whole policy of Elizabeth's reign would giveus reason to believe that she rightly understood the deep remarkof the worldly heretic. Hence, although (or, rather, because)the north, Ulster, was at that time the stronghold of Catholicfeeling, and the O'Neills and O'Donnells its leaders, sheflatters them, has them brought to her court, pardons several"rebellions" of Shane the Proud, and afterward loads with herfavors the young Hugh of Tyrone, whom she kept at her own court.She would dazzle them by the splendor of that court, by theroyal presents she so royally lavishes upon them, and by theprospect of greater favors still to come. Meanwhile on the southshe turns a stern eye, and makes up her mind to destroy what isleft of the Geraldine family. This was to be the beginning ofthe war of extermination, and the nobility which at the time wasdisunited became firmly consolidated shortly after.

It is needless to go into the glorious and romantic history ofthe Geraldine family. Elizabeth chose them for the first objectof her attack, because they, as Anglo-Irish Catholics, were moreodious in her eye than the pure Irish.

She knew that the then Earl of Desmond had escaped almost bymiracle from the island with his younger brother John, when therest of the noble stock had been butchered at Tyburn. She knewthat Gerald, after many wanderings, had finally reached Rome,been educated under the care of his kinsman, Cardinal Pole,cherished as a dear son by the reigning Pontiff, hadsubsequently appeared at the Tuscan court of Cosmo de Medici;that consequently, since his return to Ireland, he might beconsidered the chief of the Catholic party there, although, tosave himself from attainder and hold possession of his immensewealth in Munster, he displayed the greatest reserve in all hisactions, appeared to respect the orders of the queen in allthings, even in her external policy against the Church; so thatif priests were entertained in his castles, it was always bystealth, and they were compelled to lead a life of totalretirement.

But, despite all this outward show, Elizabeth knew that Geraldwas really a sincere Catholic, that he considered himself asovereign prince, and would consequently have small scrupleabout entering into a league against her, not only with thenorthern Irish chieftains, but even with the Catholic princes ofthe Continent. She resolved, therefore, to destroy him.

Sidney was sent to Ireland as lord-lieutenant. He travelledfirst through all Munster, and complained bitterly that theIrish chieftains were destroying the country by their divisions,though perfectly conscious that those divisions were secretlyencouraged by England. He appeared to listen to the people, whenthey complained of their lords, and yet at the holding ofassizes he hanged this same people on the flimsiest pretexts,and had them executed wholesale. In one of his dispatches to thehome government, he makes complacent allusion to the countlessexecutions which accompanied his triumphant progress throughMunster: "I wrote not," he says, "the name of each particularvarlet that has died since I arrived, as well by the ordinarycourse of the law, and the martial law, as flat fighting withthem, when they would take food without the good-will of thegiver; for I think it is no stuff worthy the loading of myletters with; but I do assure you, the number of them is great,and some of the best, and the rest tremble. For the most partthey fight for their dinner, and many of them lose their headsbefore they are served with supper. Down they go in every corner,and down they shall go, God willing."—(Sidney's Dispatches, Br. M.)

This was the man who announced himself as the avenger of thepeople on their rulers. He complained chiefly of Gerald ofDesmond, and, without any pretext, summoned him with his brotherJohn, carried them prisoners to Dublin, and afterward sent themto the Tower of London. The shanachy of the family relates thatthen, and then only, Gerald sent a private message to hiskinsmen and retainers, appointing his cousin James, son ofMaurice, known as James Fitzmaurice, the head and leader in hisfamily during his own absence.

"For James," says the shanachy, "was well known for hisattachment to the ancient faith, no less than for his valor andchivalry, and gladly did the people of old Desmond receive thesecommands, and inviolable was their attachment to him who was nowtheir appointed chieftain."

James began directly to organize the memorable "Geraldine League," upon the fortunes of which, for years, the attention ofChristendom was fixed.

This, the first open treaty of Irish lords with the Pope, as asovereign prince, and with the King of Spain, calls for a fewremarks on the right of the Irish to declare open war withEngland, and choose their own friends and allies, without beingrebels.

The English were at this very time so conscious of the weaknessof their title to the sovereignty of Ireland, that they werecontinually striving to prop up their claims by the most absurdpretensions.

In the posthumous act of attainder against Shane O'Neill in theIrish Parliament of 1569, Elizabeth's ministers affected totrace her title to the realm of Ireland back to a periodanterior to the Milesian race of kings. They invented aridiculous story of a "King Gurmondus," son to the noble KingBelan of Great Britain, who was lord of Bayon in Spain—theyprobably meant Bayonne in France—as were many of his successorsdown to the time of Henry II., who possessed the island afterthe "comeing of Irishmen into the same lande."—(Haverty, IrishStatutes, 2 Eliz., sess. 3, cap. i.)

These learned men who flourished in the golden reign ofElizabeth must have thought the Irish very easily imposed uponif they imagined they could give ear to such a fabrication, at atime when each great family had its own chronicler to trace itspedigree back to the very source of the race of Miledh.

The title of conquest, at that time a valid one in all countries,had no value with the Irish who never had been and neveradmitted themselves to have been conquered. Had they notpreserved their own laws, customs, language, local governments?Had the English ever even attempted to subject them to theirlaws? They had openly refused to grant their pretended benefitsto those few "degenerate Irishmen" who in sheer despair hadapplied for them. This policy of separation was adopted byEngland with the view of "rooting out" the Irish. The EnglishGovernment could therefore only accept the natural consequenceof such a system—that the Irish race should be left to itself,in the full enjoyment of its own laws and local governments.

The very policy of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, as displayed intheir attempt to break down the clans by favoring "well-disposedIrishmen" and setting them up, by fraudulent elections, aschiefs of the various septs, proves that the English themselvesadmitted the clans to be real nation—nationes—as they werecalled at the time by Irish chroniclers and by English writerseven. It was an acknowledgment of the plain fact that thenatives possessed and exercised their own laws of succession andelection, their own government and autonomy.

The disappearance of the Ard-Righ, who had held the titularpower over the whole country, is no proof that the Irishpossessed no government: for they themselves had refused forseveral centuries to acknowledge his power. The island was splitup into several small independent states, each with the right oflevying war, and making peace and alliance. Gillapatrick, ofOssory, dispatched his ambassador to Henry VIII. to announcethat if he, the English king, did not prevent his deputy, RufusPierce, of Dublin, from annoying the clans of Ossory,Gillapatrick would, in self-defence, declare war against theKing of England. And the imperious Henry Tudor, instead oflaughing at the threat of the chieftain; was shrewd enough torecognize its significance, and prevented it being carried intoexecution by admitting the cause as valid, and submitting theconduct of his deputy to an investigation.

Moreover, the principles by which Christendom had been ruled forcenturies, were just then being broken up by the advent ofProtestantism; and novel theories were being introduced for thegovernment of modern nations. What were the old principles, andwhat the new; and how stood Ireland with respect to each?

In the old organization of Christendom, the key-stone of thewhole political edifice was the papacy. Up to the sixteenthcentury, the Sovereign Pontiff had been acknowledged by allChristian nations as supreme arbiter in international questions,and if England did possess any shadow of authority over Ireland,it was owing to former decisions of popes, who, beingmisinformed, had allowed the Anglo-Norman kings to establishtheir power in the island. Whatever may be thought of the bullof Adrian IV., this much is certain: we do not pretend to solvethat vexed historical problem.

But, by rebelling against Rome, by rejecting the title of thePope, England threw away even that claim, and by the bull ofexcommunication, issued against Elizabeth, the Irish werereleased from their allegiance to her, supposing that suchallegiance had existed, solely built upon this claim.

So well was this understood at the time, that the Roman Pontiffs,as rulers of the Papal States, the Emperors of Germany, asheads of the German Empire, and the Kings of Spain and France,always covertly and sometimes openly received the envoys ofO'Neill, Desmond, and O'Donnell, and openly dispatched troopsand fleets to assist the Irish in their struggle for their defacto independence.

All this was in perfect accordance, not merely with theauthority which Catholic powers still recognized in theSovereign Pontiff, but even with the new order of things whichProtestantism had introduced into Western Europe, and whichEngland, as henceforth a leading Protestant power, had acceptedand eagerly embraced. By the rejection of the supremearbitration of the Popes, on the part of the new heretics,Europe lost its unity as Christendom, and naturally formeditself into two leagues, the Catholic and the Protestant. Anoppressed Catholic nationality, above all a weak and powerlessone, had therefore the right of appeal to the great Catholicpowers for help against oppression. And the pretension ofEngland to the possession of Ireland was the very essence ofoppression and tyranny in itself, doubly aggravated by the factof an apostate and vicious king or queen making it treason for apeople, utterly separate and distinct from theirs, to hold fastto its ancient and revered religion.

Who can say, then, that Gregory XIII. was guilty of injusticeand of abetting rebellion when, in 1578, he furnished JamesFitzmaurice, the great Geraldine, with a fleet and army to fightagainst Elizabeth? The authority greatest in Catholic eyes, andmost worthy of respect in the eyes of all impartial men—thePope— thus endorsed the patent fact that Ireland was anindependent nation, and could wage war against her oppressors.Here we have a stand-point from which to argue the question forfuture times.

The rash or, perhaps, treacherous share taken by a few Irishchieftains, in the schismatical and heretical as well asunpatriotic decrees of the Parliament of 1541, and in thesubsequent ones of 1549, could compromise the Irish nation innowise, inasmuch as the people, being still even in legalenjoyment of their own government, their chieftains possessed noauthority to decide on such questions without the fullconcurrence of their clans, and these had already pronounced,clearly enough and unmistakably, on the return of their lordsfrom their title-hunting expedition in England.

All the chroniclers of the time agree that "the people" wasinvariably sound in faith, siding with the chieftains whereverthey rose in opposition to oppressive decrees, abandoning themwhen they showed signs of wavering, even; but, above all, whenthey ranged themselves with the oppressors of the Church. TheEnglish Protestant writers of the period confirm this honorabletestimony of the Irish bards, by constantly accusing the nativesof a "rebellious" spirit.

The history of the Geraldine struggle is known to all readers ofIrish history, and does not enter into the scope of these pages.We have, however, to consider the foreign aid which thechieftains received, from Spain chiefly, and the causes of thesefailures, which at first would seem to argue a lack of firmnesson the part of the Irish themselves. During the Geraldine wars,and later on in what is called the rebellion of Hugh O'Neill andHugh O'Donnell, the King of Spain sent vessels and troops to theassistance of the Irish. All these expeditions failed, and thedestruction of the natives was far greater than it mightotherwise have been, in consequence of the greater number ofEnglish troops sent to Ireland to face the expected Spanishinvasion.

The same ill success attended the French fleet and armydispatched to Limerick by Louis XIV. to assist James II., and,later still, the large fleet and well-appointed troops sent bythe French Convention to the aid of the "United Irishmen," in1798.

In like manner, the Vendeans, on the other side, those French"rebels" against the Convention itself, received their death-blow in consequence of the English who were sent to their succorat Quiberon.

It seems, indeed, a universal historic law that, when a nationor a party in a nation struggles against another, the almostinvariable consequence of foreign aid is failure; but noconclusion can be deduced from that fact of lack of bravery,steadfastness, even ultimate success, on the part of those whorise in arms against oppression. Of the many causes which may beassigned to that apparently strange law of history, the chiefare:

1. The difficulty of effecting a joint and simultaneous effortbetween the insurgent forces and the distant friendly power.Help comes either too soon or too late, or lands on a point ofthe coast where aid is worse than useless, and where it onlythrows confusion into the ranks of the struggling native forces,whose plans are thus all disarranged, disconcerted, and throwninto confusion. Add to this the dangers of the sea, the possiblyinsufficient knowledge of the soundings and of the nature of thecoast, the differences of spirit, customs, and language, of thetwo coalescing forces, and it may be easily concluded that thechances of success, as opposed to those of failure, are butscanty.

2. The forces against which the coalition is made are alwaysimmeasurably increased for the very purpose of meeting it, itspurport being always known beforehand. In the case underconsideration, it were easy to show that Elizabeth was promptedby the fear of Spain to be speedy in crushing the attempted"rebellions" in the south and north. Historians have made acomputation of the troops dispatched from England by the queen,and of the treasure spent in these expeditions during her reign,and the result is astonishing for the times. In fact, the wholestrength of England was brought into requisition for the purposeof overpowering Ireland.

In our own days, the successful insurrection of Greece againstTurkey seems at variance with these considerations. But theindependence of the Greeks was brought about rather by theunanimous voice of Europe coercing Turkey than by the few troopssent from France, or by the few English or Poles who volunteeredtheir aid to the insurgents.

The remarks we have made may be further corroborated by thereflection that the successful risings of oppressednationalities, recorded in modern history, were wholly effectedby the unaided forces of the insurgents. Thus, the seven cantonsof Switzerland succeeded against Austria, the Venetian Republicagainst the barbarians of the North, the Portuguese in theBraganza revolution against Spain, and the United Provinces ofthe Low Countries against Spain and Germany.

The only historical instance which may contravene this generalrule is found in the Revolution of the United States of America,where the French cooperation was timely and of real use, chieflybecause the foreign aid was placed entirely under the controland at the command of the supreme head of the colonists, GeneralWashington.

These few words suffice for our purpose.

The policy of Elizabeth toward the Irish nobility is well knownto our readers. The fate of the house of Desmond was, in hermind, sealed from the beginning. It is now an ascertained factthat she drove the great earl into rebellion, who, for a longtime, refused openly to avow his approbation of theconfederates' schemes, and even seemed at first to cooperatewith the queen's forces, in opposition to them. It was onlyafter his cousin Fitzmaurice and his brother John had beenalmost ruined that, convinced of the determination of theEnglish Government to seize and occupy Munster with his five orsix millions of acres, he boldly stood up for his faith and hiscountry, and perished in the attempt.

It was then that "Protestant plantations" began in Ireland. Theconfiscated estates of Desmond—which, in reality, did notbelong to him but to his tribe—were handed over to companies of"planters out of Devonshire, Dorsetshire, and Somersetshire, outof Lancashire and Cheshire, organized for defence and to besupported by standing forces."—(Prendergast.)

Then the work set on foot by Henry II. in favor of Strongbow, DeLacy, De Courcy, and others, was resumed, after an interval offour hundred years, to be carried through to the end; that is tosay, to the complete pauperizing of the native race.

Among the "undertakers" and "planters" introduced into Munsterby Elizabeth, a word may not be out of place on Edmund Spenserand Walter Raleigh, the first a great poet, the second a greatwarrior and courtier. They both united in advocating theextermination of the native race, a policy which Henry VIII. wastoo high-minded to accept, and Elizabeth too great a despiser of"the people" to notice. To Henry and Elizabeth Tudor the peoplewas nothing; the nobility every thing. Spenser, Raleigh, andother Englishmen of note, who came into daily contact with thenation, saw very well that account should be taken of it, andthought, as Sir John Davies had thought before them, that itought to be "rooted out." That great question of the Irishpeople was assuming vaster proportions every day; the people wassoon to show itself in all its strength and reality, to becrushed out apparently by Cromwell, but really to be preservedby Providence for a future age, now at hand to-day.

Spenser and Raleigh, being gifted with keener foresight thanmost of their countrymen, were for the entire destruction of thepeople, thinking, as did many French revolutionists of our owndays, that "only the dead never come back."

The author of the "Faerie Queene," who had taken an active partin the horrible butcheries of the Geraldine war, when all theIrish of Munster were indiscriminately slaughtered, insistedthat a similar policy should be adopted for the whole island. Inhis work "On the State of Ireland," he asks for "large masses oftroops to tread down all that standeth before them on foot, andlay on the ground all the stiff-necked people of that land." Heurges that the war be carried on not only in the summer but inthe winter; "for then, the trees are bare and naked, which useboth to hold and house the kerne; the ground is cold and wet,which useth to be his bedding; the air is sharp and bitter, toblow through his naked sides and legs; the kine are barren andwithout milk, which useth to be his food, besides being all withcalf (for the most part), they will through much chasing anddriving cast all their calf, and lose all their milk, whichshould relieve him in the next summer."

Spenser here employs his splendid imagination to presentgloatingly such details as the most effective means for thedestruction of the hated race. All he demands is, that "the endshould be very short," and he gives us an example of theeffectiveness and beauty of his system "in the late wars inMunster." For, "notwithstanding that the same" (Munster) "was amost rich and plentiful country, full of corne and cattle, . . .yet ere one yeare and a half they" (the Irish) "were brought tosuch wretchednesse as that any stony heart would have rued thesame. Out of every corner of woods and glynnes, they camecreeping forthe upon their hands, for their legges could notbeare them; they looked like anatomies of death; they spoke likeghosts crying out of their graves . . . . that in short spacethere were none almost left, and a most populous and plentifulcountry suddenly left void of man and beast."

Such is a picture, horribly graphic, of the state to whichMunster had been reduced by the policy of England as carried outby a Gilbert, a Peter Carew, and a Cosby; and to this pass the"gentle" Spenser would have wished to see the whole country come.

Even Mr. Froude is compelled to denounce in scathing terms themonsters employed by the queen, and his facts are all derived,he tells us, from existing "state papers."

Writing of the end of the Geraldine war, he says: "The Englishnation was at that time shuddering over the atrocities of theDuke of Alva. The children in the nurseries were being inflamedto patriotic rage and madness by the tales of Spanish tyranny.Yet, Alva's bloody sword never touched the young, defenceless,or those whose sex even dogs can recognize and respect.

"Sir Peter Carew has been seen murdering women and children, andbabies that had scarcely left the breast; but Sir Peter Carewwas not called on to answer for his conduct, and remained infavor with the deputy. Gilbert, who was left in command atKilnallock, was illustrating yet more signally the same tendency." Nor "was Gilbert a bad man. As time went on, he passed for abrave and chivalrous gentleman, not the least distinguished inthat high band of adventurers who carried the English flag intothe western hemisphere . . . . above all, a man of 'specialpiety.' He regarded himself as dealing rather with savage beaststhan with human beings (in Ireland), and, when he tracked themto their dens, he strangled the cubs, and rooted out the entirebrood.

"The Gilbert method of treatment has this disadvantage, that itmust be carried out to the last extremity, or it ought not to betried at all. The dead do not come back; and if the mothers andbabies are slaughtered with the men, the race gives no furthertrouble; but the work must be done thoroughly; partial andfitful cruelty lays up only a long debt of deserved and ever-deepening hate.

"In justice to the English soldiers, however, it must be saidthat it was no fault of theirs if any Irish child of thatgeneration was allowed to live to manhood."—(Hist. of Engl.,vol. x., p. 507.)

These Munster horrors occurred directly after the defeat of theIrish at Kinsale. Cromwell, therefore, in the atrocities whichwill come under our notice, only followed out the policy of the"Virgin Queen." And it is but too evident that the English of1598 were the fathers or grandfathers of those of 1650. Bothwere inaugurating a system of warfare which had never beenadopted before, even among pagans, unless by the Tartar troopsunder Genghis Khan; a system which in future ages should shapethe policy, which was followed, for a short time, by the FrenchConvention in la Vendee.

Raleigh, as well as Spenser, seems to have been a vigorousadvocate of this system. It is true that his sole appearance onthe scene was on the occasion of the surrender of Smerwick bythe Spanish garrison; but the Saxon spirit of the man wasdisplayed in his execution of Lord Grey's orders, who, after,according to all the Irish accounts, promising their lives tothe Spaniards, had them executed; and Raleigh appears to havedirected that execution, whereby eight hundred prisoners of warwere cruelly butchered and flung over the rocks in the sea. Fromthat time out the phrase "Grey's faith" (Graia fides) became aproverb with the Irish.

After having succeeded in crushing Desmond and "planting "Munster, the attention of Elizabeth was directed to the 0'Neillsand O'Donnells of Ulster. That thrilling history is well known.It is enough to say that O'Donnell from his youth was designedlyexasperated by ill-treatment and imprisonment; and that as soonas O'Neill, who had been treated with the greatest apparentkindness by the queen, that he might become a queen's man,showed that he was still an Irishman and a lover of his country,he was marked out as a victim, and all the troops and treasuresof England were poured out lavishly to crush him and destroy theroyal races of the north.

In that gigantic struggle one feature is remarkable—that,whenever the English Government felt obliged to come to termswith the last asserters of Irish independence, the firstcondition invariably laid down by O'Neill and O'Donnell was thefree exercise of the Catholic religion. For we must not losesight of the well-ascertained fact that the English queen, whoat the very commencement of her reign had had her spiritualsupremacy acknowledged by the Irish Parliament under pain offorfeiture, praemunire, and high-treason, insisted all along onthe binding obligation of this title; and though at first shehad secretly promised that this law should not be enforcedagainst the laity, she showed by all her measures that itsobservance was of paramount importance in her eyes.

Had the Irish followed the English as a nation, and acceptedProtestantism, Elizabeth would scarcely have made war upon them,nor introduced her "plantations." All along the Irish were"traitors" and "rebels" simply because they chose to remainCatholics, and McGeoghegan has well remarked that, "not-withstanding the severe laws enacted by Henry VIII., Edward VI.,and Elizabeth, down to James I., it is a well-established truththat, during that period, the number of Irishmen who embracedthe 'reformed religion' did not amount to sixty in a countrywhich at the time contained two millions of souls." AndMcGeoghegan might have added that, of these sixty, not onebelonged to the people; they were all native chieftains who soldtheir religion in order to hold their estates or receive favorsfrom the queen.

Sir James Ware is bold enough to say that, in all her dealingswith the Irish nobility, Elizabeth never mentioned religion, andtheir right of practising it as they wished never came into thequestion. She certainly never subjected them to any oath, as wasthe case in England. Technically speaking, this statement seemscorrect. Yet it is undeniable that Elizabeth allowed no Catholicbishops or priests to remain in the island; permitted the Irishto have none but Protestant school-teachers for their children;bestowed all their churches on heretical ministers; closed, oneby one, all the buildings which Catholics used for their worship, as soon as their existence became known to the police; in factobliged them to practise Protestantism or no religion at all.

In the eyes of Elizabeth a Catholic was a "rebel." Whoever wasexecuted for religion during her reign was executed for"rebellion." The Roman emperors who persecuted the Church duringthe first three centuries, might have advanced the samepretences And indeed the early Christians were said to betortured and executed for their "violation of the laws of theempire."

This point will come more clearly before us in considering thesecond phase of the policy of Elizabeth, her direct interferencewith the Church.

II. If the policy of England's queen had been one of treacheryand deceit toward the nobility, toward the Church it wasavowedly one of blood and destruction.

Well-intentioned and otherwise well-informed writers, among themMr. Prendergast, seem to consider that the main object of theatrocious proceedings we now proceed to glance at was "greed,"and that the English Government merely connived at the covetousdesires of adventurers and undertakers, who wished to destroythe Irish and occupy their lands; for, as Spenser says "Sure itwas a most beautiful and sweete country as any under heaven,being stored throughout with many goodly rivers, replenishedwith all sorts of fish most abundantly; sprinkled with many verysweete islands, and goodly lakes like little inland seas;adorned with goodly woods; also full of very good ports andhavens opening upon England as inviting us to come into them."

Such, according to those writers, was the policy of England fromthe first landing of Strongbow on the shores of Erin, and evenduring the preceding four centuries, when both races wereCatholic, and the conversion of the natives to Protestantismcould not enter the thoughts of the invaders.

This, to a certain extent, is true. Still, it seems verydoubtful to us that Elizabeth should have undertaken so manywars in Ireland, which lasted through her whole reign, and onwhich she employed all the strength and resources of England,merely to please a certain number of nobles who wished to findforeign estates whereon to settle their numerous offspring.

The chief importance, in her eyes, of the conquest was clearlyto establish her spiritual superiority in that part of herdominions. She would have left the native nobles at peace, andeven conferred on them her choicest favors, had they onlyconsented, as English subjects, to break with Rome. Rome hadexcommunicated her; Pius V. had released her subjects from theirallegiance because of her heresy, and Ireland did not reject thebull of the Pope. This in her eyes constituted the great andunpardonable offence of the Irish. And that, for her, the wholequestion bore a religious character, will appear more clearlyfrom her conduct toward the Catholic Church throughout her reign.Into this part of our subject the examination of the step takenby Pius V. naturally enters, and, in examining it, we shall seewhether, and how far, the Irish can be called rebels and"traitors."

In his history of the Reformation, Dr. Heylin says of Elizae'ssupremacy could not stand together, and she could not possiblymaintain the one without discarding the other." This isperfectly true, and furnishes us with the key to all her churchmeasures.

She pretended to be a Catholic during Mary's reign; but it wasmerely pretence. To persevere in Catholicity required of her thesacrifice of her political aspirations; for the Church could notadmit of her legitimacy, and consequently her title to the crownof England. Hence, upon the death of Mary Tudor, the Queen ofScots immediately assumed the title of Queen of England; andalthough the Pope, then Pius IV., did not immediately declarehimself in favor of Mary Stuart, but reserved his decision for afuture period, nevertheless, the view of the case adopted by thePontiff could not be mistaken. Elizabeth's legitimacy, or, asHeylin has it, "legitimation and the Pope's supremacy could notstand together." No course was left open to her, then, than toreject the pontifical authority, and establish her own in herdominions, as she did not possess faith enough to set her soulabove a crown; and the success of her father, Henry VIII., andof her half-brother, Edward VI., encouraged her in this step.This fully explains her policy. It became a principle with herthat, to accept the Pope's supremacy in spirituals, was to denyher legitimacy, and consequently to be guilty of treason againsther. This made the position of Catholics in England and Irelanda most trying one. But their moral duty was clear enough, andevery other obligation had to give way before that. In thepersecution which followed they were certainly martyrs to theirduty and their religion.

That the question of the succession in England was an open one,must be admitted by every candid man. Who was the legitimateQueen of England at the death of Mary Tudor? The Queen of Scotsassumed the title, and, as the legitimate offspring of thesister of Henry VIII., she had the right to it as the nearestdirect descendant in the event of Elizabeth's pretensions notbeing admitted by the nation. The nation at the time was in fact,though not in right, the nobles, who enriched themselves at theexpense of the Church, and were therefore deeply interested inthe exclusion of Catholic principles. A Parliament composed ofthe nobles had already acknowledged Elizabeth to the exclusionof the Queen of Scots, and the former decision was reaffirmed asagainst a "female pretender" supported by a foreign power,namely, France.

England, that is to say, the corrupt nobility of the kingdom, bytaking upon itself that decision, refused to submit the questionto the arbitration of the Pope; and thus, for the first time,the principles which had guided Christendom for eight hundredyears, were discarded. Yet, under Mary, the Catholic Church hadbeen declared the Church of the state; at her death, no changetook place; the mass of the people was still Catholic. It tookElizabeth her whole reign to make the English a thoroughlyProtestant people. The great mass of the nation cameconsequently then, even legally, under the law of mediaevaltimes, which surrendered the decision of such cases into thehands of the Roman Pontiff.

Again, when we reflect that our preset object is theconsideration of who was the legitimate Queen of Ireland, thequestion becomes clearer and simpler still. The supremacy ofHenry VIII. had never been acknowledged in the island, even bythose who had subscribed to the decrees of the Parliament of1541 and 1569. The Irish chieftains had not only never assented,but had always preserved their independence in all, save thesuzerainty of the English monarchs, and they were at the time,without exception, Catholics. For them, therefore, the Pope wasthe expounder of the law of succession to the throne, as, up tothat time, he had been generally recognized in Europe. Elizabeth,consequently, as an acknowledged illegitimate child, could notbecome a legitimate queen without a positive declaration andelection by the true representatives of the people, approved bythe Pope. Her assumption, then, of the supreme government was amere usurpation. The theory of governments de facto being obeyedas quasi-legitimate had not yet been mooted among lawyers andtheologians. With respect to the whole question, there can be nodoubt as to the conclusion at which any able constitutionaljurist of our days would arrive.

Could usurped rights such as these invest Elizabeth withauthority to declare herself paramount not only in political butalso in religious matters? And, because she was called queen,can it be considered treason for an Irishman to believe in thespiritual supremacy of the Pope? Yet, unless we look upon asmartyrs those who died on the rack and the gibbet in Irelandduring her reign, because they refused to admit in a woman thetitle of Vicar of Christ, to such decision must we come.

The policy of the English queen toward Catholic bishops, priests,and monks, presents the question in a still stronger light. Itschief feature will now come before us, and will show how all ofthese suffered for Christ. We say all, because not only thoseare included in the category who held aloof from politics andconfined themselves to the exercise of their spiritual functions,but those also who, at the bidding of the Pope, or followingthe natural promptings of their own inclinations, favored the so-called rebellion of the Geraldine and of the Ulster chieftains.The lives and death of both are now well known, and to both weaward the title of heroes and Christian martyrs.

As it would be too long to present here a complete picture ofthose events, and trace the biography of many of those whosuffered persecution at that time, we content ourselves with twofaithful representatives of the classes above mentioned—RichardCreagh, Archbishop of Armagh, and Dr. Hurley, Archbishop ofCashel. The case of the great Oliver Plunkett, who sufferedunder Charles II., and who was the victim of the entire Englishnation, is beyond our present discussion.

The biography of the first of these has been written by severalauthors, who, agreeing as to the main facts of his history,differ only in their chronology. Dr. Roothe's account is thelongest of all and is intricate, and subject to some confusionwith regard to dates; but a sketch of that life, which appearedin the Rambler of April, 1853, is the most consistent and easilyreconciled with the well-known facts of the general history ofthe period, and therefore we follow it:

Richard Creagh, proposed for the See of Armagh by the nuncio,David Wolfe, arrived at Limerick in the August of 1560, at thevery beginning of the reign of Elizabeth. Pius IV., who was thenPontiff, had not come to any conclusion respecting thesovereignty of England, and did not openly declare himself infavor of the right of Mary Stuart to the crown. The Pope, nothaving given any positive injunctions to Archbishop Creagh, withregard to his political conduct, the latter was left free tofollow the dictates of his conscience. He came only with aletter, to Shane O'Neill, who, at the time, was almostindependent in Ulster.

Not only did the archbishop not take any part in the politicalmeasures of the Ulster chieftain, who was often at war withElizabeth, but he soon came to a disagreement with him on purelyconscientious grounds, and finally excommunicated him. In themidst of the many difficulties which surrounded him, he resolvedto inculcate peace and loyalty to Elizabeth throughout Ulster,asking of Shane only one favor, that of founding colleges andschools, and thinking that, by remaining loyal to the queen, hemight obtain her assistance in founding a university. The goodprelate little knew the character of the woman with whom he hadto deal, imagining probably that the decree of her spiritualsupremacy would remain a dead letter for the priesthood, as hadbeen falsely promised to the laity.

But he was not left long to indulge in these delusions; for, inthe act of celebrating mass in a monastery of his diocese, hewas betrayed by some informer, and was arrested by a troop ofsoldiers, who conducted him before the government authorities,by whom he was sent to London and confined in the Tower onJanuary 18,1565. He was there several times interrogated byCecil and the Recorder of London, who could easily ascertainthat the prelate was altogether guiltless of political intrigue.

He escaped miraculously, passed through Louvain, went to Spain,at the time at peace with England, and, wishing to return toIreland, wrote, through the Spanish ambassador, to Leicester,then all-powerful with the queen, to protest beforehand that, ifthe Pope should order him to return to his diocese, he intendedonly to render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what isGod's. Even then, after his prison experience of several months,he thought that, if he could persuade Elizabeth that he wastruly loyal to her, she would forgive him his Catholicity.

Receiving no answer, he set sail for his country, where helanded in August, 1566, and shortly after wrote to Sir HenrySidney, then lord-deputy, in the very terms he had used withLeicester, and proposing in addition to use his efforts ininducing Shane O'Neill to conclude peace.

What Sidney and his masters in London, Cecil and Leicester, musthave thought of the simplicity of this good man, it isimpossible to say. They condescended to return no answer to hismore than straightforward communication, save the short verbalreply concerning O'Neill: "We have given forth speach of hisextermination by war."

The good prelate, after having so clearly defined his position,thought he might safely follow the dictates of his conscience,and govern his flock in peace; but he was soon taken prisoner,in April, 1567, by O'Shaughnessy, who received a special letterof thanks from Elizabeth for his services on this occasion.

Bv order of the queen, he was tried in Dublin; but, so clear wasthe case before them, that even a Protestant jury could notconvict him. The honest Dublin jurors were therefore cast intoprison and heavily fined, while the prelate was once againtransferred to London, whence he a second time escaped by theconnivance of his jailor.

Retaken in 1567, he was handed over to the queen's officers,under a pledge that his life would be spared. And, inconsequence of this pledge alone, was he never brought to trial,but kept a close prisoner in the Tower for eighteen years, untilin 1585 he was, according to all reliable accounts, deliberatelypoisoned.

This simple narrative certainly proves that in Elizabeth's eyes,the mere sustaining the Pope's spiritual supremacy was treason,and every Catholic consequently, because Catholic, a traitordeserving death. True, the Irish prelates, monks, and people,might have imitated the majority of the English nobles andpeople in accepting the new dogma. In that case, they would havebecome truly loyal and dutiful subjects, and been admitted toall the rights of citizenship; the nobles would have retainedpossession of their estates, the gentry obtained seats in theIrish Parliament; while the common people, renouncing clanship,absurd old traditions, the memory of their ancestors, togetherwith their obedience to the See of Rome, would not have beenexcluded from the benefits of education; would have been allowedto engage in trades and manufactures; would have been permittedto keep their land, or hold it by long leases; would haveenjoyed the privilege of dwelling in walled towns and cities, ifthey felt no inclination for agriculture. They would have becomeno doubt "a highly-prosperous" nation, as the English and Scotchof our days have become, partakers of all the advantages of theglorious British Constitution, cultivating the fields of theirancestors, and converting their beautiful island into a paradisemore enchanting than the rich meadows and wheat-fields ofEngland itself.

On the other hand, they would have obtained all those temporaladvantages at the expense of their faith, which no one had aright to take from them; in their opinion, and in that ofmillions of their fellow-Catholics, they would have forfeitedtheir right to heaven, and the Irish have always beenunreasonable enough to prefer heaven to earth. They havepreferred, as the holy men of old of whom St. Paul speaks, "tobe stoned, cut asunder, tempted, put to death by the sword, towander about in sheep-skins, in oat-skins; being in want,distressed, afflicted, of whom the word was not worthy;wandering in deserts, in mountains, in dens, and in the caves ofthe earth, being approved by the testimony of faith:" that is tosay, having the testimony of their conscience and the approvalof God, and considering this better than worldly prosperity andearthly happiness.

Turning now to those prelates, monks, and priests, who duringElizabeth's reign took part in Irish politics against the queen,can we on that account deny them the title of martyrs to theirfaith?

Dr. Hurley, Archbishop of Cashel, whose memoirs were publishedby Miles O'Reilly, may be taken as a type of this class. Suppose,as well grounded, although never proved, the suspicion of theEnglish Government with regard to his political mission.Prelates and priests, generally speaking, were put to deathunder Elizabeth, or confined to dungeons on mere suspicion, and,as we have seen in the case of the Archbishop of Armagh, evenclear proofs of their innocence would not save them.

On his father's side, Dr. Hurley was naturally in the interestof James Geraldine, Earl of Desmond; and, on his mother's, hebelonged to the royal family of O' Briens of Munster.Consecrated Archbishop of Cashel at Rome in 1550, under GregoryXIII., during the Geraldine rebellion, he was compelled to usethe utmost precaution in entering Ireland. The police ofElizabeth was particularly active at that time in hunting uppriests and monks throughout the whole island, but particularlyin the south.

The archbishop escaped all these dangers, and he avoided thecertain denunciation of Walter Baal, the Mayor of Dublinprobably, who was then actually persecuting his mother, DameEleanor Birmingham; he fled to the castle of Thomas Fleming, whoconcealed him in a secret chamber in his house and treated himas a friend. But when everybody thought the danger past, andthat it was no longer imprudent for him to mix in the society ofthe castle, he was suspected by an Anglo-Irishman of the name ofDillon, denounced by him, and finally surrendered by ThomasFleming, and conveyed to Dublin, where proceedings were set onfoot against him by the Irish Council and the queen's ministersin England.

His imprisonment was coincident with the suppression of therising in Munster, and the Earl of Desmond was beginning thatfrightful outlaw-life which only ended with his miserable death.

The object of the archbishop's accusers was to connect him withthe designs of Rome and the Munster insurrection; and the statepapers preserved in London have disclosed to us thecorrespondence between Adam Loftus, the Protestant Archbishop ofDublin, on the one side, and Walsingham and Cecil on the other.

The only proofs of the Archbishop's having joined the southernconfederacy were: 1. Suspicions, as he was consecrated in Romeabout the time of the sailing of the expedition under JamesFitzmaurice; 2. The information of a certain ChristopherBarnwell, then in jail, who was promised his life if he couldfurnish proofs enough to convict the prelate. The value of thetestimony of an "informer" under such circ*mstances isproverbial; yet all Barnwell could allege was, that "he waspresent at a conversation in Rome between Dr. Hurley andCardinal Comensis, the Pope's secretary, and, the result of thewhole conversation was, "that the doctor did not know norbelieve that the Earl of Kildare had joined the rebellion ofFitzmaurice and Desmond, and he was rebuked by the cardinal fornot believing it."

This was considered overwhelming proof against him, in spite ofhis positive denial. Torture was applied, but the most awfulsufferings could not wring from him the acknowledgment of havingtaken part in the conspiracy. Yet Loftus and Wallop were ofopinion that he was a "rebel" and ought to be put to death. Theonly difficulty which presented itself to the "Lords Justices"of Ireland was, that there was no statute in Ireland against"traitors" who had plotted beyond the seas, and they asked thatthe archbishop should either be sent to be tried in England, ortried in Ireland by martial law, which would screen them fromresponsibility.

This last favor was granted them; and the holy archbishop wastaken from prison at early dawn, on a Friday, either in May orJune, 1584. He was barbarously hanged in a withey (withe)calling on God, and forgiving his torturers with all his heart.

Our purpose is not to inveigh against this judicial murder, and,by further details, increase the horror which every honest manmust feel at the narrative of such atrocious proceedings. Wewill suppose, on the contrary, that the cooperation of theArchbishop of Cashel with Fitzmaurice and Desmond, and even withthe Pope and King of Spain, had been clearly proved—as it iscertain that, if not in this case, at least in some others,during the reign of Elizabeth, the bishops or priests accusedhad really taken part in the attempt of the Irish to freethemselves from such tyranny—and insist that, even then, themurdered Catholic ecclesiastics really died for their religion,and could be called "rebels" in no sense whatever.

First, the question might arise as to how far the Irish weresubject to the English crown. We have seen how, a few yearsbefore, Gillapatrick, of Ossory, asserted his right of makingwar on England, when he felt sufficient provocation. UnderElizabeth the case was still clearer, at least for Catholics,after the excommunication of the queen by Pius V. As we haveseen, the chief title of England to Ireland rested on twopretended papal bulls: another Pope could and did recall thegrant, which had been founded on misrepresentation. Up to thattime, there had been no real subjection by conquest, outside ofthe Pale, which formed but an insignificant part of the island.

Under such circ*mstances, it must at least be admitted that aradically and clearly unjust law, imposed by a foreign thoughperhaps suzerain power, could be justly resisted by force ofarms. And such was the case in Ireland. The Queen of England—the Irish Parliament of 1539 had no other authority than that ofthe queen, and represented no part of the people—had made itrebellion for the Irish to remain faithful to their religion.What could prevent the Irish from resisting such pretension,even at the cost of effusion of blood? The early Christians,under the Roman Empire, it is true, never rose in arms againstthe bloody edicts of the Caesars or the Antonines; but the casesare not parallel.

Suppose that Greece or Asia Minor had never succumbed to theRoman power, and had become entirely Christian: no one wouldrefuse to admit their right to offer armed resistance to theextension of the edicts of persecution into their territory. Onthe contrary, it would have been their duty to do so: and everyone of their inhabitants, who was taken and executed as a rebel,would have been crowned with the martyr's crown.

At this point, indeed, comes in the consideration of the specialmotive which animated each belligerent, even when fighting onthe right side. We are far from saying that all the Irishmen,particularly the leaders and chieftains who at that time rangedthemselves under the banners of the Desmonds or the O'Neills,fought purely for Christ and religion. Many of them, no doubt,engaged in the contest from mere worldly motives, perhaps evenfor purposes unworthy of Christians; and in this case, those whofell in the struggle were in no sense soldiers of Christ.

But how many such are to be found among the bishops, priests, ormonks, who perished under Elizabeth? May it not be said of themthat, to a man, they fell for the sake of religion? We may evenbe bold enough to say that the majority of the common Irishpeople who lost their lives in those wars may be placed in thesame category as their spiritual rulers, being in reality theupholders of right and the champions of Catholicity.

Let it be remembered that, at the period of which we speak, theonly real question involved in the contest was graduallyassuming more and more a religious character. Henry VIII. andhis deputy, St. Leger, had struck a fatal blow at clanship andIrish institutions in general, by bestowing on and compellingthe chieftains to accept English titles, and by investing themwith new deeds of their lands under feudal tenure. By Elizabeth,the same policy was steadily and successfully pursued, her courtbeing always graced by the presence of young Irish lords,educated under her own eyes, and loaded with all her royalfavors. All she asked of them in return was that they shouldbecome Queen's men. The repugnance once felt by Irishmen forthat gilded slavery was each day becoming less marked. But,while every thing was seemingly working so well for theattainment of Elizabeth's object at the commencement of herreign, a new feature suddenly shows itself, and grows rapidlyinto prominence —the attachment of the Irish to their religion,and the violent opposition to the change always kept foremost inview by the queen, namely the substitution of her spiritualsupremacy for that of the Pope.

Thus we find the Irish leaders, when proclaiming theirgrievances, either on the eve of war, or the signing of a treatyof peace, always giving their religious convictions the firstplace on the list. The religious question, then, was becomingmore and more the question, and, notwithstanding all her fineassurances that she would not infringe upon the religiouspredilections of the laity, Elizabeth's great purpose, inIreland and in England, was to destroy Catholicity, bydestroying the priesthood, root and-branch.

The nobles showed how fully convinced they were of this, whenthey carne to adopt a system of concealment, even of duplicity,to which Irishmen ought never to have been weak enough to submit.Not only were the practices of their religion confined toplaces where no Englishman or Protestant could penetrate, butgradually they allowed their houses—those sanctuaries offreedom—to be invaded by the pursuivants of the queen,searching for priests or monks "lately arrived from Rome."

Secret apartments were constructed by skilful architects innoblemen's manors; recesses were artfully contrived under theroofs, in roomy staircases, or even in basem*nts and cellars.There the unfortunate minister of religion was confined forweeks and months, creeping forth only at night, to breathe thefresh air at the top of the house or in the thick shrubbery ofthe adjoining park. All the means of evading the law used by theChristians of the first centuries were reproduced and resortedto in Catholic Ireland by chieftains who possessed the "secretpromise" of the queen that their religion should not beinterfered with, and that her supremacy should not be enforcedagainst them.

Not thus did the people act: their keen sense of injustice tookin at once all the circ*mstances of the case. It was a religiouspersecution, nothing else; and this the nobles also felt intheir inmost souls. The people saw the ministers of religionhunted down, seized, dragged to prison, tried, convicted,barbarously executed; they recognized it in its reality as asheer attempt to destroy Catholicity, and as such they opposedit by every means in their power. They beheld the monks andfriars treated as though they had been wild beasts; the soldiersfalling on them wherever they met them, and putting them todeath with every circ*mstance of cruelty and insult, withouttrial, without even the identification required for outlaws. Mr.Miles O'Reilly's book, "Irish Martyrs," is full of cases of thiskind. Hence the people frequently offered open resistance to theexecution of the law; the soldiers had to disperse the mob; butthe real mob was the very troop commanded by English officers.

When at length the Irish lords no longer dared offer asylum tothe outlawed priesthood in their manors and castles, the hut ofthe peasant lay open to them still. The greater the quantity ofblood poured out by the executors of the barbarous laws, thegreater the determination of the people to protect the oppressedand save the Lord's anointed.

Then opened a scene which had never been witnessed, even underthe most cruel persecutions of the tyrants of old Rome. Thewhole strength of the English kingdom had been called into playto crush the Irish nobility during the wars of Ulster andMunster; the whole police of the same kingdom was now put inrequisition for the apprehension and destruction of church-men.Nay, from this very occupation, the great police system whichsince that time has flourished in most European states, arose,being invented or at least perfected for the purpose.

Then, for the first time in modern history, numbers of "spies"and "informers" were paid for the service of English ministersof state. Not only did the cities of England and Ireland, harborcities chiefly, swarm with them, but they covered the wholecountry; they were to be found everywhere: around the humbledwelling of the peasant and the artisan, in the streets and onthe highways, inspecting every stranger who might be a friar ormonk in disguise. They spread through the whole EuropeanContinent—along the coast and in the interior of France andBelgium, Italy and Spain, in the churches, convents, andcolleges, even in the courts of princes, and, as we have seen inthe case of Dr. Hurley, in the very halls of the Vatican. TheEnglish state papers have disclosed their secret, and the wholehistory is now before us.

To support this army of spies and informers, the soldiers ofthat other army of England, who were employed either in keepingEngland under the yoke or in crushing freedom and religion outof Ireland, did not disdain to execute the orders whichconverted them into policemen and sbirri. And it may be said, totheir credit, that they executed those orders with a ferociousalacrity unequalled in the annals of military life in othercountries. If, during the most fearful commotions in France, thearmy has been employed for a similar purpose, it must beacknowledged that, as far as the troops were concerned, theyperformed their unwelcome task with reluctance, and softeneddown, at least, their execution, by considerate manners andrespectful demeanor. But these soldiers of Elizabeth showedthemselves, from first to last, full of ferocity. They generallywent far beyond the letter of their orders; they took an inhumandelight in adding insult to injury, uniting in their persons thedouble character of preservers of public order and ruffianlyexecutioners of innocent victims. Many and many a record oftheir barbarity is kept to this day. We add a few, only tojustify our necessarily severe language:

"The Rev. Thaddeus Donald and John Hanly received their martyr'scrown on the 10th of August, 1580. They had long labored amongthe suffering faithful along the southwestern coast of Ireland.When the convent of Bantry was seized by the English troops,these holy men received their wished-for crown of martyrdom.Being conducted to a high rock impending over the sea, they weretied back to back, and precipitated into the waves beneath."

"In the convent of Enniscorthy, Thaddeus O'Meran, father-guardian of the convent, Felix O'Hara, and Henry Layhode, underthe government of Henry Wallop, Viceroy of Ireland, were takenprisoners by the soldiers, for five days tortured in variousways, and then slain."

"Rev. Donatus O'Riedy, of Connaught, and parish priest ofCoolrah, when the soldiers of Elizabeth rushed into the village,sought refuge in the church; but in vain, for he was therehanged near the high altar, and afterward pierced with swords,12th of June, 1582."

"While Drury was lord-deputy, about 1577, Fergal Ward, aFranciscan, . . . fell into the hands of the soldiery, and,being scourged with great barbarity, was hanged from thebranches of a tree with the cincture of his own religious habit."

In order to find a parallel to atrocities such as these, we mustgo back to the record of some of the sufferings of the earlymartyrs—St. Ignatius of Antioch, for instance, who wrote of theguards appointed to conduct him to Italy: "From Syria as far asRome, I had to fight with wild beasts, on sea and on land, tiednight and day to a pack of ten leopards, that is to say, tensoldiers who kept me, and were the more ferocious the more Itried to be kind to them."

Instances of such extreme cruelty are rare, even in the Acts ofthe early martyrs, but they meet us every moment in the memoirsof the days of Elizabeth. Both the police-spies and the soldier-police were animated with the rage and fury which must havepossessed the soul of the queen herself; for, after all, thecruelty practised in her reign, and mostly under her orders, wasnot necessary in order to secure her throne to her, during life;and, as she could hope for no posterity of her own, it was notthe desire of retaining the crown to her children which couldexcuse so much bloodshed and suffering. She evidently followedthe promptings of a cruel heart in those atrocious measureswhich constitute the feature of the home policy of her reign.The persecution which raged incessantly throughout her longcareer, in Ireland and England, is surely one of the most bloodyin the annals of the Catholic Church.

CHAPTER X.

ENGLAND PREPARED FOR THE RECEPTION OF PROTESTANTISM—IRELAND NOT.

It cost Elizabeth the greater part of her reign in time, and allthe growing resources of a united England in material, toestablish her spiritual supremacy in Ireland; and yet, when, ather death, Mountjoy received orders to conclude peace onhonorable terms with the Ulster chieftains, her darling policywas abandoned; and failure, in fact, confessed.

On the 30th of March, 1603, Hugh O'Neill and Mountjoy met byappointment at Mellifont Abbey, where the terms of peace wereexchanged. O'Neill, having declared his submission, was grantedamnesty for the past, restored to his rank, notwithstanding hisattainder and outlawry, and reinstated in his dignity of Earl ofTyrone. Himself and his people were to enjoy the "full and freeexercise of their religion;" new letters-patent were issuedrestoring to him and other northern chieftains almost the wholeof the lands occupied by their respective clans.

O'Neill, on his part, was to renounce forever his title of
"O'Neill," and allow English law to prevail in his territory.

How this last condition could agree with the full and freeexercise of the Catholic religion, the treaty did not explain;but it is evident that the new acts of Parliament respectingreligion were not to be included in the English law admitted bythe Ulster chiefs.

Meanwhile, the descendants of Strongbow's companions had beencompletely subdued in the south, Munster having been devastated,and the Geraldines utterly destroyed. Yet, even there,Protestantism was not acknowledged by such of the inhabitants aswere left.

It may be well to compare here the different results whichattended the declaration of the queen's supremacy in England andIreland:

At the commencement of Elizabeth's reign, England was still,outwardly at least, as Catholic as Ireland. Henry VIII. had onlyaimed at starting a schism; the Protestantism established underEdward had been completely swept away during Mary's short reign.Could Elizabeth only have hoped to be acknowledged queen by thePope, there can be little doubt that, even for political motives,she would have refrained from disturbing the peace of thecountry for the sake of introducing heresy. Religion was nothingto her—the crown every thing.

It was not so easy a matter for her to establish heresy as forHenry to introduce schism. All the bishops of Henry's reign,with the exception of Fisher, had renounced their allegiance toRome, in order to please the sovereign; all the bishops ofMary's nomination remained faithful to Rome; and so difficultwas it to find somebody who should consecrate the new prelatescreated by Elizabeth, that Catholic writers have, we believe,shown beyond question that no one of the intruding prelates wasreally consecrated.

Nevertheless, at the end of Elizabeth's reign, there is no doubtthat the English people, with a few individual exceptions, wereProtestant; and Protestants they have ever since remained.

In Dr. Madden's "History of the Penal Laws," we read "FatherCampian was betrayed by one of Walsingham's spies, George Eliot,and found secreted in the house of Mr. Yates, of Lyford, inBerkshire, along with two other priests, Messrs. Ford andCollington. Eliot and his officers made a show of theirprisoners to the multitude, and the sight of the priests in thehands of the constables was a matter of mockery to the unwisemultitude. This was a frequent occurrence in conveying capturedpriests from one jail to another, or from London to Oxford, orvice versa, and it would seem, instead of finding sympathy fromthe populace, they met with contumely, insult, and sometimeseven brutal violence. This is singular, and not easily accountedfor; of the fact, there can be no doubt."

Dr. Madden probably considered that, within a few years afterthe change of religion, the English people ought to have shownthemselves as firm Catholics as did the Irish. But theexplanation of the contumely and violence is easy: it was anEnglish and not an Irish populace. The first had altogetherforgotten the faith of their childhood, the second could not bebrought to forsake it. The difficulty, in accounting for thedifference between them, is in getting at its true cause; and tous it seems that one of the chief causes was the difference ofrace.

The English upper classes, as a whole, were utterly indifferentto religion; the one thing which affected them, soul and body,was their temporal interests, and, to judge by their readyacquiescence in all the changes set forth at the commencement ofthe last chapter, they would as soon have turned Mussulmen asCalvinists. The lower classes, at first merely passive, becameafterward possessed by a genuine fanaticism for the new creedestablished by the Thirty-nine Articles; so that, from thatperiod until quite recently—and the spirit still lives—anEnglish mob was always ready to demolish Catholic chapels, andestablishments of any kind, wherever the piety of a few hadsucceeded in erecting such, however quietly.

It is evident from the facts mentioned that, prior even to thatextraordinary religious revolution called the Reformation, theCatholic faith did not possess a firm hold upon the English mindand heart, whatever may have been the case in previous ages. Itis clear that even "the people" in England were not ready tosubmit to any sacrifice for the sake of their religion.

There is small doubt that Elizabeth foresaw this, and expectedbut little opposition on the part of the English nobility andpeople to the changes she purposed effecting. Had she imaginedthat the nation would have been ready to submit to any sacrificerather than surrender their religion, she would at least havebeen more cautious in the promulgation of her measures, eventhough she had determined to sever her kingdom from Rome. Shemight have rested content with the schism introduced by herfather, and this indeed would have sufficed for the carrying outof her political schemes.

But she knew her countrymen too well to accredit them with areligious devotion which, if they ever possessed, had long agodied out. She saw that England was ripe for heresy, and theresult confirmed her worldly sagacity. How came it, then, thatthe change which was absolutely impossible in Ireland, was soeasily effected in the other country? Or, to generalize thequestion: How is it that, to speak generally, the nations ofNorthern Europe embraced Protestantism so readily, while thoseof Southern Europe refused to receive it, or were only slightlyaffected by it? Ranke has remarked that, when, after the firstoutbreak in the North, the movement had reached a certain pointin time and space, it stopped, and, instead of advancing further, appeared to recede, or at least stood still.

Many Protestant writers have attempted a weak and flippantsolution of the question, and we are continually told of thesuperior enlightenment of the northern races, of theirattachment to liberty, of their higher civilization, and othervery fine and very easily-quoted things of the same kind, which,at the present moment, are admitted as truths by many, andesteemed as unanswerable explanations of the phenomenon.According to this opinion, therefore, the southern races weremore ignorant, less civilized, more readily duped by priestcraftand kingcraft; above all, readier to bow to despotism, andindifferent to freedom.

Catholic writers, Balmez principally, have often given asatisfactory answer to the question; yet, the replies which theyhave made to the various sophisms touched upon, have seeminglyproduced no effect on the modern masses, who continue steadfastin their belief of what has been so often refuted. It would bepresumptuous and probably quite useless, on our part, to enterinto a lengthened discussion of the question. But, when confinedto England, it is a kind of test to be applied to all thosesubjects of civilization and liberty, and is so clear and truethat it cannot leave the least room for doubt or hesitation:moreover, as it necessarily enters into the inquiry which formsthe heading of this chapter, it cannot be entirely laid aside.

All that we purpose doing is, discovering why the northernnations fell a prey more readily to the disorganizing doctrinesof Protestantism than the southern. The general fickleness ofthe human mind, which is so well brought out by the greatSpanish writer, does not strike us as a sufficient cause; forthe mind of southern peoples is certainly not less fickle, onmany points at least, than that of other races.

In our comparison between the North and the South, we class theIrish with the latter, although, geographically, they belong tothe former, and, indeed, constitute the only northern nationwhich remained faithful to the Church.

First, let us state the broad facts for which we wish to assignsome satisfactory reasons.

After the social convulsions which attended the change ofreligion had subsided somewhat, it was found that Protestantismhad invaded the three Scandinavian kingdoms, to the almost totalexclusion of Catholicism, to such an extent, indeed, that, untilquite recently, it was death or transportation for any persontherein to return to the bosom of the mother Church.

The same statement is true, to almost the same extent, ofNorthern Germany, where open persecution, or rather war, rageduntil the establishment of "religious peace" toward 1608. Saxony,whence the heresy sprang, was its centre and stronghold inGermany; and the Saxons were Scandinavians, having crossed overfrom the southern-borders of the Baltic, where, for a long time,they dwelt in constant intercourse with the Danes, Norwegians,and Swedes.

Saxon and Norman England was found to be, at the end of thesixteenth century, almost entirely Protestant, and thepersecution of the comparatively few Catholics who survivedflourished therein full vigor.

A singular phenomenon presented itself in the Low Countries.That portion of them subsequently known as Holland, which wasfirst invaded and peopled by the Northmen of Walcheren, becamealmost entirely Protestant, while Belgium, which was originallyCeltic, remained Catholic.

Bavaria, Austria, and Switzerland, were divided betweenProtestantism and Catholicity, and the division exists to thisday.

In France a section only of the nobility, which was originallyNorman as well as Frank, and under feudalism had becomethoroughly permeated by the northern spirit, was found to haveembraced the new doctrines, which were repudiated by the peopleof Celtic origin. It is true that, later on, the Cevennesmountaineers received Protestantism from the old Waldenses; butwe are presenting a broad sketch, and do not deny that severalminor lineaments may not fall in with the general picture.

In Italy only literary men, in Spain a few rigorist prelates andmonks, showed any inclination toward the "reform" party.

On the whole, then, it is safe to conclude that the Scandinavianmind was congenial to Protestantism.

We say the Scandinavian mind, because the Scandinavian raceextended, not only through Scandinavia proper, but also throughNorthern Germany, along the Baltic Sea and German Ocean; throughHolland by Walcheren; through a portion of Central and SouthernGermany, as far down as Switzerland, which was invaded by Saxonsat the time of Charlemagne, and after him, until Otto the Greatgave them their final check, and subdued them more thoroughlythan the great Charles had succeeded in doing.

Common opinion traces the Scandinavians and Germans back to thesame race. In the generic sense, this is true; and all the Indo-Germanic nations may have originally belonged to the same parentstock; but, specifically, differences of so striking a naturepresent themselves in that immense branch of the human family,that the existence of sub-races of a definite character,presupposing different and sometimes opposite tendencies, mustbe admitted.

Who can imagine that the Germans proper are identical with theHindoos, although by language they, in common with the greaterpart of European nations, may belong to the same parent stock?In like manner, the Germanic tribes, although possessing manythings in common with the Scandinavian race, differ from it invarious respects.

The best ethnographic writers admit that the Scandinavian race,which they, in our opinion improperly, name Gothic, differedgreatly in its language from the Teutonic. The language of thefirst, retained in its purity in Iceland to this day, soonbecame mixed up with German proper in Denmark, Sweden, and evenin Norway to a great extent. The languages differed thereforeoriginally, as did, consequently, the races. Even at this verymoment an effort is being made by Scandinavians to establish thedifference between themselves and the Teutons with respect tolanguage and nationality.

How far the religion of both was identical is a difficultquestion. We believe it very probable that the worship of Thor,Odin, and Frigga, was purely Scandinavian, and penetratedGermany, as far as Switzerland, with the Saxons. Hertha,according to Tacitus, was the supreme goddess of the Germans.She had no place in Scandinavian mythology. Ipsambul, sorenowned among the Teutons, was quite unknown in Scandinavia.The Germans, in common with the Celts, considered the buildingof temples unworthy the Deity; whereas, the Scandinavian temples,chiefly the monstrous one of Upsala, are well known. Many othersuch facts might be brought out to show the difference of theirreligions.

The Germans showed themselves from the beginning attached to acountry life; and we know how the Frankish Merovingian kingsloved to dwell in the country. The Scandinavians only cared forthe sea, and manifested by their skill in navigation how theydiffered from the Germans, who were less inclined even than theCelts for large naval expeditions.

All this is merely given as strong conjecture, not as proofpositive amounting to demonstration, of the real differencebetween the two races—the Germanic and Scandinavian.

But how was Protestantism congenial to the Scandinavian mind?This second question is of still greater importance than thefirst.

In the earlier portion of the book, we passed in review thecharacter of the tribes, once clustered around the Baltic, withthe exception of the Finns, who dwelt along the eastern coast;and, grounding our opinion on unquestionable authorities, wefound that character to consist mainly of cruelty, boldness,rapacity, system, and a spirit of enterprise in trade andnavigation.

When they embraced Christianity, it undoubtedly modified theircharacter to a great extent, and many holy people lived amongthem, some of whom the Church has numbered among the saints. Butthe conquest of these ferocious pirates was undoubtedly thegreatest triumph ever achieved by the holy Spouse of Christ.

Yet, even after becoming Christian, they preserved for a Iongtime—we speak not now of the present day—deep features oftheir former character, among others the old spirit of rapacity,and that systematic boldness which, when occasion demands, isever ready to intrench upon the rights of others. They soondisplayed, also, a general tendency to subject spiritual mattersto individual reason, and the great among them to interfere andmeddle with religious affairs. The Dukes of Normandy, the Kingsof England, and the Saxon Emperors of Germany, seldom ceaseddisputing the rights of spiritual authority; and the learnedamong them were forward to question the supremacy of Rome inmany things, and to argue against what other people, morereligiously inclined, would have admitted without controversy.That spirit of speculation, to which the Irish Four Masterspartly ascribed the introduction of Protestantism into England,was rampant in the schools of these northern nations, when asuperior civilization gave rise to the erection of universitiesand colleges in their midst.

But over and above that systematic philosophical spirit, theircharacter was deeply imbued with a material rapacity which,after all, has always constituted the great vice of thosenorthern tribes. It is unnecessary to remind the reader that, inEngland chiefly, Protestantism was particularly grateful to theavaricious longings of the courtiers of Henry VIII. andElizabeth. The confiscation of ecclesiastical property and itsdistribution among the great of the nation was the chiefincentive which moved them to adopt the convenient doctrines ofthe new order, and subvert the old religion of the country. Thisrapacious spirit showed itself also in Germany, though not soconspicuously as in England; and certainly, in both countries,the universal confiscation of the estates of religious houses,and the robbery of the plate and jewels of the churches, areprominent features in the history of the great Reformation.

William Cobbett has written eloquently on this subject, andmarshalled an immense array of facts so difficult of denial thatthe defenders of Protestantism were compelled to resort to thepetty subterfuge of retorting that the great English radical wasa mere partisan, who never spoke sincerely, but always supportedthe theory he happened to take up by exaggerated and distortedfacts, which no one was bound to admit on his responsibility.Such was their reply; but the awkward facts remained and remainstill unchallenged.

But, since Cobbett, men who could not be accused of partisanshipand exaggeration have published authentic accounts of theunbounded rapacity of the Reformers of the sixteenth century, inEngland particularly, which all impartial men are bound torespect, and not attribute to any unworthy motive, since theyare supported even by Protestant authorities. We quote a few,taken from the "History of the Penal Laws" by Dr. R. R. Madden:

"The Earl of Warwick, afterward Duke of Northumberland, was thefirst of the aristocracy in England who inveighed publiclyagainst the superfluity of episcopal habits, the expense ofvestments and surplices, and ended in denouncing altars and the'mummery' of crucifixes, pictures and images in churches.

"The earl had an eye to the Church plate, and the preciousjewels that ornamented the tabernacles and ciboriums. Manycourtiers soon were moved by a similar zeal for religion—a lustfor the gold, silver, and jewels of the churches. In a shorttime, not only the property of churches, but the possession ofrich bishopries and sees, were shared among the favorites ofCranmer and the protector (Somerset): as were those of the Seeof Lincoln, 'with all its manors, save one;' the Bishoprie ofDurham, which was allotted to Dudley, Duke of Northumberland; ofBath and Wells, eighteen or twenty of whose manors in Somerset,were made a present of to the protector, with a view ofprotecting the remainder."

A number of similar details are to be found in the pages of thesame author.

Dr. Heylin, a Protestant, says: "That the consideration ofprofit did advance this work—of the Reformation—as much as anyother, if perchance not more, may be collected from an inquirymade two years after, in which (inquiry) it was to beinterrogated: `What jewels of gold, or silver crosses,candlesticks, censers, chalices, copes, and other vestments,were then remaining in any of the cathedral or parochialchurches, or, otherwise, had been embezzled or taken away? '. . .The leaving," adds Dr. Heylin, "of one chalice to every church,with a cloth or covering for the communion-table, being thoughtsufficient. The taking down of altars by command, was followedby the substitution of a board, called the Lord's Board, andsubsequently of a table, by the determination of Bishop Ridley.

"Many private persons' parlors were hung with altar-cloths,their tables and beds covered with copes, instead of carpets andcoverlets, and many made carousing cups of the sacred chalices,as once Belshazzar celebrated his drunken feasts in thesanctified vessels of the Temple. It was a sorry house, notworth the naming, which had not something of this furniture init, though it were only a fair large cushion made of a cope oraltar-cloth, to adorn their windows, and to make their chairsappear to have somewhat in them of a chair of state."

Could such scenes as these have been surpassed by what tookplace during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, in therude towns of Norway and Denmark, at the return of a powerfulseakong, with his large fleet, from a piratical excursion intoSouthern Europe, when the spoils of many a Christian church andwealthy house went to adorn the savage dwellings or thosebarbarians? Adam of Bremen relates how he saw, with his own eyes,the rich products of European art and industry accumulated inthe palace of the King of Denmark, and in the loathsomedwellings of the nobility, or exposed for sale in the publicmarkets of the city.

But rapacity formed only one characteristic of the Scandinavians;the mind of the people, moreover, showed itself,notwithstanding the intricate and monstrous mythology which ithad created when pagan, of a rationalistic and anti-supernaturaltendency. Their mind was naturally systematic and reasoning; itdiscussed spiritual matters in all their material aspects, andthus gave rise to those speculations which soon became thesource of heresy. Hence, in England and the north of Germany,the power of Rome was always called in question; and as theEnglish mind was altogether Scandinavian, while that of theGermans was mixed with more of a southern disposition, the chieftrouble in Germany, between the empire and the Roman Church, layin the question of investitures, which combined a material andspiritual aspect, whereas, in England, the quarrel was almostinvariably of a pecuniary nature, as, for instance, Peter'spence.

Even in the most Catholic times, the English made a bittergrievance of the levying of Peter's pence among them, and of thegiving of English benefices to prelates of other nations, whichalso resolved itself into a question of revenue or money. And socharacteristic was the grievance of the whole nation that it wasrestricted to no class, churchmen and monks being as loud intheir denunciations of Rome as the king and the nobles; and thusthe theological questions of the papal supremacy and ofecclesiastical authority generally took with them quite amaterial form. The diatribes of the Benedictine monk MatthewParis are well known, and their worldly spirit can only excitein us pity that they should have been the chief cause of thedestruction of his own order in England and Ireland, and of thetotal spoliation of the religious houses in whose behalf heimagined that he wrote.

If the harms done by those contemptible wranglings about Peter'spence and benefices had been confined to depriving thepontifical exchequer of a revenue which was cheerfully grantedby other nations to aid the Father of the Faithful, the resultwas to be regretted; but, after all, Christendom would not havesuffered in a much more sensible quarter. But in England thequestion passed immediately to the election of bishops andabbots, and thus the opposition to Rome gradually assumed muchvaster proportions.

The nation, also, in the main, sided with the kings against thepopes. Every burgher of London, York, or Canterbury, got it intohis head that Rome had formed deep designs of spoliation againsthis private property, and purposed diving deep into his privatepurse. In such a state of public opinion, respect for spiritualauthority could not fail to diminish and finally die outaltogether; and, when the voice of the Pontiff was heard onimportant subjects in which the best interests of the nationwere involved, even the clearest proof that Rome was right, anddesired only the good of the people, could not entirely dispelthe suspicious fears and distrusts which must ever lurk in themind of the miser against those he imagines wish to rob him.

It is not possible to enter here into further details, but, ifthe reader wish for stronger proofs of the "questioning spirit,""reasoning mistrust," and "systematic doggedness," natural tothe Scandinavian mind, he has only to reflect on what took placein England at the time of the Reformation. Every questionrespecting the soul, every supernatural aspiration of theChristian, every emotion of a living conscience, appears to bealtogether absent from all those English nobles, prelates,theologians, learned university men, even simple priests andmonks often, save a very few who, with the noble Thomas More,thought that "twenty years of an easy life could not withoutfolly be compared with an eternity of bliss." The reasoningfaculty of the mind, nourished on "speculations," had replacedfaith, and, every thing of the supernatural order beingobliterated, nothing was left but worldly wisdom and materialaspirations for temporal well-being.

By reviewing other characteristics of the Scandinavian race, wemight arrive at the same conclusion; but our space forbids us togo into them. After what has been said, however, it is easy tosee how well prepared was the English nation for accepting thechange of religion almost without a murmur.

There was, indeed, some expression of indignation on the part ofthe people at the beginning of the reign of Edward VI., when thedesecration of the churches began. "Various commotions," says Dr.Madden, "took place in consequence of the reviling of thesacrament, the casting it out of the churches in some places,the tearing down of altars and images; in one of which tumults,one of the authorities was stabbed, in the act of demolishingsome objects of veneration in a church.

"The whole kingdom, in short, was in commotion, but particularlyDevonshire and Norfolk. In the former county, the insurgentsbesieged Devon; a noble lord was sent against them, and, being,reenforced by the Walloons—a set of German mercenaries broughtover to enable the government to carry out their plans—hislordship defeated these insurgents, and many were executed bymartial law."

But this remnant of affection for the religion of their fathersseems to have soon died out, since at the death of Edward thepeople appeared to have become thoroughly converted to the newdoctrines. At the very coronation of Mary, a Catholic clergymanhaving prayed for the dead and denounced the persecutions of theprevious reign, a tumult took place; the preacher was insulted,and compelled to leave the pulpit. What wonder, then, that, atthe death of Elizabeth, England was thoroughly Protestant?

We are very far from ignoring the noble examples of attachmentto their religion displayed by Christian heroes of every classin England during those disastrous days. The touchingbiographies of the English martyrs, told in the simple pages ofBishop Challoner, cannot be read without admiration. The feelingproduced on the Catholic reader is precisely that arising from aperusal of the Acts of the Christian martyrs under the Romanemperors, which have so often strengthened our faith and drawntears of sorrow from our eyes. At this moment, particularly whenso many details, hitherto hidden, of the lives of Catholics,religious, secular priests, laymen, women, during those times,are coming to light in manuscripts religiously preserved byprivate families, and at last being published for theedification of all, the story is moving as well as inspiring ofthe heroism displayed by them, not only on the public scaffold,but in obscure and loathsome jails, in retreats and painfulseclusion, continuing during long years of an obscure life, andending only in a more obscure death, when the victim ofpersecution was fortunate enough to escape capture. There is nodoubt that, when the whole story of the hunted Catholics inEngland shall be known, as moving a narrative of their virtueswill be written as can be furnished by the ecclesiastical annalsof any people.

Nevertheless, what has been said of the nation, as a nation,remains a sad fact which cannot be doubted. Those nobleexceptions only prove that the promptings of race are notsupreme, and that God's grace can exalt human nature fromwhatever level.

How different were the nations of the Latin and Celtic stock!With them the attachment to the religion of their fathers wasnot the exception, but the rule, and it is only necessary tobear in mind what the Abbe McGeoghegan has said—that, at thedeath of Elizabeth, scarcely sixty Irishmen, take them all inall, had professed the new doctrines—in order at once tocomprehend the steady tendency toward the path of duty impartedby true nobility of blood. Nor did the Irish stand alone in thissteadfastness; it is needless to call to mind how the peoplegenerally throughout France, and particularly in Paris, acted atthe time when the Huguenot noblemen would have rooted in thesoil the errors planted there before, and already bearing fruitin Germany, Switzerland, and England.

It looks as though we had lost sight of the interesting questionproposed at the outset, and of which so far not a word has beensaid—whether Protestantism spread so readily in the North,because it found that region peopled with races better disposedfor civilization, if not taking the lead already in that respect,and men ardent for freedom and impatient of servitude of anykind. We stated that the solution of this question, particularlyin the case of England, is clear, and consequently not to bediscarded on account of previous solutions of the same question,which have scarcely met with any attention from the adverse side.

One thing certainly undeniable is, that neither in its origin,nor even in its consequences, can Protestantism be esteemed asin any sense the promoter of freedom and civilization in theBritish islands.

It has always struck us as strange that sensible men, acquaintedwith history, could maintain that an aspiration after freedomand a higher civilization gave to Germany and England a leaningtoward Protestantism. We can understand how the state of Europein the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries may give a coloringto the statement of a partisan writer, desirous of explaining inthese modern times the greater amount of freedom really enjoyedin England, and the advanced material prosperity visiblegenerally among Protestant Northern nations. So much we canunderstand. But, to make Protestantism the origin of freedom andcivilization, and ascribe to it what happened subsequent to itsspread indeed, but what really resulted from very differentcauses, passes our comprehension.

As far as freedom goes, the most superficial reader must knowthat there was not a particle of it left in England whenProtestantism commenced; and it were easy to show that there wasless of it in Germany than in Italy, Spain, and even France.

Who can mention English freedom in the same breath with Henryand Elizabeth Tudor? How could the actions of those two membersof the family advance it in the least degree, and was it notprecisely the slavish disposition of the English people at thetime which prepared them so admirably for the reception ofGerman heresy? The people were treated like a set of slaves, andstood for nothing in the designs of those great political rulers.In the very highest of the aristocracy, there lingered not aspark of the old brave spirit which wrung Magna Charta from theheart of a weak sovereign. The king or queen could fearlesslytrample on every privilege of the nobility, send the proudestlords of the nation to the block, almost without trial, andconfiscate to the swelling of the royal purse the immenseestates of the first English families. There is no need ofproofs for this. The proofs are the records, the headings, as itwere, of the history of the times which one may read as he runs;it constitutes the very essence of their history; and events ofthe sixteenth century in England scarcely present us with anything else. This state of things was the natural result of thegeneral anarchy which prevailed during the "Wars of the Roses."

A more interesting and intricate question still might be raisedhere: how to explain the appearance of such a phenomenon in soproud a nation? Had the Catholic religion, which, up to thattime, had been the only religion of the country, anything to dowith the matter? These questions might furnish material for avery animated discussion. But, with regard to the fact itself—the slavish disposition of Englishmen at that time under kinglyand queenly rule—no doubt can possibly exist.

To show that Catholicity had nothing to do with the introductionof such a despotism, would give rise to a dissertation too longfor us to enter upon. We merely offer a few suggestions, which,we think, will prove sufficient and satisfactory for our purposeto every candid reader:

I. Catholic theology had certainly never brought about such astate of affairs. In all Catholic schools of the day, in Englandas on the Continent, St. Thomas was the great authority, and hiswork, "De Regimine Principum," was in the hands of all Catholicstudents. Luther was the first to reject St. Thomas.

In this book, all were taught that, if, among the various kindsof government, "that of a king is best," in the opinion of theauthor, "that of a tyrant is the worst." And a tyrant he definesas "any ruler who despises the common good, and seeks hisprivate advantage."

In that book of the great doctor, all may read: "The farther thegovernment recedes from the common weal, the more unjust is it.It recedes farther from the common weal in an oligarchy, inwhich the welfare of a few is sought, than in a democracy, whoseobject is the good of the many. . . . But farther still does itrecede from the common weal in a tyrannous government, by whichthe good of one alone is sought."

The general consequence which St. Thomas draws from thisdoctrine is, that, "if a ruler governs a multitude of freemenfor the common good of the multitude, the government will begood and just as becomes freemen."

Such was the political doctrine taught in the Catholicuniversities of Europe until the sixteenth century; but, in allprobability, this golden work, "De Regimine Principum," was nolonger the text-book in the English schools of the time of HenryTudor.

But, when, entering into details, the holy and learned authorgoes on to contrast the contrary effects produced by freedom anddespotism on a nation, how could Henry willingly permit thecirculation of such words as the following?

"It is natural that men brought under terror" (a tyrannicalgovernment) "should degenerate into beings of a slavishdisposition, and become timid and incapable of any manly anddaring enterprise—an assertion which is proved by the conductof countries which have been long subjected to a despoticgovernment. Solomon says: 'When the imperious are in power, menhide away' in order to escape the cruelty of tyrants, nor is itastonishing; for a man governing without law, and according tohis own caprice, differs in nothing from a beast of prey. Hence,Solomon designates an impious ruler as a roaring lion and aravenous bear.'

"Because, therefore, the government of one is to be preferred —which is the best—and because this government is liable todegenerate into tyranny—which has been proved to be the worst —hence, the most diligent care is to be taken so to regulate theestablishment of a king over the people, that he may not fallinto tyranny."

Finally, St. Thomas epitomizes the doctrines of this whole bookin his "Summa," as follows: "A tyrannical government is unjust,being administered, not for the common good, but for the privategood of the ruler; therefore, its overthrow is not sedition,unless when the subversion of tyranny is so inordinately pursuedthat the multitude suffers more from its overthrow than from theexistence of the government."

The subject might be illustrated by any quantity of extractsfrom the writings of other great theologians of the middle ages;but what we have said is enough for our purpose. It is manifestthat Catholic doctrine cannot have brought about the state ofEngland under the Tudors.

II. Another, and a very important suggestion, is the following:it certainly was not the Catholic hierarchy, least of all thepontifical power, which produced it.

Whatever may have been written derogatory to the institutionsexisting in Europe during the mediaeval period, several greatfacts, most favorable to the Catholic religion, have beencommonly admitted by Protestant writers, from which we selecttwo. The first of these was originally stated by M. Guizot, inhis "Civilization in Europe," namely, that the kingdom of Francewas created by Christian bishops. Since that first admission,other non-Catholic writers have gone further, and have feltcompelled to admit that, as a general rule, the modern Europeannations have all been created, nurtured, fostered, by Catholicbishops, and that the first free Parliaments of those nationswere, in fact, "councils of the Church," either of a purelyclerical character and altogether free from the intermixture oflay elements, such as the Councils of Toledo, in Spain, oracting in concert with the representatives of the variousclasses in the nations.

The clergy, as all readers know, the clerks, were the first totake the lead in civil affairs, being more enlightened than theother classes, and holding in their body all the education ofthe earlier times. It is unnecessary to add to this fact that,among really Christian people, the voice of religion is listenedto before all others. And is it not to-day a well-ascertainedfact that, in the main, the influence exerted by the clergy onthe formation of modern European kingdoms was in favor of a well-regulated freedom based on the first law—the law of God—thatprimal source of true liberty and civilization? To the clergy,certainly, and to the monks, is chiefly due the abolition ofslavery; and the bishops took a very active and prominent partin the movements of the communes, to which the Third Estate owesits birth.

A malignant ingenuity has been displayed by many writers, inransacking the pages of history, in order to fasten on certainprelates of the Church charges of despotism and oppression. But,apart from the fact that the narratives so carefully compiledhave, in many cases, turned out to be perversions of the truth,and granting even that all these allegations are impartial andtrue, the general tenor and tendency of the history of thosetimes is now admitted to be ample refutation of such accusations,and impartial writers confess that the ecclesiastical influence,during those ages, was clearly set against the oppression ofthe people, and finally resulted in the formation of thoserepresentative and moderate governments which are the boast ofthe present age; and that the principles enunciated by the greatschoolmen, led by Thomas Aquinas, founded the order of societyon justice, religion, and right. The more history is studiedhonestly, investigated closely, and viewed impartially, the moreplainly does the great fact shine forth that the Catholichierarchy, in the various European nations, constituted thevanguard of true freedom and order.

With regard to the papal power, it is a curious instance of thereversal of human judgment, and a very significant fact, thatthose very Popes who, a hundred years ago, were looked upon,even by Catholic writers, as the embodiment of superciliousarrogance and sacrilegious presumption, namely, Gregory VII.,Innocent III., and Boniface VIII., are now acknowledged to havebeen the greatest benefactors to Europe in their time, and truemodels of supreme Christian bishops.

But, if these two facts be admitted, the question recurs, How isit that the governments of several kingdoms, and that of Englandin particular, had, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,merged into complete and unalloyed despotism? As our presentinterest in the question is restricted to England, we confineourselves to that country, and proceed to treat of it in a fewwords.

Under the Tudors, the government grew to be altogetherirresponsible, personal, and despotic, chiefly because underprevious reigns, and constantly since the establishment of theNorman line of kings, the authority of Rome, which formed theonly great counterpoise to kingly power at the time, had beengradually undermined, while the bishops, being deprived of theaid of the supreme Pontiff, had become mere tools in the handsof the monarchs.

The particular shape which the opposition to Rome took inEngland, compared with a similar opposition in Germany, has beenalready touched upon; it was found to be involved chiefly in thequestion of tribute-money and benefices, the latter being alsoreduced to a money difficulty. It was seen that the monks andthe people sided generally with the kings, and gradually took adislike and mistrust to every thing coming from Rome; theauthority of the monarch, though not precisely strengthenedthereby, was left without the control of a superior tribunal todirect him, and consequently the kings, if they chose, were leftto follow the impulse of their own caprice, which, according toSt. Thomas, forms the characteristic of tyranny.

Other causes, doubtless, contributed to pave the way for andconsolidate the despotism of the Kings of England. Among suchcauses may be mentioned the extraordinary successes whichattended the English arms, led by their warrior kings in France,and the frightful convulsions subsequently arising from the Warsof the Roses; but we doubt not the one mentioned above was thechief, and, of itself, would in the long-run have brought aboutthe same result.

Protestantism, therefore, was neither the growth of freedom inEngland, nor did it plant freedom there at its introduction,inasmuch as the royal power became more absolute than ever byits predominance, and by the first principle which it laid down,that the king was supreme in Church as well as in state. Can itsorigin in England, then, be accounted for by the existence of ahigher civilization, anterior to it in point of time, out ofwhich it grew, or, at least, by a true aspiration toward such.

This question is as easy of solution as the first: There can beno doubt that the nations which remained either entirely or inthe main faithful to the Church, in point of learning andcivilization, ranked far beyond the Northern nations, whereheresy so early found a permanent footing, and that in the Southalso the tendencies toward a higher civilization were at thattime of a most marked and extraordinary character, so much sothat the reign of Leo X. has become a household phrase toexpress the perfection of culture.

England, as a nation, was at that period only just beginning toemerge from barbarism, and in fact was the last of the Europeannations to adopt civilized customs and manners in the political,civil, and social relations of life.

In politics she was, until that epoch, plunged in frightfuldynastic revolutions, and as yet had not learned the firstprinciples of good government. In civil affairs, her code wasthe most barbarous, her feudal customs the most revolting, herwhole history the most appalling of all Christendom. In socialhabits, she had scarcely been able to retain a few preciousfragments of good old Catholic times; and the fearful scenesthrough which the nation had passed, which, according to J. J.Rousseau, for once expressing the truth, render the reading ofthat period of her history almost impossible to a humane man,had sunk her almost completely in degradation. The reader willunderstand that the England here spoken of is the England ofthree centuries ago, and not of to-day.

If by civilization is understood learning and the fine arts,what, in general phrase, is expressed by culture and refinement,how could England compare at the time with Italy, Flanders,Spain, France, all Latin or Celtic nations? How can it bepretended that she was better fitted for the reception of a morespiritual and elevating religion than any of the countriesmentioned?

Two great names may be brought forward as proving that theexpressions used are harsh and ill-founded—Shakespeare andMilton; a third, Bacon, we omit for reasons which our spaceforbids us to give.

Shakespeare, whose name may rank with those of Homer and Dante,was not a product of those times. He was a gift of Heaven. Atany other epoch he would have been as great, perhaps greater.What he received from his surroundings and from the"civilization" with which he was blessed, he has handed down tous in the uncouth form, the intricacy of plot and adventures,which would have rendered barbarous a poet less naturally gifted.And, although the question has never been definitely settled,it is probable that he was born and lived a Catholic; and it isstrange how Elizabeth, who, tradition tells us, was present atsome of his plays, could endure his faithful portrayal of friarsand nuns, while she was persecuting their originals sobarbarously at the time; strangest of all, how she could bear tolook upon the true and noble image of Katherine of Aragon, whomHenry in his good moment pronounces "the queen of earthly queens," contrasted with her own mother, to whom the shrewd old courtlady tells the story:

"There was a lady once ('tis an old story), That would not be aqueen, that would she not, For all the mud in Egypt :—Have youheard it?"

Thus did Shakespeare contrast Elizabeth's wanton mother with thenoble woman whom Henry discarded for a toy. And some critics canonly find a reason for the composition of the "Merry Wives ofWindsor" and the "Sonnets" as an offering to the lewd queen.Nothing more did he owe to his time.

And Milton, who, though his father was a Catholic, was himself arank Puritan, something of what we have said of Shakespeare maybe said of him. At all events, all his cultivation and tastecame from Italy. The poets of that really civilized country hadpolished his uncouth nature, as it were in spite of itself, andadded to the depth of his wonderful genius the beauty and softharmony of verse that ever flowed freely, and the strength of anervous and sonorous prose.

Now comes the question: If the origin of Protestantism inEngland cannot be attributed to freedom and civilization, may itnot, at least, be maintained that the natural result ofProtestantism was the acquisition of true freedom and of ahigher civilization? Is it not true that to-day Protestantnations are in advance of others in both these respects? And towhat other cause can such advancement be ascribed than to the"reformed religion?" Is it not the freedom which has come to thehuman mind, after the rejection of the yoke of spiritualauthority, and the proclamation of the rights of individualreason, that has brought about the present advanced state ofaffairs

We know all these fine-sounding phrases which are socontinuously dinned into our ears, and republished day after dayin a thousand forms. The question, we admit, is not so easy ofsolution as the first, and might, indeed, without suspicion ofevasion, be discarded as not coming under the head of thischapter, which spoke of origin and not of consequences.Nevertheless, a few words may be devoted to the subject, toprove that the answer must still be in the negative.

The first result of Protestantism was undoubtedly to extinguishas completely as possible the remaining sparks of truly liberalthought promulgated in Europe by the Catholic doctors of themiddle ages. Wherever the new doctrines spread, secular rulerswere not only freed from pontifical control, but were themselvesinvested with supreme ecclesiastical power. The effective checkwhich the paternal and bold voice issuing from the Vatican hadexercised on kings and princes was in a moment taken away. InGermany, England, and Scandinavia, the kings and petty princes,and dukes even, became each so many popes in their own dominions. And this took place with the consent and frequently at theearnest request of the Reformers.

Even the European states which did not fall away from the oldfaith of Christendom took advantage, it might almost be said, ofthe difficult position in which the Holy Father found himself,to countenance new doctrines with respect to the limits of theauthority of the Supreme Pontiff; and the new errors which sosuddenly appeared in France and elsewhere, during the prevalenceand at the extinction of the great schism, limiting the power ofthe Popes in many matters where it had been considered binding,broke out again, in France principally, under the lead ofProtestant or Erastian parliamentarians and legists, under thename of Gallican liberties—pretended liberties, which wouldreally make the Church a subordinate adjunct of the State,instead of what it is, a spiritual living body ruled exclusivelyby a spiritual head.

How could the cause of true liberty in Europe be promoted bysuch altered circ*mstances as these?—to say nothing of thedisastrous imprudence with which those blind rulers and so-called theologians took away the key-stone of the Europeansocial edifice, which grew weaker from that day forth, until nowwe see it tottering to its fall.

The introduction of Protestantism, then, was one of the chiefcauses of the change by which a much greater personal power wastransferred to the hands of the sovereign than he had everbefore held, and it is no surprise to see the absolutism ofemperors and kings, in Christian Europe, date from its coming.

As time passed on, the cause acting on a larger scale, embracinga wider circumference, and drawing within its circle vasterterritories, the world saw absolute rule established in England,France, Spain, and Germany. Previous to the sixteenth century,the word 'absolutism' was unknown in Christendom, as was thedoctrine of the "divine right of kings" understood and preachedas it has since been in England.

But, to furnish details which should render these reflectionsmore striking, would require an unravelling of the whole tangledskein of history during those times.

Nevertheless, we must come to consider the last refuge ofProtestant liberalism. Did not the Reformation really emancipatemodern nations, and gradually bring about the whole system ofrepresentative governments, which, starting from England, havenow, in fact, become, more or less, general throughout Europe?

Our answer is, Yes and No. It may be granted that Protestantismdid give rise to a certain kind of liberalism very prevalent inour days; but such liberalism is very far from bestowing onnations true liberty and stability; hence their constantagitation, and the perils of society which threaten all, eventhe specially favored Protestant nations themselves as much asany.

It was indeed the new doctrines which brought about the"Commonwealth" in England, and the subsequent Revolution of 1688;between which two events, however, great differences exist.

The destruction of monarchy under and in the person of Charles I. was the just retribution dealt by Providence to the Englishkings, who had been the first openly to shake off from a greatnation the wise and beneficent yoke of Rome. At all events, onething is certain, that under the "Protector," the child of theRevolution, as little as under the Protestant Tudors, could theEnglish scarcely be regarded as freemen.

Cromwell banished from their hall the representatives of thepeople. He could scarcely find epithets opprobrious enough forMagna Charta, which the people considered, and rightly, as thepalladium of English liberty. In his scornful order to "takeaway that bawble," though the "bawble" immediately referred towas the Speaker's mace, the word meant the freedom of the nation.He was as absolute a monarch as ever ruled England. The libertyenjoyed under his regime was as meaningless for every class asfor the Catholics, whom he more immediately oppressed, and wasill compensated for by the material prosperity which his geniusknew so well how to secure.

It was his despotic rule, in fact, and the fear of anarchy whichaffrighted the minds of the people at his death—the dread of agovernment of rival soldiers—which rendered so easy thetriumphant restoration of the worthless Stuarts, in the personof the most worthless of them all, Charles II.

The true constitutional liberty of which England may fairlyboast was the work of a long series of years subsequent to theRevolution of 1688. It was the work of the whole eighteenthcentury, in fact, and was grounded on the fragments of oldCatholic doctrines and customs. In no sense can it be called theresult of Protestantism, save as coming after it in point oftime.

Whoever is acquainted with the state of religion and society inEngland, during the latter part of the seventeenth and the wholeof the eighteenth century, needs not to be told that, among theruling classes, faith in a revealed religion had ceased to exist.The yoke of Rome once shaken off, the human mind was quick todraw all the consequences of the principle of entireindependence in religious matters. Tindal, Collins, Hobbes,Shaftesbury, and other philosophers, had openly denouncedrevelation, and that portion of the nation which esteemed itselfenlightened embraced their new doctrines. It would be false toimagine that, in 1700 and afterward, the English were as firmbelievers in the Church of England's Thirty-nine Articles asthey seemed to be at the beginning of this century. The whole ofthe last century was for all Europe, with the exception of thetwo peninsulas of Italy and Spain, a period of avowed disbelief.

Even Presbyterian Scotland did not escape the contagion, andsome theologians and preachers of the Kirk at that time are nowpraised for their liberal views of religion, that is, for theirwant of real faith. The influence of Wesley and his fellow-workers on the English mind, and the dread of the spread ofFrench infidelity and jacobinism, were more extensive andeffectual than people are apt to imagine; and there is no doubtthat, seventy years ago England was far more of a believingcountry than she had been for a hundred years before.

But, if even Scotch Presbyterian ministers and Church of Englandmen, such as Laurence Sterne, were unworthy of the name ofChristian, what are we to think of those who had to profess nooutward faith in Christianity, because of ministerial offices?There is no doubt that, in the mass, they were almost completelyvoid of any faith in revealed religion.

To such men as these is England indebted for the development ofher constitution. If Protestantism had any share in it at all,it did not go beyond preparing the way for the destruction ofChristianity in the mind and heart of the people; or, rather,constitutional liberty in England has no connection whateverwith religion. The English, left to their own ingenuity andskill, displayed a vast amount of statesmanlike qualities indevising for themselves a system of check and counter-check,which protected the subject and defined the rights of the ruler;and this gave the nation an undoubted superiority over theirneighbors on the Continent. But it cannot be attributed, exceptin a very remote manner, to the Protestant doctrine of theindependence of the human mind.

Were we to examine the effect which the example of Englandproduced on other nations, we should find that, instead ofspreading liberty, it was the cause of the diffusion of anunbridled license under the name of liberalism.

In England itself; the lower orders of society having been keptin ignorance, and consequently in subjection to the rulingclasses, and the latter finding it to their interest to preserveorder and stability in the state, no frightful commotions couldensue to threaten the destruction of society.

In Continental countries, the middle and even the lowest classeswere more readily caught by doctrines which, when kept withindue bounds, may be promotive of exterior prosperity, but which,pushed to their extremes and logical consequences, may embroilthe whole nation in revolution and calamities.

Such has been the case in our own days, and in days immediatelypreceding our own; and England is now experiencing the recoil ofthose convulsions, and seems on the eve of being convulsedherself more terribly, perhaps, than any other nation has yetbeen.

These few reflections must suffice, as to extend them would gobeyond our present scope. But now comes the question, Why wasIreland unprepared for the reception of Protestantism? Why didshe reject it absolutely and permanently?

According to the theorists who attribute the success ofProtestantism in the North of Europe to a higher civilizationand a more ardent love of freedom, the contrary characteristicsshould distinguish those nations which remained faithful to theChurch, and particularly the Irish. Was the lack of a highercivilization and more ardent love for freedom really the cause,then, for Ireland's undergoing so many fearful sacrifices merelyfor the sake of her religion?

We should not dread entering upon a comparison of theScandinavian and Celtic races in these two articular points, asthey existed at the time of the Tudors. We are confident that adetailed survey of both would result in a glorious vindicationof the Irish character, although, owing to six hundred years ofcruel wars with Dane and Anglo-Norman, the actual prosperity ofthe country was far inferior to that of England. But the outlineof so vast a subject must content us here.

In judging of the elevation of a nation's sentiments, the firstthing that strikes us is the motive assigned by the Irishrepresentatives for refusing to pass the bill of supremacy."Five or six changes of religion in twelve years were too muchfor conscientious people." Such was the answer sent back toElizabeth, and spoken as though easy of comprehension. Had theydeemed that their language could have been misunderstood, theywould undoubtedly have expressed themselves in stronger terms.

Strange that such an obvious and common-sense remark had neveroccurred to the intelligent and highly-civilized members of theEnglish Parliament—those ardent lovers of freedom—when appliedto by a new English monarch to acknowledge and confirm, as law,the religious system he had determined to establish!

Apparently, then, at this time, Ireland possessed a consciencewhich England either laid no claim on, or made no pretensions to;and it might not be too much to lay this down as the firstreason why Ireland remained faithful to her religion. In fact,the whole history of the period bears out this generalobservation. The subserviency of the proud English aristocracy,of those pretended statesmen and legislators, in matters sointimately connected with the soul, its convictions and itsmorality, shows conclusively that the word "conscience" had nomeaning for them, or that, if they were aware of the existenceof such a thing, they made so little account of it that theywere ready at all times to barter it for position, what theyconsidered honor, and wealth.

On the other hand, the constant, unshaken, and emphatic refusalof the Irish to renounce their religion for the novel"speculations" of pretended theologians— in reality, hereticalteachers —at the beck of king or queen; their willingness tosubmit to all the rigor of extreme penal laws rather thandisobey their sense of right, proves too well that theypossessed a conscience, knew what it meant, and resolved tofollow it. There is not a single fact of their, history, generalor particular, taking them collectively as a nation, when, bytheir actions, they spoke as one people or individually, whenpriest and friar, great man or mean man, chose to lose position,property, name—life itself—rather than be false to theirreligion and God—which does not prove that they owned aconscience and obeyed its voice.

Can a nation, deprived of this, be esteemed really free andtruly civilized? and can a nation which possesses it beconsidered barbarous? The answer cannot be doubtful, and is ofitself a sufficient solution of the question under examination.

But, to come to more special details. The Irish idea ofcivilization was certainly of a very different character fromthat of the English; but was it the less true? From the landingof the first invasion, the Norman nobles and prelates lookeddown on the invaded people as barbarous and uncouth, as theypreviously looked down upon the Anglo-Saxons. Later on, theyspoke of the Irish customs as "lewd;" and, later still, themajority of them adopted those "lewd customs."

If the question be merely one of refinement of outward manners,and aquaintance with the artificial code established by asociety with which the Irish, up to that time, had never come incontact, the Normans may be granted whatever benefit may accrueto them from such, though, even here, the Irish chieftains mightlater on compare favorably with their foes. For instance, if isdoubtful whether Hugh O'Donnell and O'Sullivan Beare, one ofwhom went to Spain, and the other to Portugal—and the second,Philip II. commanded to be treated as a Spanish grandee —werenot as courteous and dignified as Cecil or Walsingham, or Essexor Raleigh, at the court of Elizabeth. And, if we take the caseof the descendants of Strongbow's warriors, who became "moreIrish than the Irish," there is no reason why we should notprefer the manners and bearing of young Gerald Desmond, when,after leaving Rome, he appeared at the court of Tuscany, tothose of the young lords who danced at Windsor, under the eyesof Henry, with Anne Boleyn. But, treating the subject seriously,and examining it more closely, we may find a necessity forreversing the opinion which is too commonly entertained.

Civilization does not consist only, or chiefly, in refinement ofmanners, but in all things which exalt a nation; and, after the"conscience" of which we have spoken, nothing is so important inmaking a nation civilized as the institutions under which itlives.

The laws are the great index of a people's civilization, chieflyas regards their execution. Nothing can be more indicative of itthan the criminal code of a people.

The law of England at that time compares poorly with the Irishcompilation known as the "Senchus Mor," which scholars have onlyrecently been able to study, and which is being printed as wewrite, and to be illustrated with learned notes. From allaccounts given by competent reviewers, it is clear that wisdom,sound judgment, equity, and Christian feeling, constitute theessence of those laws which Edmund Campian found the youngIrishmen of his day studying under such strange circ*mstancesand with such ardor and application as to spend sixteen oreighteen years at it.

And in what manner were those very Christian enactments whichlay at the foundation of the English legislation executed at thesame period? What, for instance, were the features of itscriminal code? It is unnecessary to depict what all the worldknows.

In extenuation of the barbarous blood-thirstiness whichcharacterized it, it may be said that torture, cruel punishments,and fearful chastisem*nt for slight offences, formed thegeneral features of the criminal code of most Christian nations.They had been handed down by barbarous ancestors, the relics ofScandinavian cruelty for the most part, added to the Roman slavepenalties, which were the remnants of pagan inhumanity. Thisanswer would be insufficient when comparing the English with theBrehon law, but it does not hold good even with reference toother Continental nations. In no country at that time waspunishment so pitiless as in England. The details, now wellknown, can only be published for exceptional readers; to find acomparison for them Dr. Madden says:

"We must come down to the reign of terror in France, to themassacres of September, to the wholesale executions ofconventional times; to find the mob insulting the victims, andthe executioner himself adding personal affront to thedisgusting fulfilment of his horrible office."

Passing from the laws to the usages of warfare, and chiefy todomestic strife, here the most vulnerable point in the Irishcharacter shows itself. The constant feuds resulting from theclan system furnish a never-failing theme to those who accusethe Irish of barbarism. Yet is there no parallel to them in thehorrors of those dynastic revolutions which preceded the Tudorsin England, and which the Tudors only put an end to by thecompletest despotism, and by shedding the best blood of thecountry in torrents? The Irish feuds never depopulated thecountry. It is even admitted by most reliable historians that,while those dissensions were rifest, the land was really teemingwith a happy people, and rich in every thing which anagricultural country can enjoy. The great battles of the variousclans resulted often in the killing of a few dozen warriors.Such, in fact, was the manner in which chroniclers estimated thegains or losses of each of those victories or defeats.

But, in the Wars of the Roses, England lost a great part of heradult population; so much so, that she was altogetherincapacitated from waging war with any external nation. Shecould not even afford to send any reenforcements to the EnglishPale in Ireland—not even a few hundred which at times wouldhave proved so serviceable. It was in fact high time and almosta happy thing for England that the crushing despotism of theTudors came in to save the nation from total ruin.

Finally, can it be said that the Irish were inferior incivilization to the English by reason of their social habits,when Danes, Anglo-Saxons and Normans, in turn, invariablyadopted Irish manners in preference to their own, after living asufficient time in the country to be able to appreciate thedifference between the one and the other?

The writers of whom we speak ascribe the spread of Protestantismnot only to a higher civilization, or at least a special aptnessand fitness for it, but also say that it was due to the greaterlove for freedom which possessed those who accepted it; whereasthe Irish, as they allege, have been forever priest-ridden andcowered under the lash.

The connection between English Protestantism and freedom hasbeen sufficiently touched upon. But in Ireland the wholeresistance of the Irish people to the change of religion is themost conspicuous proof which could be advanced of their inherentlove for freedom.

What is the meaning of this word "priest-ridden?" If, asattached to the Irish, it means that they have remainedfaithfully devoted to their spiritual guides, and protected themat cost of life and limb against the execution of barbarous laws,this epithet which is flung at them as a reproach is a glory tothem, and a true one.

Are they to be accused of cowardice because they were never boldenough to demolish a single Catholic chapel—a favoriteamusem*nt of the English mobs from Elizabeth's reign toVictoria's—or because they could not find the courage in theirhearts to mock a martyr at the stake, or imbrue their hands inhis blood, as did the nation of a higher civilization and a moreardent love for freedom?

The Irish cower under the lash! It could never be applied, untilcalculating treachery had first rendered them naked anddefenceless, and removed from their reach every weapon ofdefence. And the man who in such a case receives the lash is acoward, while he who safely applies it is a hero!

Our observations so far have cleared the ground for the rightsolution and understanding of the present question. It may nowbe said that the Irish were not prepared for the reception ofProtestantism, and remained firm in their faith because—

1. They possessed a conscience.

2. There had existed no religious abuses, worthy of the name, intheir country which called for reform. Such abuses had inEngland and Germany furnished the pretext for a change ofreligion. It was a mere pretext, for the alleged abuses mightall be remedied without intrenching on the domain of faith, andunsettling the religious convictions of the whole nation. Thereis no greater crime possible than to introduce among peopleenjoying all the benefits resulting from a firm belief in holytruth a simple doubt, a simple hesitating surmise, calculated tomake them waver in the least in what had previously been a solidand well-grounded faith. But to consider that crime carried tothe extent of so sapping the foundation of Christian belief asto bring about the inevitable consequence of opening undernations the fearful abyss of atheism and despair—there is noword sufficiently strong to express the indignation which such acourse of action must naturally excite. And that the ultimateresult of the new heresy was to carry men to the very brink ofthe abyss is plain enough to-day, and was foreseen by Lutherhimself. In all probability he had a clear perception of it,since the latter half of his life was devoted to propping up thecrumbling walls of his hastily-erected edifice by whateversupports he could steal from the old faith, and fighting hardagainst all those who had already drawn the ultimate conclusionsof his own principles.

For those, then, who in the sixteenth century set in motion thechaos which threatens to overwhelm us to-day, the religiousabuses existing at the time can offer no excuse for theirdestruction of Religion, because stains happened to sully thepurity of her outward garment.

But in Ireland no such abuses existed; and consequently therewas there not even a pretext for the introduction ofProtestantism, and by the very reason of their sense of good andright the Irish were unprepared for heresy.

3. Even had it entered into their minds to wish for areformation of some kind, they were certainly unprepared for theone offered them. The first reform of the new order was to closethe religious houses which the people loved, which were theseats of learning, holiness, and education. Their Catholicancestors had founded those religious houses; they themselvesenjoyed the spiritual and even temporal advantages attached tothem, for they constituted in fact the only important and usefulestablishments which their country possessed; they had beenconsecrated by the lives and deaths of a thousand saints withintheir walls; and they suddenly beheld pretended ministers of anew religion of which they knew nothing, backed by ferociousWalloon or English troopers, turn out or slay their inmates,close them, set them on fire, pillage them, or convert them intoprivate dwellings for the convenience of an imported aristocracy.This was the first act of the "introduction " of the"Reformation " into Ireland. The people were enabled to judge ofthe sanctity of the new creed at its first appearance among them. And this alone, apart from their firm adherence to the faith oftheir fathers, was quite enough to justify them in theirresistance to such a substitute.

But, above all, when they beheld how the inmates of those holy-houses were treated, when they saw them cast out into the world,penniless, reduced to penury and want, persecuted, declaredoutcasts, hunted down, insulted by the soldiery, arrested,cruelly beaten, bound hand and foot, and hung up either beforethe door of their burning monastery, or even in the churchitself before the altar—what wonder that they were unpreparedto receive the new religion?

The barbarity displayed throughout England and Ireland towardCatholicism was specially fiendish when directed againstreligious of both sexes; and, as in Ireland no class of personswas more justly and dearly loved, what wonder that the Irishliterally hated the religion that came to them from beyond thesea?

Without going over the other aspects of the religious questionof the time, and comparing article with article of the new andold beliefs, this single feature of the case alone is sufficient.The process might be carried out with advantage, but is notnecessary.

4. The new order of things, in one word, resolved itself intorapacity and wanton bloodshed. And, despite whatever may be saidof Irish outrages by those who are never tired of alluding tothem, Irish nature is opposed to such excesses. If they are everguilty of such, it is only when they have previously beenoutraged themselves, and in such cases they are the first torepent of their action in their cooler moments. On the otherhand, the men who first set all these outrages going never findreason to accuse themselves of any thing, are even perfectlysatisfied with and convinced of their own perfection; and, asfrom the first they acted coolly and systematically, their self-equanimity is never disturbed, they continue unshaken in thecalm conviction that they have always been in the right,whatever may have been the consequences of the initiativemovement and its steady continuance.

But we repeat advisedly—the Irish nature is opposed to rapacityand wanton shedding of blood, and this formed another strongreason for their opposition to the religious revolution whichimmersed them in so bloody a baptism.

5. Yet perhaps the most radical and real cause of theirpersistent refusal to embrace Protestantism lies in theirtraditional spirit, of which we have previously spoken. There isno rationalistic tendency in their character.

And all the points well considered, which, after all, is thebetter, the simply traditional or strictly rationalistic nature?What has been the result of those philosophical speculationsfrom which Protestantism sprang? Whither are men tending to-dayin consequence of it? Would it not have been better for mankindto have stood by the time-honored traditions of former ages,independently of the strong and convincing claims whichCatholicity offers to all? This is said without in the leastattributing the fault to sound philosophy, without casting theslightest slur on those truly great and illustrious men who havewidened the limits of the human intellect, and deserved well ofmankind by the solid truths they have opened up in their worksfor the benefit and instruction of minds less gifted than theirown.

CHAPTER XI.

THE IRISH AND THE STUARTS.—LOYALTY AND CONFISCATION.

Upon the death of Elizabeth, in 1603, the son of the unfortunateMary Stuart was called to the throne of England, and for thefirst time in their history the Irish people accepted Englishrule, gave their willing submission to an English dynasty, andafterward displayed as great devotedness in supporting thefalling cause of their new monarchs, as in defending theirreligion and nationality.

This feeling of allegiance, born so suddenly and strangely inthe Irish breast, cherished so ardently and at the price of somany sacrifices, finally raising the nation to the highest pitchof heroism, is worth studying and investigating its true cause.

What ought to have been the natural effect produced on the Irishpeople by the arrival of the news that James of Scotland hadsucceeded to Elizabeth? The first feeling must have been one ofdeep relief that the hateful tyranny of the Tudors had passedaway, to be supplanted by the rule of their kinsmen the Stuarts—kinsmen, because the Scottish line of kings was directlydescended from that Dal Riada colony which Ireland had sent solong ago to the shores of Albania, to a branch of whichColumbkill belonged.

For those who were not sufficiently versed in antiquariangenealogy to trace his descent so far back, the thought thatJames was the son of Mary Stuart was sufficient. If any peoplecould sympathize with the ill-starred Queen of Scots, thatpeople was the Irish. It could not enter into their ideas thatthe son of the murdered Catholic queen, should have feelingsuncongenial to their own. It is easy, then, to understand how,when the news of Elizabeth's death and of the accession of Jamesarrived, the sanguine Irish heart leaped with a new hope andjoyful expectation.

As for the real disposition of that strangest of monarchs, JamesI,, writers are at variance. Matthew O'Connor, the elder, whohad in his hands the books and manuscripts of Charles O'Connorof Bellingary, is very positive in his assertions on his side ofthe question:

"James was a determined and implacable enemy to the Catholicreligion; he alienated his professors from all attachment to hisgovernment by the virulence of his antipathy. One of his firstgracious proclamations imported a general jail-delivery, exceptfor 'murderers and papists.' By another proclamation he pledgedhimself 'never to grant any toleration to the Catholics,' andentailed a curse on his posterity if they granted any."

Turning now to Dr. Madden's "History of the Penal Laws," weshall feel disposed to modify so positive an opinion. There weread:

"It is very evident that his zeal for the Protestant Church hadmore to do with a hatred of the Puritans than of popery, andthat he had a hankering, after all, for the old religion whichhis mother belonged to, and for which she had been persecuted bythe fanatics of Scotland."

Hume seems to support this judgment of Dr. Madden when he saysthat "the principles of James would have led him to earnestlydesire a unity of faith of the Churches which had been separated."

Both opinions, however, agree in the long-run, since Dr. Maddenis obliged to confess that "new measures of severity, as thebigotry of the times became urgent, were wrung from the timidking. He had neither moral nor political courage."

Still, on the day of his coronation, the Irish could littleimagine what was in store for them at the hands of the son ofMary Stuart; hence their great rejoicing, till the first strokeof bitter disappointment came to open their eyes, and awakenthem to the hard reality. This was the flight of Tyrone andTyrconnell, which had been brought about by treachery and lowcunning. These chieftains were, as they deserved to be, theidols of the nation. They were compelled to fly because, as Dr.Anderson, a Protestant minister, says, "artful Cecil hademployed one St. Lawrence to entrap the Earls of Tyrone andTyrconnell, the Lord of Devlin, and other Irish chiefs, into asham plot which had no evidence but his."

The real cause of their flight was that adventurers and"undertakers" desired to "plant" Ulster, though the final treatywith Mountjoy had left both earls in possession of their lands.That treaty yielded not an acre of plunder, and was consequentlyin English eyes a failure. The long, bloody, and promising warsof Elizabeth's reign had ended, after all, in forcing coronets onthe brows of O'Neill and O'Donnell, with a royal deed added, securingto them their lands, and freedom of worship to all the north.

James was met by the importunate demand for land. O'Neill,O'Donnell, and several other Irish chieftains, were sacrificedto meet this demand; they were compelled to fly; and they hadscarcely gone when millions of acres in Ulster were declared tobe forfeited to the crown, and thrown open for "planting."

And here a new feature in confiscation presents itself, whichwas introduced by the first of the Stuart dynasty, and provedfar more galling to Irishmen than any thing they had yetencountered in this shape.

In the invasion led by Strongbow, in the absorption of theKildare estates by Henry VIII., in the annexation of King's andQueen's Counties under Philip and Mary, even in the last"plantation" of Munster by Elizabeth's myrmidons at the end ofthe Desmond war, the land had been immediately distributed amongthe chief officers of the victorious armies. The conquered knewthat such would be the law of war; the great generals andcourtiers who came into possession scarcely disturbed thetenants. A few of the great native and Anglo-Irish familiessuffered sorely from the spoliation; the people at largescarcely felt it, except by the destruction of clanship and theintroduction of feudal grievances. Moreover, the new proprietorswere interested in making their tenants happy, and notunfrequently identified themselves with the people—becoming incourse of time true Irishmen.

But, with the accession of the first of the Stuarts to theEnglish throne, a great alteration took place in the disposal ofthe land throughout Ireland.

The Tyrone war had ended five years before, and those who hadtaken part in the conflict had already received their portion;the vanquished, of misfortune—the conquerors, of gain. Jamesbrought in with him from Scotland a host of greedy followers;and all, from first to last, expected to rise with their kinginto wealth and honor. England was not wide enough to hold them,nor rich enough to satiate their appetites. The puzzled butcrafty king saw a way out of his difficulties in Ireland. He nolonger limited the distribution of land in that country tosoldiers and officers of rank chiefly. He gave it to Scotchadventurers, to London trades companies. He settled it onProtestant colonies whose first use of their power was to evictthe former tenants or clansmen, and thus effect a completechange in the social aspect of the north.

Well did they accomplish the task assigned them. Ulster became aProtestant colony, and the soil of that province has ever sinceremained in the hands of a people alien to the country.

Yet the Ulstermen had been led to believe that James purposedsecuring them in their possessions; for, according to Mr.Prendergast, in his Introduction to the "Cromwellian settlement:"

"On the 17th of July, 1607, Sir Arthur Chichester, Lord Deputy,accompanied by Sir John Davies and other commissioners,proceeded to Ulster, with powers to inquire what land each manheld. There appeared before them, in each county they visited,the chief lords and Irish gentlemen, the heads of creaghts, andthe common people, the Brehons and Shanachies, who knew all thesepts and families, and took upon themselves to tell whatquantity of land every man ought to have. They thus ascertainedand booked their several lands, and the Lord-Deputy promisedthem estates in them. 'He thus,' says Sir John Davies, 'made ita year of jubilee to the poor inhabitants, because every man wasto return to his own house, and be restored to his ancientpossessions, and they all went home rejoicing.'

"Notwithstanding these promises, the king, in the following year,issued his scheme for the plantation of Ulster, urged to it, itwould seem, by Sir Arthur Chichester, who so largely profited byit. . . . It could not be said that the flight of the earls gaveoccasion for this change, inasmuch as the king, immediatelyafter, issued a proclamation—which he renewed on takingpossession of both earls' territories—assuring the inhabitantsthat they should be protected and preserved in their estates."

It looks, indeed, as though the whole transaction, including thepromises and the call for ascertaining the quantity of landoccupied by each inhabitant, as also the sham plot into whichthe earls were inveigled, was but a cunning device to bringabout the plantation, in which manors of one thousand, fifteenhundred, and three thousand acres, were offered to such Englishand Scotch as should undertake to plant their lots with BritishProtestants, and engage that no Irish should dwell upon them.Meanwhile, all who had been in arms during Tyrone's war were tobe transplanted with their families, cattle, and followers, towaste places in Munster and Connaught, and there set down at adistance from one another.

Over and above this, the Irish were indebted to James for a newproject—a most ingenious invention for successful plunder. Hewas the real author of the celebrated "Commission for theinvestigation of defective titles."

It would seem that the province of Ulster was too small for therapacity of those who were constantly urging upon the king agreater thoroughness in his plans. It was clear, moreover, thatthe English occupation of the other three provinces had hithertoproved a failure. The island had failed to become Anglicised,and it was necessary to begin the work anew.

The new commission was presented to the Irish people in a mostalluring guise. That political hypocrisy, which to-day standsfor statesmanship, is not a growth of our own times. Theintention of James confined itself to putting an end to alluncertainty on the subject of titles, and bestowing on each land-owner one which, for the future, should be unimpeachable. Butthe result went beyond his intention. This measure became, infact, an engine of universal spoliation. It failed to secureeven those who succeeded in retaining a portion of their formerestates in possession, as Strafford made manifest, who, despiteall the unimpeachable titles conferred by James, managed toconfiscate to his own profit the greater part of the province ofConnaught.

It is fitting to give a few details of this new measure of James,in order to show the gratitude which the Irish owed the Stuarts,if on that account only. In "Ireland under English Rule," theRev. A. Perraud justly remarks: "Most Irish families heldpossession of their lands but by tradition, and their rightscould not be proved by regular title-deeds. By royal command, ageneral inquiry was instituted, and whoever could not prove hisright to the seat of his ancestors, by authentic documents, wasmercilessly but juridically despoiled of it; the pen of the lawyerthus making as many conquests as the blade of the mercenary."

The advisers of James—those who aided him in this scheme —werefully alive to its efficiency in serving their ends. A few yearspreviously, Arthur Chichester and Sir John Davies had only toconsult the Brehon lawyers and the chroniclers of the tribes,whose duty it was to become thoroughly acquainted with thelimits of the various territories, and keep the records in theirmemory, in order to procure from the Ulster men the proofs oftheir rights to property. Up to that time the word of those whowere authorized, by custom, to pronounce on such subjects, waslaw to every Irishman. And, indeed, the verdict of these was all-sufficient, inasmuch as the task was not overtaxing to thememory of even an ordinary man, since it consisted inremembering, not the landed property of each individual, but thelimits of the territory of each clan.

The clan territories were as precisely marked off as in anyEuropean state to-day; and, if any change in frontier occurred,it was the result of war between the neighboring clans, andtherefore known to all. To suppose, then, under such a state ofland tenure, that the territory of the Maguire clan, forinstance, belonged exclusively to Maguire, and that he couldprove his title to the property by legal documents, waserroneous—in fact, such a thing was impossible. Yet, such wasthe ground on which the king based his establishment of theodious commission.

The measure meant nothing less than the simple spoliation of allthose who came under its provisions at the time. MatthewO'Connor has furnished some instances of its workings, which maybring into stronger light the enormity of such an attempt.

"The immense possessions of Bryan na Murtha O'Rourke had beengranted to his son Teige, by patent; in the first year of theking's reign, and to the heirs male of his body. Teige died,leaving several sons; their titles were clear; no plots orconspiracies could be urged to invalidate them. By the medium ofthose inquisitions, they were found, one and all, to be bastards.The eldest son, Bryan O'Rourke, vas put off with a miserablepension, and detained in England lest he should claim hisinheritance. Yet, in this case, the title was actually in existence.

"In the county of Longford, three-fourths of nine hundred andninety-nine cartrons, the property of the O'Farrells, weregranted to adventurers, to the undoing and beggary of thatprincely family. Twenty-five of the septs were dispossessed oftheir all, and to the other septs were assigned mountainous andbarren tracts about one-fourth of their former possessions.

"The O'Byrnes, of Wicklow, were robbed of their property by aconspiracy unparalleled even in the annals of those times;fabricated charges of treason, perjury, and even legal murder,were employed; and, though the innocence of those victims ofrapacious oppression was established, yet they were never restored."

With regard to the Anglo-Irish, and even such of the natives ashad consented to accept titles from the English kings, thosetitles, some of which went back as far as Strongbow's invasion,were brought under the "inquiry" of the new commission—withwhat result may be imagined. An astute legist can discover flawsin the best-drawn legal papers. In the eye of the law, theneglect of recording is fatal; and it was proved that manyproprietors, whose titles had been bestowed by Henry VIII. andElizabeth, were not recorded, simply by bribing the clerks whowere charged with the office of recording them.

This portion of our subject must present strange features toreaders acquainted with the laws concerning property whichobtain among civilized nations. In making the necessary studiesfor this most imperfect sketch, the writer has been surprised atfinding that not one of the authors whom he has consulted hasspoken of any thing beyond the cruelty of compelling Irishlandowners to exhibit title-deeds, which it was known they didnot and could not possess. Not a single one has ever said a wordof "prescription;" yet, this alone was enough to arrest theproceedings of any English court, if it followed the rules oflaw which govern civilized communities.

Most of the estates, then declared to be escheated to the king,had been in possession of the families to which the holdersbelonged, for centuries; we may go so far, in the case of someIrish families and tribes, as to say for thousands of years. But,to disturb property which has been held for even less than acentury, would convulse any nation subjected to such a revolutionaryprocess. No country in the world could stand such a test; it wouldloosen in a day all the bonds that hold society together.

If the commission set on foot by James did not go to the extremelengths to which it was carried by those who came after him, heit was who established what bore the semblance of a legalprecedent for the excesses of Strafford, under Charles I., whichreached their utmost limits in the hands of Cromwell'sparliamentary commissioners. James set the engine of destructionin action: they worked it to its end. The Irish might justly layat his door all the woes which ensued to them from theprinciples emanating from him. Even during his reign they saw,with instinctive horror, the abyss which he had opened up toswallow all their inheritance. The first commission of Jamescommenced its operations by reporting three hundred and eighty-five thousand acres in Leinster alone as "discovered," inasmuchas the titles "were not such as ought " (in their judgment) "tostand in the way of his-Majesty's designs."

Hence, long before the death of James, all the hopes which hisaccession had raised in the minds of the Irish had vanished; yet,strange to say, they were not cured of their love for theStuart dynasty. They hailed the coming of Charles, the husbandof a Catholic princess, with joy. His marriage took place a yearprevious to the death of his father; and, to know that Henriettaof France was to be their queen, was enough to assure the Irishthat, henceforth, they would enjoy the freedom of their religion.The same motive always awakes in them hope and joy. Men maysmile at such an idea, but it is with a profound respect for theIrish character that such a sentence is written. Hope ofreligious freedom is the noblest sentiment which can move thebreast of man; and if there be reason for admiration in themotive which urges men to fight and die for their firesides andfamilies, how much more so in that which causes them to setabove all their altars and their God!

This time their hope seemed well-founded; for the treatyconcluded between England and France conferred the right on theCatholic princess of educating her children by this marriagetill the age of thirteen. And, in addition, conditions favorableto the English Catholics were inserted in the same treaty.

But people were not then aware of the reason for the insertionof those conditions. Hume, later on, being better acquaintedwith what at the time was a secret, states in his history that"the court of England always pretended, even in the memorials tothe French court, that all the conditions favorable to theEnglish Catholics were inserted in the marriage treaty merely toplease the Pope, and that their strict execution was, by anagreement with France, secretly dispensed with."

The Irish rejoiced, however; and Charles and his ministersencouraged their expectations. Lord Falkland, in the name of theking, promised that, if the Catholic lords should presentCharles, who needed money, with a voluntary tribute, he would inreturn grant them certain immunities and protections, whichacquired later on a great celebrity under the name of "graces."

The chief of these were—to allow "recusants" to practise in thecourts of law, and to sue out the livery of their land, merelyon taking an act of civil allegiance instead of the oath ofsupremacy; that the claims of the crown should be limited to thelast sixty years—a period long enough in all conscience; andthat the inhabitants of Connaught should be allowed to make anew enrolment of their estates, to be accepted by the king. AParliament was promised to sit in a short time, in order toconfirm all these "graces."

The subsidy promised by the Irish lords amounted to the thenenormous sum of forty thousand pounds sterling, to be paidannually for three years. Two-thirds of it was paid, accordingto Matthew O'Connor, but no one of the "graces" was forthcoming,the king finding he had promised more than he could perform.

Instead of enabling the land-owners of Connaught to obtain a newtitle by a new enrolment, Strafford, with the connivance ofCharles, devised a project which would have enabled the king todispose of the whole province to the enriching of his exchequer.This project consisted in throwing open the whole territory tothe court of "defective titles." To legalize this spoliation,the parchment grant, five hundred years old, given to RodericO'Connor and Richard de Burgo, by Henry II., was set up asrendering invalid the claims of immemorial possession by theIrish, although confirmed by recent compositions.

In the counties of Roscommon, Mayo, and Sligo, juries were foundfor the crown. The honesty and courageous resistance of a Galwayjury prevented the carrying out of the measure in that county.Strafford resented this rebuff deeply; and the brave Galwayjurors were punished without mercy for their "contumacy," forthey had been told openly to find for the king. Compelled toappear in the Castle chamber, they were each fined four thousandpounds, their estates seized, and themselves imprisoned untiltheir fines should be paid; while the sheriff, who was alsofined to the same amount, not being able to pay, died in prison.Such were a few of the "graces" granted the Irish on theaccession of Charles I.

Meanwhile, the king's difficulties with his English subjectsdrove him to turn for hope to the Scotch, upon whom he hadattempted to force Episcopalianism. The resistance of the Scotch,and the celebrated Covenant by which they bound themselves, arewell known. Charles, finally, granted the Covenanters not onlyliberty of conscience, but even the religious supremacy ofPresbyterianism, paying their army, moreover, for a portion ofthe time it passed under service in the rebellion againsthimself.

The example of the Scotch was certainly calculated to inflamethe Irish with ardor, and drive them likewise into rebellion.What was the oppression of Scotland compared to that under whichIreland had so long groaned? Surely the final attempt of thechief minister of Charles to rob them of the one province whichhad hitherto escaped, was enough to open their eyes, and converttheir faith in the Stuart dynasty into hatred and determinedopposition. Yet were they on the eve of carrying their devotionto this faithless and worthless line to the height of heroism.The generosity of the nature which is in them could find anexcuse for Charles. "He would have done us right," they thought,"had he been left free." From the rebellion of his subjects, inEngland and Scotland, they could only draw one conclusion—thathe was the victim of Puritanism, for which they could entertainno feeling but one of horror; and it is a telling fact thattheir attachment to their religion kept them faithful to thesovereign to whom they had sworn their allegiance, howeverunworthy he might be.

Thus in the famous rising of 1641, when in one night Ireland,with the exception of a few cities, freed herself from theoppressor (the failure of the plan in Dublin being the onlything which prevented a complete success; the English of thePale still refusing to combine with the Irish), the native Irishalone, left to their own resources, proclaimed emphatically inexplicit terms their loyalty to the king, whom they creditedwith a just and tolerant disposition, if freed from therestraints imposed upon him by the Puritanical faction. Afurther fact stranger still, and still more calculated to shaketheir confidence in the monarch, occurred shortly after, whichindeed raises the loyalty of the nation to a heightinconceivable and impossible to any people, unless one whoseconscience is swayed by the sense of stern duty.

When the Scottish Covenanters, whose rebellion had secured themin possession of all they demanded, heard of the Irish movement,they were at once seized with a fanatical zeal urging them tostamp out the Irish "Popish rebellion." King Charles, who wasthen in Edinburgh, expressed his gratification at their proposal,and no time was lost in shipping a force of two thousand Scotsacross the Channel. They landed at Antrim, when they began thosefrightful massacres which opened by driving into the sea threethousand Irish inhabitants of the island Magee.

When, according to M. O'Connor's "Irish Catholics," "lettersconveying the news of the intended invasion of the Scots wereintercepted; when the speeches of leading members in the EnglishCommons, the declaration of the Irish Lord-Justices, and of theprincipal members of the Dublin Council, countenanced thoserumors; when Mr. Pym gave out that he would not leave a Papistin Ireland; when Sir Parsons declared that within a twelvemonthnot a Catholic should be seen in the whole country; when SirJohn Clotworthy affirmed that the conversion of the Papists wasto be effected with the Bible in one hand and the sword in theother," and the King all the while seemed to allow and consentto it, the Irish were not in the least dismayed by those rumors,but set about establishing in the convulsed island a sort oforder in the name of God and the king!

Then for the first time did native and Anglo-Irish Catholicstake common side in a common cause. This was the union whichArchbishop Browne had foreseen, which had shown itself insymptoms from time to time, but which had oftener been broken bythe old animosity. But, at last, convinced that the only partyon which they could rely, and the party which truly supportedthe reigning dynasty, was that of the Ulster chiefs, theCatholic lords of the Pale threw themselves heart and soul intoit, and, under the guidance of the Catholic bishops who thencame forward, together they formed the celebrated "Confederationof Kilkenny" in 1642.

Had Charles even then possessed the courage, honesty, or wisdomto recognize and acknowledge his true friends, he might havebeen spared the fate which overtook him; but all he did wasalmost to break up the only coalition which stood up boldly inhis favor.

A circ*mstance not yet touched upon meets us here. Protestantismwas at this time effecting a complete change in the rules ofjudgment and conduct which men had hitherto followed. In placeof the old principles of political morality which up to thisperiod had regulated the actions of Christians, notions ofindependence, of subversion of existing governments, ofrevolutions in Church and state, were for the first time inChristian history scattered broadcast through the world, andbeginning that series of catastrophes which has made Europeanhistory since, and which is far from being exhausted yet. TheIrish stood firm by the old principles, and, though they becamevictims to their fidelity, they never shrank from theconsequences of what they knew to be their duty, and to thoseprinciples they remain faithful to-day.

To return from this short digression: The Irish hierarchy, thenative Irish and the Anglo-Irish lords of the Pale, had combinedtogether to form the "Confederation of Kilkenny," in whichconfederation lay the germ of a truly great nation. Early in thestruggle the Catholic hierarchy saw that it was for them to takethe initiative in the movement, and they took it in rightearnest. They could not be impassive spectators when thequestion at issue was the defence of the Catholic religion,joined this time with the rights of their monarch. They met inprovincial synod at Kells, where, after mature deliberation, thecause of the confederates, "God and the king," freedom ofworship and loyalty to the legitimate sovereign, was declaredjust and holy, and, after lifting a warning voice against thebarbarities which had commenced on both sides, and ordaining theabolition and oblivion of all distinctions between native Irishand old English, they took measures for convoking a nationalsynod at Kilkenny.

It met on the 10th of May, 1643. An oath of association boundall Catholics throughout the land. It was ordained that ageneral assembly comprising all the lords spiritual and temporaland the gentry should be held; that the assembly should selectmembers from its body to represent the different provinces andprincipal cities, to be called the Supreme Council, which shouldsit from day to day, dispense justice, appoint to offices, andcarry on the executive government of the country.

Meanwhile the Irish abroad, the exiles, had heard of themovement, and several prominent chieftains came back to takepart in the struggle; while those who remained away helped thecause by gaining the aid of the Catholic sovereigns, and sendinghome all the funds and munitions of war they could procure.Among these, one of the most conspicuous was the learned LukeWadding, then at Rome engaged in writing his celebrated works,who dispatched money and arms contributed by the Holy Father.John B. Rinuccini, Archbishop of Fermo, sent by the Pope asNuncio, sailed in the same ship which conveyed thosecontributions to Ireland.

The Catholic prelates thus originated a free government withnothing revolutionary in its character, but combining some ofthe forms of the old Irish Feis with the chief features ofmodern Parliamentary governments. Matthew O'Connor makes thefollowing just observations on this subject in his "IrishCatholics:"

"The duty of obedience to civil government was so deeplyimpressed on the Catholic mind, at this period, in Ireland, thatit degenerated into passive submission. These impressionsoriginated in religious zeal, and were fostered by persecution.The spiritual authority of the clergy was found requisite tosoften those notions, and temper them with ideas of theconstitutional, social, and Christian right of resistance inself-defence. The nobility and gentry fully concurred in thoseproceedings of the clergy, and the nation afterward ratifiedthem in a general convention held at Kilkenny, in the subsequentmonth of October. The national union seemed to be at lastcemented by the wishes of all orders, and the interests of allparties."

The fact is, the nation had been brought to life, and took itsstand on a new footing. When the general assembly met, inOctober, eleven bishops and fourteen lay lords formed what maybe called the Irish peerage; two hundred and twenty-sixcommoners represented the large majority of the Irishconstituencies; a great lawyer of the day, Patrick Darcy, waselected chancellor; and a Supreme Council of six members fromeach province constituted what may be called the Executive.

This government, which really ruled Ireland without anyinterference until Ormond succeeded in breaking it up, wasobeyed and acknowledged throughout the land. It undertook andcarried out all the functions of its high office, such as thecoining of money, appointing circuit-judges, sending ambassadorsabroad, and commissioning officers to direct the operations ofthe national army. Among these latter, one name is sufficient tovouch for their efficiency: that of Owen Roe O'Neill, who hadreturned, with many others, from the Continent, in the July ofthat year, and formally, assumed the command of the army ofUlster.

Owen Roe O'Neill was grand-nephew to Hugh of Tyrone. Unknown,even now, to Europe, his name still lives in the memory of hiscountrymen. "The head of the Hy-Niall race, the descendant of ahundred kings, the inheritor of their virtues, without a taintof their vices, he would have deserved a crown, and, on a largertheatre, would have acquired the title of a hero."—(M. O'Connor.)

Had Charles recognized this government, which proclaimed himking, discharged from office the traitors, Borlase and Parsons,who plotted against him, and not surrendered his authority toOrmond, Ireland would probably have been saved from the horrorsimpending, and Charles himself from the scaffold. Whatever theissue might have been, the fact remains that the Irish thenproved they could establish a solid government of their own, andthat it is an altogether erroneous idea to imagine themincapable of governing themselves.

It is impossible to enter here upon the details of the intricatecomplications which ensued—complications which were chieflyowing to the plots of Ormond; but, it may be stated fearlesslythat, the more the history of those times is studied, the morecertainly is the "national" party, with the Nuncio Rinuccini forhead and director, recognized as the one which, better than anyother, could have saved Ireland. At least, no true Irishman willnow pretend that the "peace party," headed by Ormond, which waspitted against the "Nuncionists," could bring good to thecountry; on the contrary, its subsequent misfortunes are to beascribed directly to it.

To stigmatize it as it deserves, needs no more than to say thatamong its chief leaders were Ormond, its head and projector, andMurrough O'Brien, of Inchiquin, to this day justly known asMurrough of the burnings. These two men were the product of the"refined policy" of England to kill Catholicism in the higherclasses by the operation of one of the laws that governed theoppressed nation—wardship.

Both Inchiquin and Ormond were born of Catholic fathers, and alltheir relations, during their lives, remained Catholics. But,their fathers dying during the minority of both, the law tooktheir education out of the hands of the nearest kin, to give itto English Protestant wardens, in the name of the king, who wassupposed by the law to be their legitimate guardian. This wasone of the fruits of feudalism. They were duly brought up bythese wardens in the Protestant religion, and received aProtestant education. They grew up, fully impressed with theidea that the country which gave them birth was a barbarouscountry; the parents to whom they owed their lives wereidolaters; and their fellow-countrymen a set of villains, onlyfitted to become, and forever remain, paupers and slaves.

There is no exaggeration in these expressions, as anybody mustconcede who has studied the opinions and prejudices entertainedby the English with regard to the Irish, from that period downalmost to our own days. At any rate, to one acquainted with theworkings of the "Court of Wards," there is nothing surprising inthe fact that Ormond, the descendant of so many illustrious menof the great Butler family—a family at all times so attached tothe Catholic faith, and which afterward furnished so manyvictims to the transplantation schemes of Cromwell—shouldhimself become an inveterate enemy to the religion of his ownparents, and to those who professed it; and that he shouldemploy the great gifts which God had granted him, solely toscheme against this religion, and prevent his native countrymenfrom receiving even the scanty advantages which Charles at onetime was willing to concede to them, through Lord Glanmorgan.

It was Ormond who prevented the execution of the treaty betweenthat lord and the confederates, the provisions of which were—

1. The Catholics of Ireland were to enjoy the free and publicexercise of their religion.

2. They were to hold, and have secure for their use, all theCatholic churches not then in actual possession of Protestants.

3. They were to be exempt from the jurisdiction of theProtestant clergy.

But, thanks to his education, such provisions were too much forOrmond, the son of a Catholic father, and whose mother, at thevery time living a pious and excellent life, would have rejoicedto see those advantages secured to her Church and herself, incommon with the rest of her countrymen and women.

In like manner, Murrough O'Brien, the Baron of Inchiquin, thedescendant of so many Catholic kings and saints, whose name wasa glory in itself, and so closely linked to the Catholic gloriesof the island, was converted, by the education which he hadreceived, into a most cruel oppressor of the Church of hisbaptism. His expeditions, through the same country which hisancestors had ruled, were characterized by all the barbaritiespractised at the time by Munro, Coote, and all the parliamentaryleaders of the Scotch Puritans, and would have fitted him as aworthy compeer of Cromwell and Ireton, who were soon to follow.The name of Cashel and its cathedral, where he murdered so manypriests, women, and children, around the altar adorned by thegreat and good Cormac McCullinan, would alone suffice to handhis name down to the execration of posterity.

Ormond and Murrough being the two chiefs of the "peace party,"what wonder that the prelates, who had so earnestly labored atthe formation of the Kilkenny Confederation, and the Nuncio attheir head, refused to have aught to do with projects in whichsuch men were concerned, when it is borne in mind also thatseveral provisions of that "peace treaty" were directly opposedto the oath taken by the Confederates? But, unfortunately,Ormond was a skilful diplomat, had been dispatched by the king,and was supposed to be carrying out the ideas suggested to himby the unhappy monarch. His representations, therefore, couldnot fail to carry weight, principally with the Anglo-Irish lordsof the Pale, many of whom, influenced by his courtly manners andaddress, declared openly for the proposed peace.

Thus did the peace sow the germs of division and even war amongthe Irish. The unity among the Catholics, so full of promise,was soon broken up; and those who had met each other in such abrotherly spirit in the day when the native chiefs and Anglo-Irish lords assembled together at Tara, who swore then that thedivision of centuries should exist no longer, began to look uponeach other again as enemies. Without going at length into thevicissitudes of those various contentions, it is enough to saythat in the end war broke out between those who had so recentlytaken the oath of confederation together. Owen Roe O'Neill, thevictor of Benburb, and the only man who could direct the Irisharmies, was attacked by Preston and other lords of the Pale, anddied, as some historians allege, of poison administered to himby one of them.

This was the result of the intrigues of Ormond; nevertheless,Charles continued to place confidence in him, and though he hadbeen twice obliged to resign his lieutenancy, and once to flythe country, the infatuated sovereign sent him back once more.

If was only at the end of the struggle, when the ill-fated kingwas at length in the hands of his enemies, that Ormond could bebrought to consent to conditions acceptable to the nationalparty. But then it was too late; the parliamentary forces hadcarried every thing before them in England; England was alreadyrepublican to the core; and the armies which had been employedagainst the Cavaliers, once the efforts of the latter had ceasedwith the death of the king, were at liberty to leave the country,now submissive to parliamentary rule, and cross over to Ireland,with Cromwell at their head, to crush out the nation almost,and concentrate on that fated soil, within the short space ofnine months, all the horrors of past centuries.

By the death of Owen Roe O'Neill just at that time, Ireland wasleft without a leader fit to cope with the great republicangeneral. The country had already been devastated by Coote, Munro,St. Leger, and other Scotch and English Puritans; but themassacres which, until the coming of Cromwell, had been, atleast, only local and checked by the troops of Owen Roe, soonextended throughout the island, unarrested by any forces in thefield. The Cromwellian soldiers, not content with the characterof warriors, came as "avengers of the Lord," to destroy an"idolatrous people."

That their real design was to exterminate the nation, and usethe opportunity which then presented itself for that purpose,there can by no doubt. It was only after a fair trial that theproject was found to be impossible, and that other expedientswere devised. Coote had previously acted with this design inview, as is now an ascertained fact, and had been encouraged inthe course he pursued by the Dublin government. 1 (1 See MatthewO'Connor's "Irish Catholics.") The same might be shown of St.Leger, in Munster, toward the beginning of the insurrection. Atall events, all doubt in the matter, if any existed, ceased withthe landing of Cromwell in 1649, when the real object of the warat once showed itself everywhere.

The result of this man's policy has been painted by Villemain,in his "Histoire de Cromwell," in a sentence: "Ireland became adesert which the few remaining inhabitants described by themournful saying, 'There was not water enough to drown a man, notwood enough to hang him, not earth enough to bury him.'"

The French writer attributes to the whole island what was saidof only a part of it. To this day, the name of Cromwell isjustly execrated in Ireland, and "the curse of Cromwell " is oneof the bitterest which can be invoked upon a person's head. But,at present, the fidelity of the Irish to the Stuarts concerns us,and a few reflections will put it in a strong but true lightbefore us.

Ever since the restoration of Charles II., many Englishmen haveprofessed great reverence for the memory of the "martyr-king."Even the subsequent Revolution of 1658 left the monument erectedto him untouched. Many British families continued steady intheir devotion to the Scotch line, and the name of Jacobite wasfor them a title of honor. Yet what were their sufferings forthe cause of the king during his struggle with the Parliament,and after his execution? A few noblemen lost their lives andestates; some went into exile and followed the fortunes of thePretenders who tried to gain possession of the throne. But thebulk of the nation—England—may be said to have sufferednothing by the great revolution which led to the Commonwealth.On the contrary, it is acknowledged that the administration ofCromwell at least brought peace to the country, and raised thepower of Great Britain to a higher eminence in Europe than ithad ever known before. As usual, the English made greatprofession of loyalty, but, as a rule, were particularly carefulthat no great inconvenience should come to them from it.

Treated with contempt and distrust by Charles and his advisers,so insulted in every thing that was dear to her that it is stilla question for historians if, in many instances, the king andthe royalists did not betray her, Ireland alone, after havingtaken her stand for a whole decade of years for God and the king,resolved to face destruction unflinchingly in support of whatshe imagined to be a noble cause.

After the landing of Cromwell, when to any sensible man there nolonger remained hope of serving the cause of the king, when thedesire which is natural to every human heart, of saving what canbe saved, might, not only without dishonor, but with justice andright, have dictated the necessity of coming to terms with theparliamentarians, and of abandoning a cause which was hopeless,"on the 4th of December, 1649, Eber McMahon, Bishop of Clogher,a mere Irishman by name, by descent, by enthusiastic attachmentto his country, exerted his great abilities to rouse hiscountrymen to a persevering resistance to Cromwell, and to uniteall hearts and hands in the support of Ormond's administration. . . . All the bishops concurred in his views, and subscribed asolemn declaration that they would, to the utmost of their power,forward his Majesty's rights, and the good of the nation. . . .Ormond, at last, either sensible that no reliance could beplaced on them, or that the treachery of Inchiquin's troops was,at least, on the part of the Irish, a fair ground of distrustand suspicion of the remainder, consented to their removal."—("Irish Catholics.")

"At last!" will be the reader's exclamation, while he wonders ifanother people could be found forbearing enough to wait eightyears for the adoption of such a necessary measure.

And the only reward for their fidelity to King Charles I. couldunder the circ*mstances be destruction. They waited withresignation for the impending gloom to overshadow them. Terriblemoment for a nation, when despair itself fails to nerve it forfurther resistance and possible success! Such was the positionof the Irish at the death of Charles.

Who shall describe that loyalty? After Ormond had met with thedefeat he deserved in the field; after the cities had fallen oneafter another into the hands of the destroyer, who seldomthought himself bound to observe the conditions of surrender;after the chiefs, who might have protracted the struggle, haddisappeared either by death or exile, the doom of the nation wassealed; yet it shrank not from the consequences.

The barbarities of Cromwell and his soldiers had depopulatedlarge tracts of territory to such an extent that the troopsmarching through them were compelled to carry provisions asthrough a desert. The cattle, the only resource of anagricultural country, had been all consumed in a ten years' war.It was reported that, after every successful engagement, therepublican general ordered all the men from the age of sixteento sixty to be slaughtered without mercy, all the boys from sixto sixteen to be deprived of sight, and the women to have a red-hot iron thrust through their breasts. Rumors such as these,exaggerated though they may be, testify at least to the terrorwhich Cromwell inspired. As for the captured cities, there canbe no doubt of the wholesale massacres carried out therein byhis orders. Of the entire population of Tredagh only thirtypersons survived, and they were condemned to the labor of slaves.Hugh Peters, the chaplain of Fairfax, wrote after thisbarbarous execution: "We are masters of Tredagh; no enemy wasspared; I just come from the church where I had gone to thankthe Lord."

The same fate awaited Wexford, and, later on, Drogheda. Cromwell,when narrating those bloody massacres, concluded by saying,"People blame me, but it was the will of God."

The Bible, the holy word of God, misread and misunderstood bythose fanatics, persuaded them that it would be a crime not toexterminate the Irish, as the Lord punished Saul for havingspared Agag and the chief of the Amalekites. Whoever wishes forfurther details of these sickening atrocities, committed in thename of God, may find them in a multitude of histories of thetime, but chiefly in the "Threnodia" of Friar Morrison.

Certain modern Irish historians would seem not to understand theheroism of their own countrymen. "Bitterly," says A. M.O'Sullivan, "did the Irish people pay for their loyalty to anEnglish sovereign. Unhappily for their worldly fortunes, if notfor their fame, they were high-spirited and unfearing, wherepusillanimity would certainly have been safety, and might havebeen only prudence."

But the verdict of posterity, always a just one, calls such ahigh-spirited and unfearing attitude true heroism, and spurnspusillanimity even when it insures safety and may be calledprudence, if its result is the surrender of holy faith andChristian truth. Safety and prudence characterized the conductof the English nation under the iron rule of Cromwell, as underthe tyranny of the Tudors. Can the reader of history admire thenation on that account? Who shall affirm that the result of thecraven spirit of the English was the prosperity which ensued,and that of Irish heroism destruction and gloom? The history ofeither nation is far from ended yet; and bold would be the manwho dare assert that the prosperity of England is everlasting,and the humiliation of Ireland never to know an end.

However that may be, this at least is undeniable: the opinioncurrent of the Irish character is demonstrated to be altogetheran erroneous one by the incontrovertible facts cursorilynarrated above. Determination of purpose, adherence toconscience and principle, consistency of conduct, are terms alltoo weak to convey an idea of the magnanimity displayed by thepeople, and of their heroic bearing throughout those stirringevents.

At last, after a bloody struggle with Cromwell and Ireton, onMay 12, 1652, "the Leinster army of the Irish surrendered atKilkenny on terms which were successively adopted by the otherprincipal bodies of troops, between that time and the Septemberfollowing, when the Ulster forces came to composition." Thenbegan the real woes of Ireland. Never was the ingenuity of manso taxed to destroy a whole nation as in the measures adopted bythe Protector for that purpose. It is necessary to present abrief sketch of them, since all that the Irish suffered wasdesigned to punish them for their attachment to their religion,and, be it borne in mind, their devotion to the lawful dynastyof the Stuarts.

First, then, to render easy of execution the stern and cruelresolve of the new government, the defenders of the nation werenot only to be disarmed, but put out of the way. Hence Cromwellwas gracious enough to consent that they be permitted to leavethe country and take service in the armies of the foreign powersthen at peace with the Commonwealth. Forty thousand men,officers and soldiers, adopted this desperate resolution.

"Soon agents from the King of Spain, the King of Poland, and thePrince de Conde, were contending for the service of the Irishtroops. Don Ricardo White, in May, 1672, shipped seven thousandin batches from Waterford, Kinsale, Galway, Limerick, and Bantry,for the King of Spain. Colonel Christopher Mayo got liberty inSeptember to beat his drums, to raise three thousand more forthe same destination. Lord Muskerry took with him five thousandto the King of Poland. In July, 1654, three thousand fivehundred went to serve the Prince de Conde. Sir Walter Dungan andothers got liberty to beat their drums in different garrisonsfor various destinations."—(Prendergast.)

To prove that the desperate resolution of leaving their countrydid not originate with the Irish, notwithstanding what some havewritten to the contrary, it is enough to remark that theirexpatriation was made a necessary condition of their surrenderby the new government. For instance, Lord Clanrickard, accordingto Matthew O'Connor, "deserted and surrounded, could obtain noterms for the nation, nor indeed for himself and his troops,except with the sad liberty of transportation to any othercountry in amity with the Commonwealth."

To prove, if necessary, still further that the expatriation ofthe Irish troops was part of a scheme already resolved upon, itis enough to remember the indisputable fact that from thesurrender at Kilkenny in 1652, until the open announcement inthe September of 1653, that the Parliament had assignedConnaught for the dwelling-place of the Irish nation, whitherthey were to be "transplanted" before the 1st of May, 1654, thevarious garrisons and small armies which had fought so gallantlyfor Ireland and the Stuarts were successively urged (and urgedby Cromwell meant compelled) to leave the country; and it wasonly when the last of the Irish regiments had departed that thedoom of the nation was boldly and clearly announced.

But these forced exiles were not restricted to the warrior class."The Lord Protector," says Prendergast, "applied to the LordHenry Cromwell, then major-general of the forces of Ireland, toengage soldiers . . . . and to secure a thousand young Irishgirls to be shipped to Jamaica. Henry Cromwell answered thatthere would be no difficulty, only that force must be used intaking them; and he suggested the addition of fifteen hundred ortwo thousand boys of from twelve to fourteen years of age. . . .The numbers finally fixed were one thousand boys and onethousand girls."

The total number of children disposed of in the same way, from1652 to 1655, has been variously estimated at from twentythousand to one hundred thousand. The British Government at lastwas compelled to interfere and put a stop to the infamoustraffic, when, the mere Irish proving too scarce, the agentswere not sufficiently discriminating in their choice, butshipped off English children also to the Tobacco Islands.

At last the island was left utterly without defenders, andsufficiently depopulated. It is calculated that, when the lastgreat measure was announced and put into execution, only half amillion of Irish people remained in the country, the rest of theresident population being composed of the Scotch and English,introduced by James I., and the soldiers and adventurers let inby Cromwell.

The main features of the celebrated "act of settlement" areknown to all. It was an act intended to dispose quietly of halfa million human beings, destined certainly in the minds of itsprojectors to disappear in due time, without any great violence—to die off —and leave the whole island in the possession ofthe "godly."

Connaught is famed as being the wildest and most barren provinceof Ireland. At the best, it can support but a scanty population.At this time it had been completely devastated by a ten years'war and by the excesses of the parliamentary forces. Thisprovince then was mercifully granted to the unhappy Irish race;it was set apart as a paradise for the wretched remnant to dwellin all Connaught, except a strip four miles wide along the sea,and a like strip along the right bank of the Shannon. Thislatter judicious provision was undoubtedly intended to preventthem from dwelling by the ocean, whence they might derivesubsistence or assistance, or means of escape in the event oftheir ever rising again; and, on the other hand, from crossingthe Shannon, on the east side of which their homes might stillbe seen. This cordon of four miles' width was drawn all aroundwhat was the Irish nation, and filled with the fiercest zealotsof the "army of the Lord" to keep guard over the devoted victims.

Surely the doom of the race was at last sealed!

But let all justice be done to the Protector. The act was to theeffect that, on the first day of May, 1654, all who, throughoutthe war, had not displayed a constant good affection to theParliament of England in opposition to Charles I., were to beremoved with their families and servants to the wilds of a poorand desolated province, where certain lands were to be giventhem in return for their own estates. But, who of the Irishcould prove that they had displayed a "constant good affection"to the English Parliament during a ten years' war? The act wasnothing less than a proscription of the whole nation. TheEnglish of the Pale were included among the old natives, andeven a few Protestant royalists, who had taken of the cause ofthe fallen Stuarts. The only exception made was in favor of"husbandmen, ploughmen, laborers, artificers, and others of theinferior sort." The English and Scotch—constituted by this actof settlement lords and masters of the three richest provincesof Ireland— could not condescend to till the soil with theirown hands and attend to the mechanical arts required in civilsociety. Those duties were reserved for the Irish poor. It washoped that, deprived of their nobility and clergy, they might beturned to any account by their new masters, and either becomegood Protestants or perish as slaves. Herein mentita estiniquitas sibi.

The heart-rending details of this outrage on humanity may beseen in Mr. Prendergast's "Cromwellian Settlement." There allwho read may form some idea of the extent of Ireland'smisfortunes.

It is a wonder which cannot fail to strike the reader, how,after so many precautions had been taken, not only against thefurther increase of the race, but for its speedy demolition, how,reduced to a bare half million, penned off on a barren tract ofland, left utterly at the mercy of its persecutors, withoutpriests, without organization of any kind, it not only failed toperish, but, from that time, has gone on, steadily increasing,until to-day it spreads out wide and far, not only on the islandof its birth, but on the broad face of two vast continents.

In the space at our disposal, it is impossible to satisfy thecuriosity of the reader on this very curious and interestingtopic. A few remarks, however, may serve to broadly indicate thechief causes of this astonishing fact, taken apart from themiraculous intervention of God in their favor.

First, then, Connaught became more Irish than ever, and apowerful instrument, later on, to assist in the resurrection ofthe nation. In fact, as will soon be seen, it preserved life toit. Again, the outcasts, who were allowed to remain in the otherthree provinces as servants, or slaves, rather, were not foundmanageable on the score of religion; and, although new acts ofParliament forbade any bishop or priest to remain in the island,many did remain, some of them coming back from the Continent,whither they had been exported, to aid their unfortunatecountrymen in this their direst calamity.

As Matthew O'Connor rightly says : "The ardent zeal, thefortitude and calm resignation of the Catholic clergy duringthis direful persecution, might stand a comparison with theconstancy of Christians during the first ages of the Church. Inthe season of prosperity they may have pushed their pretensionstoo far"—this is M. O'Connor's private opinion of theConfederation of Kilkenny— "but, in the hour of trial, theyrose superior to human infirmities. . . . Sooner than abandontheir flocks altogether, they fled from the communion of men,concealed themselves in woods and caverns, from whence theyissued, whenever the pursuit of their enemies abated, to preachto the people, to comfort them in their afflictions, toencourage them in their trials;. . . their haunts were objectsof indefatigable search; bloodhounds, the last device of humancruelty, were employed for the purpose, and the same price wasset on the head of a priest as on that of a wolf."—(IrishCatholics.)

But, the expectation that the Irish of the lower classes, bereftof their pastors as well as of the guidance of their chieftains,would fall a prey to proselytizing ministers, and lose at oncetheir nationality and their religion, was doomed to meet withdisappointment.

Perhaps the cause more effective than all others in preservingthe Irish nation from disappearing totally, came from a quarterleast expected, or rather the most improbable and wonderful.

No device seemed better calculated to succeed in ProtestantizingIreland than the decree of Parliament which set forth that notonly the officers, but even the common soldiers of theparliamentary army should be paid for their services, not inmoney, but in land; and that the estates of the old ownersshould be parcelled out and distributed among them in payment,as well as among those who, in England, had furnished funds forthe prosecution of the war. Although many soldiers objected tothis mode of compensation, some selling for a trifle the landallotted to them and returning to their own country, the greatmajority was compelled to rest satisfied with the governmentoffer, and so resolved to settle down in Ireland and turnfarmers. But a serious difficulty met them: women could not beinduced to abandon their own country and go to dwell in thesister isle, while the Irish girls, being all Catholics, adecree of Parliament forbade the soldiers to marry them, unlessthey first succeeded in converting them to Protestantism. Aftermany vain attempts, doubtless, the Cromwellian soldiers soonfound the impossibility of bringing the "refractory" daughtersof Erin to their way of thinking, and could find only one modeof bridging over the difficulty—to marry them first, withoutrequiring then to apostatize; and secure their prize after byswearing that their wives were the most excellent of Protestants.Thus while perjury became an every-day occurrence, thevictorious army began to be itself vanquished by a powerfulenemy which it had scarcely calculated upon, and was utterlyunprepared to meet, and finally resting from its labors, enjoyedthe sweets of peace and the fat of the land.

But woman, once she feels her power, is exacting, and in courseof time the Cromwellian soldiers found that further sacrificesstill were required of them, which they had never counted upon.Their wives could, by no persuasion, be induced to speak English,so that, however it might go against the grain, the husbandswere compelled to learn Irish and speak it habitually as bestthey might. Their difficulties began to multiply with theirchildren, when they found them learning Irish in the cradle,irresistible in their Irish wit and humor, and lisping theprayers and reverencing the faith they had learned at theirmothers' knees. So that, from that time to this, the posterityof Cromwell's "Ironsides," of such of them at least as remainedin Ireland, have been devoted Catholics and ardent Irishmen.

The case was otherwise with the chief officers of theparliamentary army, who had received large estates and couldeasily obtain wives from England. They remained stanchProtestants, and their children have continued in the religionreceived with the estates which came to them from this wholesaleconfiscation. But the bulk of the army, instead of helping toform a Protestant middle class and a Protestant yeomanry, hasreally helped to perpetuate the sway of the Catholic religion inIreland, and the feeling of nationality so marked to-day. Thisvery remarkable fact has been well established and very plainlyset forth, a few years ago, by eminent English reviewers.

Meanwhile, Ireland was a prey to all the evils which can afflicta nation. Pestilence was added to the ravages of war and thewoes of transplantation, and it raged alike among the conquerorsand the conquered. Friar Morrisson's "Threnodia" reads to-daylike an exaggerated lament, the burden of which was drawn from avivid imagination. Yet can there be little doubt that itscarcely presented the whole truth; an exact reproduction of allthe heart-rending scenes then daily enacted in the unfortunateisland would prove a tale as moving as ever harrowed the pityingheart of a reader.

And all this suffering was the direct consequence of two things—the attachment of the Irish to the Catholic religion, and theirdevotion to the Stuart dynasty. Modern historians, inconsidering all the circ*mstances, express themselves unable tounderstand the constancy of this people's affection for a lineof kings from whom they had invariably experienced, not onlyneglect, but positive opposition, if not treachery. In theiropinion, only the strangest obliquity of judgment can explainsuch infatuation. Some call it stupidity; but the Irish peoplehave never been taxed with that. Even in the humblest ranks oflife among them, there exists, not only humor, but a keenness ofperception, and at times an extraordinary good sense, which isquick to detect motives, and find out what is uppermost in theminds of others.

There is but one reading of the riddle, consistent with thewhole character of the people: they clung to the Stuarts becausethey were obedient to the precepts and duties of religion, andlabored under the belief, however mistaken, that from theStuarts alone could they hope for any thing like freedom. Theirspiritual rulers had insisted on the duty of sustaining at allhazard the legitimate authority of the king, and they werefirmly convinced that they could expect from no other arelaxation of the religious penal statutes imposed on them bytheir enemies. The more frequent grew their disappointments inthe measures adopted by the sovereigns on whom they had settheir hopes, the more firmly were they convinced that theirintentions were good, but rendered futile by the men whosurrounded and coerced them.

Religion can alone explain this singular affection of the Irishpeople for a race which, in reality, has caused the greatest oftheir misfortunes.

The subsequent events of this strange history are in perfectkeeping with those preceding. A few words will suffice to sketchthem.

On the death of Oliver Cromwell, his son Richard, being unableand indeed unwilling to remain at the head of the English state,the nation, tired of the iron rule of the Protector, fearfulcertainly of anarchy, and preferring the conservative measuresof monarchy to the ever-changing revolutions of a commonwealth,recalled the son of Charles I. to the throne.

But a kind of bargain had been struck by him with those whodisposed of the crown; and he undertook and promised to disturbas little as possible the vested interests created by therevolution, that is to say, he pledged himself to let thesettlement of property remain as he found it. In England thatpromise was productive of little mischief to the nation at large,though fatal to the not very numerous families who had beendeprived of their estates by the Parliament. But, in Ireland, itwas a very different matter; for there the interests of thewhole nation were ousted to make room for these "vestedinterests" of proprietors of scarcely ten years' standing.

The Irish nobility and gentry, at first unaware of the existenceof this bargain, were in joyful expectation that right would atlast be done them, as it was for loyalty to the father of thenew king that they had been robbed of all their possessions.They were soon undeceived. To their surprise, they learned thatthe speculators, army-officers, and soldiers already inpossession of their estates, were not to be disturbed, short asthe possession had been; and that only such lands as were yetunappropriated should be returned to their rightful owners,provided only they were not papists, or could prove that theyhad been "innocent papists."

The consequences of this bargain are clear. The Irish of the oldnative race who had been, as now appeared, so foolishly ardentin their loyalty to the throne, were to be abandoned to the fateto which Cromwell had consigned them, and could expect torecover nothing of what they had so nobly lost. So flagrantlyunjust was the whole proceeding, that after a time manyEnglishmen even saw the injustice of the decision, and lifted uptheir voices in defence of the Irish Catholics who alone couldhope for nothing from the restoration of royalty. To put a stopto this, the infamous "Oates" fabrication was brought forward,which destroyed a number of English Catholic families andstifled the voice of humanity in its efforts to befriend theIrish race; and so sudden, universal, and lasting, was theeffect of this plot in closing the eyes of all to the claims ofthe Irish, that when its chief promoter, Shaftesbury, wasdragged to the Tower and there imprisoned as a miscreant, andOates himself suffered a punishment too mild for his villany,nevertheless no one thought of again taking up the cause of theIrish natives.

It is almost impossible in these days to realize what hasoccupied our attention in this chapter. The unparalleled act ofspoliation by which four-fifths of the Irish nation weredeprived of their property by Cromwell because of their devotionto Charles I., for the alleged reason that they could not provea constant good affection for the English regicide Parliament,that spoliation was ratified by the son of Charles within a fewyears after the rightful owners, who had sacrificed theirproperty for the sake of his father, had been dispossessed,while the parliamentarians, who by force of arms had broken downthe power of Charles and enabled the members of the LongParliament to try their king and bring him to the block, thosevery soldiers and officers were left in possession of their ill-gotten plunder, at a time when many of the owners were only afew miles away in Connaught, or even inhabiting the out-housesof their own mansions, and tilling the soil as menial servantsof Cromwell's troopers.

The case, apparently similar, which occurred in after-years, ofthe French emigrant nobility, cannot be compared with the resultof this strange concession of Charles II. In fact, it may besaid that the spoliations of 1792-'93 in France would probablynever have taken place but for the successful example held up tothe eyes of the legislators of the French Republic by theEnglish Revolution.

As for the share which Charles II. himself bore in the measure,it is best told by the fact that the work of spoliation wascarried on so vigorously during the reign of the "merry monarch,"that when a few years later William of Orange came to thethrone there was no land left for him to dispose of among hisfollowers save the last million of acres. All the rest had beenportioned off. Well might Dr. Madden say: "The whole of Irelandhas been so thoroughly confiscated that the only exception wasthat of five or six families of English blood, some of whom hadbeen attainted in the reign of Henry VIII., but recoveredflourished ever since. Yet did they not refuse the accessorywith the principal. Deluded men they may be called by many; butpeople cannot ordinarily understand the high motives which movemen swayed only by the twofold feeling of religion and nationality.

Nothing in our opinion could better prove that the Irish werereally a nation, at the time we speak of, than the remarks justset forth. When all minds are so unanimous, the wills so ready,the arms so strong and well prepared to strike together, it mustbe admitted that in the whole exists a common feeling, anational will. Self-government may be wanting; it may have beensuppressed by sheer force and kept under by the most unfavorablestate of affairs, but the nation subsists and cannot failultimately to rise.

In those eventful times shone forth too that characteristicwhich has already been remarked upon of a true conservativespirit and instinctive hatred for every principle which in ourdays is called radical and revolutionary. Had there existed inthe Irish disposition the least inclination toward those socialand moral aberrations, productive to-day of so many and suchwidespread evils, surely the period of the English Revolutionwas the fitting time to call them forth, and turn them fromtheir steady adherence to right and order into the new channels,toward which nations were being then hurried, and which wouldreally have favored for the time being their own efforts forindependence. Then would the Irish have presented to futurehistorians as stirring an episode of excitement and activity aswas furnished by the English and Scotch at that time, by theFrench later on, and which to-day most European nations offer.

The temptation was indeed great. They saw with what successrebellion was rewarded among the English and Scotch. Theythemselves were sure to be stamped as rebels whichever side theytook; and, as was seen, Charles II. allowed his commissioners inhis act of settlement so to style them, and punish them for it—for supporting the cause of his father against the Parliament.

Would it not have been better for them to have become once, atleast, rebels in true earnest, and reap the same advantage fromrebellion which all around them reaped? Yet did they stand proofa*gainst the demoralizing doctrines of Scotch Covenanter andEnglish republican. Hume, who was openly adverse to every thingIrish, is compelled to describe this Catholic people as "loyalfrom principle, attached to regal power from religious education,uniformly opposing popular frenzy, and zealous vindicators ofroyal prerogatives."

All this was in perfect accord with their traditional spirit andhistorical recollections. Revolutionary doctrines have alwaysbeen antagonistic to the Irish mind and heart. This will appearmore fully when recent times come under notice, and it may be asurprise to some to find that, with the exception of a fewindividuals, who in nowise represent the nation, the latest andfavorite theories of the world, not only on religion, science,and philosophy, but likewise on government and the social state,have never found open advocates among them. They, so far,constitute the only nation untouched, as yet, by the blightwhich is passing over and withering the life of modern society.Thus, it may be said that the exiled nobility still rules inIreland by the recollection of the past, though there can nolonger exist a hope of reconstructing an ancient order which haspassed away forever. The prerogatives once granted to thearistocratic classes are now disowned and repudiated on allsides; in Ireland they would be submitted to with joy tomorrow,could the actual descendants of the old families only make goodtheir claims. It must not be forgotten that the Irish nobility,as a class, deserved well of their country, sacrificedthemselves for it when the time of sacrifice came, and thereforeit is fitting that they should live in the memory of the peoplethat sees their traces but finds them not. The dream of findingrulers for the nation from among those who claim to be thedescendants of the old chieftains, is a dream and nothing more;but, even still to many Irishmen, it is within the compass ofreality, so deeply ingrained is their conservative spirit, andso completely, in this instance, at least, are they free fromthe influx of modern ideas.

The Stuarts, then, were supported by the Irish, not merely fromreligious, but also from national motives, inasmuch as thatfamily was descended from the line of Gaelic kings, and, howeverunworthy they themselves may have been, their rights were upheldand acknowledged against all comers. But, the Stuarts gone,allegiance was flung to the winds.

The success of Cromwell and his republic was the doom of allprospects of the reunion of the two islands; and the subsequentRevolution of 1688, which commenced so soon after the death ofthe Protector, left the Irish in the state in which thestruggles of four hundred years with the Plantagenets and Tudorshad placed and left them in relation to their connection withEngland—a state of antagonism and mutual repulsion, wherein theIrish nation, the victim of might, was slowly educated bymisfortune until the time should come for the openacknowledgment of right.

CHAPTER XII.

A CENTURY OF GLOOM.—THE PENAL LAWS.

William III., of Orange, was inclined to observe, in good faith,the articles agreed upon at the surrender of Limerick, namely,to allow the conquered liberty of worship, citizen rights, somuch as remained to them of their property, and the means forpersonal safety recognized before the departure of Sarsfield andhis men.

The lords justices even issued a proclamation commanding "allofficers and soldiers of the army and militia, and all otherpersons whatsoever, to forbear to do any wrong or injury, or touse unlawful violence to any of his Majesty's subjects, whetherof the British or Irish nation, without distinction, and thatall persons taking the oath of allegiance, and behavingthemselves according to law, should be deemed subjects undertheir Majesties' protection, and be equally entitled to thebenefit of the law."—(Harris, "Life of William.")

This first proclamation not having been generally obeyed,another was published denouncing "the utmost vengeance of thelaw against the offenders;" and the author above quoted addsthat "the satisfaction given to the Irish was a source oflasting gratitude to the person and government of William."

It is even asserted that, not only did the new monarch thusratify the treaty of Limerick, but that "he inserted in theratification a clause of the last importance to the Irish, whichhad been omitted in the draught signed by the lords justices andSarsfield. That clause extended the benefits of the capitulationto "all such as were under the protection of the Irish army inthe counties of Limerick, Clare, Kerry, Cork, and Mayo. A greatquantity of Catholic property depended on the insertion of thisclause in the ratification, and the English Privy Councilhesitated whether to take advantage of the omission. The honestyof the king declared it to be a part of the articles."

The final confirmation was issued from Westminster on February24, 1692, in the name of William and Mary.

But the party which had overcome the honest leanings of James I.,if he ever had any, and of his son and grandson, was at thistime more powerful than ever, and could not consent to extendthe claims of justice and right to the conquered. This party wasthe Ulster colony, which Cromwell's settlement had spread to thetwo other provinces of Leinster and Munster, and which wasconfirmed in its usurpation by the weakness of the secondCharles. The motives for the bitter animosity which caused it toset its face against every measure involving the scantiestjustice toward its fellow-countrymen may be summed up in twowords—greed and fanaticism.

Until the time when the first of the Stuarts ascended theEnglish throne, all the successive spoliations of Ireland, eventhe last under Elizabeth, at the end of the Geraldine war, weremade to the advantage of the English nobility. Even the youngersons of families from Lancashire, Cheshire, and Dorsetshire, who"planted" Munster after the ruin of the Desmonds, had nobleblood in their veins, and were consequently subject more or lessto the ordinary prejudices of feudal lords. The life of theagriculturist and grazier was too low down in the social scaleto catch their supercilious glance. The consequence of which was,that the Catholic tenants of Munster were left undisturbed intheir holdings. Instead of the "dues" exacted by their formerchieftains, they now paid rent to their new lords.

But the rabble let loose on the island by James I. was afflictedwith no such dainty notions as these. To supercilious glanceswere substituted eyes keen as the Israelites', for the "mainchance." The new planters, intent only on profit and gain,thought with the French peasant of an after-date, that, forlanded estate to produce its full value, "there is nothing likethe eye of a master." The Irish peasant was therefore removedfrom at least one-half the farms of Ulster, and driven to liveas best he might among the Protestant lords of Munster. And inorder to have an entirely Protestant "plantation," it becameincumbent on the new owners so to frame the legislation as todeprive the Irish Catholics of any possibility of recoveringtheir former possessions. Thus, laws were passed declaring nulland void all purchases made by "Irish papists."

Who has not witnessed, at some period in his life, the effectproduced on the people in his neighborhood by one avaricious butwealthy man, intent only on increasing his property, andprofiting by the slavish labor of the poor under his control?Who has not detested, in his inmost soul, the grinding tyrannyof the miser gloating over the hard wealth which he has wrungfrom the misery and tears of all around him, and who boasts ofthe cunning shrewdness, the success of which is only too visiblein the desolation that encircles him? Imagine such scenesenacted throughout a large territory, beginning with Ulster,spreading thence to Munster and Connaught, and finally throughthe whole island, and we have an exact picture of the effects ofthe Protestant "plantation." Each year, almost, of theseventeenth century witnessed fresh swarms of these foreignadventurers settling on the island, interrupted in theiroperations only by the Confederation of Kilkenny, butmultiplying faster and faster after the destruction of thattruly national government, until at the time now under ourconsideration, "Scotch thrift," as it is called, had become thechief virtue of most of the owners of land—Scotch thrift, whichis but another name for greed.

It were easy to show, by long details, that this greatcharacteristic of the new "plantation" would suffice to explainthat general and terrible pauperism which has since become thestriking feature of once-happy Ireland. But only a few words canbe allowed.

It is the fanaticism of the new "planters" which will chieflyoccupy our attention. These were composed, first, of the ScotchPresbyterians of Knox, whom James I. had dispatched, andafterward of the ranting soldiers and officers of Cromwell'sarmy, more Jew than Christian, since their mouths were everfilled with Bible texts of that particular character wherein thewrath of God is denounced against the impious and cruel tribesof Palestine. It is doubtful whether the ideas of God and man,promulgated and spread among the people by Calvin and Knox, haveever been equalled in evil consequences by the mostsuperstitious beliefs of ancient pagans. Let us look well atthose teachings. According to them, God is the author of evil:he issues forth his decrees of election or reprobation,irrespective of merit or demerit; inflicting eternal torments oninnumerable souls which never could have been saved, and forwhom the Son of God did not die. What any rational being mustconsider as the most revolting cruelty and injustice, these mencalled acts of pure justice executed by the hand of God. Godsaves blindly those whom he saves, and takes them home to hisbosom, though reeking with the unrepented and unexpiated crimesof their lives—unexpiable, in fact, on the part of man—merelybecause they persuade themselves that they are of "the elect."

In that system, man is a mere machine, unendowed with theslightest symptom of free-will, but inflated with the mostoverbearing pride; deeming all others but those of his sect thenecessary objects of the blind wrath of God, cast off andreprobate from all eternity in the designs of Providence; forwhom "the elect" can feel no more pity or affection thanredeemed men can for the arch-fiend himself, both being alikeredeemless and unredeemed.

No system of pretended religion, invented by the perverted mindof man, under the inspiration of the Evil One, could go furtherin atrocity than this.

Yet such was the pure, undiluted essence of Calvinism in itsbeginning. In our times its doctrines have been radicallymodified, as its adherents could not escape the soothingoperations of time and calm reason. But, at the period of whichwe speak, its absurd and revolting tenets were fresh, and takenreligiously to the letter.

The new colonists, therefore, believed, and acted on the belief,that all men outside of their own body were the enemies of Godand had God for their enemy. What a convenient doctrine for menof an "itching palm! " The papists, in particular, were worsethan idolaters, and to "root them out" was only to render aservice to God. In the event of this holy desire not beingaltogether possible of execution, the nearest approach to thegoodly work was to strip them of all rights, and render the lifeof such reprobates more miserable than the death which was tocondemn them to the eternal torments planned out for them in theeternal decrees, and so give them a foretaste here of the lifedestined for them hereafter.

The reader, then, may understand how the Scotch Presbyterians ofthe time, overflowing as they were with free and republicanideas as far as regarded their own welfare, when it came to aquestion of extending the same to their Catholic fellow-men, ifthey would have admitted the term, scouted such a preposterousand ungodly idea. These latter were unworthy the enjoyment ofsuch benefit. And thus the hoot of Protestant ascendancy,"Protestant liberty and right! " came up as war-cries to stifleout all efforts tending to extend even the most ordinaryprivileges of the liberty which is man's by nature, to any butProtestants of the same class as themselves.

Here a curious reflection, full of meaning, and causing the mindalmost to mock at the type of a free constitution, presentsitself. The eighteenth century witnessed the development of theBritish Constitution as now known. It embraced in its bosom allBritish citizens, raising up the nation to the pinnacle ofmaterial prosperity, while at the same time and all through it,whole classes of citizens of the British Empire, both in GreatBritain and Ireland, were openly, unblushingly, legally, withouta thought of mercy or pity—not to mention such an ugly word aslogic—denied the protection of the common charter and thecommon rights.

Under Cromwell the doctrines of Calvin and Knox did not showthemselves quite so obtrusively. The officers and soldiers ofhis armies, in common with their general, thought thePresbyterian Kirk too aristocratic and unbending. They formed anew sect of Independents, now called Congregationalists. But thechief feature of the new religious system became as productiveof evil to Ireland as the stern dogmas of Calvin ever could be.The principle that the Scriptures constituted the only rule offaith was beginning to bear its fruits. It is needless to remarkthat Holy Scripture, when abandoned to the free interpretationof all, becomes the source of many errors, as it may be thesource of many crimes. The historian and novelist even have erenow frequently told us to what purpose the "Word of God " wasmanipulated by Scottish Covenanter and Cromwellian freebooter.

The Covenanter, or freebooter, saw in the antagonists of his"real rebellion" and opposers of the designs of his dark policy,only the enemies of God and the adversaries of his Providence.He believed himself divinely commissioned to destroy Catholicsand butcher innocent women and children, as the armies of Joshuawere authorized to fight against Amalek, and possess themselvesof a country occupied by a people whose cruel idolatry wasineradicable, and rendered them absolutely irreconcilable. Thusto the stern and odious tenets of Calvinism the new invadersjoined the fanaticism of self-deluded Jews, never havingreceived any commission from the God whom they blasphemed, yetbearing themselves with all the solemnity of his instruments.

There is consequently nothing to surprise us in the atrocitiescommitted by the Scotch troops in 1641, when they first invadedthe island from the north, as little as there is in the numerousmassacres which first attended the march of the troops ofCromwell, Ireton, and other leaders, and which were onlydiscontinued when the voice of Europe rose up in revolt at therecital, and they themselves became thoroughly convinced thatthe complete destruction of the people was impossible, and theonly next best thing to be done was to export as many as couldbe exported and reduce the rest to slavery.

Thus did the new colony commence its workings, and it is easy tocomprehend how such intensely Protestant doctrines, remainingimplanted in the breasts of the people who came to make Irelandtheir home, could not fail to oppose an insurmountable barrierto the fusion of the new and the old inhabitants, and impart afearful reality to the theory of "Protestant ascendancy" and"Protestant liberty and right "—the liberty and right tooppress those of another creed.

These watchwords form the key to the understanding of all themiseries and woes of Irishmen during the whole of the eighteenthcentury. We now turn to contemplate the commencement of theworkings of this fanatic intolerance which ushered in thecentury of gloom.

The lords justices had just returned, after concluding thetreaty of peace with Sarsfield, when the first mutterings of thethunder were heard that presaged the coming storm. Dr. Dopping,the Protestant Bishop of Meath, while preaching before them onthe Sunday following their return to Dublin, reproached themopenly in Christ Church for their indulgence to the Irish, andurged that no faith was to be kept with such a cruel andperfidious race. This sort of doctrine has been heard before,and from men of the stamp of Dr. Dopping; it is still heardevery day, but it is generally thrown into the teeth ofCatholics and saddled on them as their doctrine, howeverfrequently refuted.

The doctor stated broadly that with such people no treaties werebinding, and that therefore the articles of Limerick were not tobe observed.

William and his Irish government endeavored to check thisintemperance; but the feelings of the sectarians were too ardentto be thus easily smothered, and the greater the opposition theyencountered, the more they insisted on proclaiming their views,to which naturally they gained many adherents among thecolonists of the Protestant plantation.

The Irish Parliament soon assembled in Dublin. The majority,imbued with the gloomy Calvinism of the times, and fearing toface the opposition of the respectable minority of Catholicmembers, who had come to take their seats, passed an actimposing a new oath, in contradiction to one of the articles ofthe treaty. That oath included an abjuration of James's right dejure, a renunciation of the spiritual authority of the Pope, and(as though that were not enough to exclude Catholics) adeclaration against the doctrine of transubstantiation and otherfundamental tenets of their creed. Persons who refused to takethis oath were debarred from all offices and emoluments, as wellas from both Houses of the Irish Parliament.

The Catholic members were compelled to withdraw at once; and noCatholic ever took part in the legislation of his own countryfrom that day until the Emancipation in 1829.

After this withdrawal, which in the times of the FrenchConvention would have been called an epuration, the IrishParliament became the bane of the country. In fact, it onlyrepresented parliamentary England, and subjected Ireland toevery measure required by English ultraists for the attainmentof their selfish purposes. Possessed by a gloomy fanaticism, itsmain object was to root out of the island every vestige thatremained of the religion which had once flourished there. Allits legislative spirit was concentrated in the two questions:Are the laws already in existence against the further growth ofPopery rigidly enforced? and, cannot some new law be introducedto further the same object.?

Many a time were these two questions put in the assembly calledthe Irish Parliament, until near the end of the eighteenththunder were heard that presaged the coming storm. Dr. Dopping,the Protestant Bishop of Meath, while preaching before them onthe Sunday following their return to Dublin, reproached themopenly in Christ Church for their indulgence to the Irish, andurged that no faith was to be kept with such a cruel andperfidious race. This sort of doctrine has been heard before,and from men of the stamp of Dr. Dopping; it is still heardevery day, but it is generally thrown into the teeth ofCatholics and saddled on them as their doctrine, howeverfrequently refuted.

The doctor stated broadly that with such people no treaties werebinding, and that therefore the articles of Limerick were not tobe observed.

William and his Irish government endeavored to check thisintemperance; but the feelings of the sectarians were too ardentto be thus easily smothered, and the greater the opposition theyencountered, the more they insisted on proclaiming their views,to which naturally they gained many adherents among thecolonists of the Protestant plantation.

The Irish Parliament soon assembled in Dublin. The majority,imbued with the gloomy Calvinism of the times, and fearing toface the opposition of the respectable minority of Catholicmembers, who had come to take their seats, passed an actimposing a new oath, in contradiction to one of the articles ofthe treaty. That oath included an abjuration of James's right dejure, a renunciation of the spiritual authority of the Pope, and(as though that were not enough to exclude Catholics) adeclaration against the doctrine of transubstantiation and otherfundamental tenets of their creed. Persons who refused to takethis oath were debarred from all offices and emoluments, as wellas from both Houses of the Irish Parliament.

The Catholic members were compelled to withdraw at once; and noCatholic ever took part in the legislation of his own countryfrom that day until the Emancipation in 1829.

After this withdrawal, which in the times of the FrenchConvention would have been called an epuration, the IrishParliament became the bane of the country. In fact, it onlyrepresented parliamentary England, and subjected Ireland toevery measure required by English ultraists for the attainmentof their selfish purposes. Possessed by a gloomy fanaticism, itsmain object was to root out of the island every vestige thatremained of the religion which had once flourished there. Allits legislative spirit was concentrated in the two questions:Are the laws already in existence against the further growth ofPopery rigidly enforced? and, cannot some new law be introducedto further the same object.?

Many a time were these two questions put in the assembly calledthe Irish Parliament, until near the end of the eighteenthPopery, and, in the next place, it makes evident the necessitythere is of cultivating and preserving a good understandingamong all Protestants in this kingdom."'

Let the reader bear in mind that language such as this, and itsresult in the shape of atrocious legislation, continuedthroughout the whole of the eighteenth century in Ireland, andhe will find no difficulty in understanding the meaning ofEdmund Burke's words when he said : "The code against theCatholics was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance; andas well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, anddegradation of a people, and the debasem*nt in them of humannature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity ofman." And, elsewhere: "To render men patient under thedeprivation of all the rights of human nature, every thing whichcould give them a knowledge and feeling of those rights wasrationally forbidden. To render humanity fit to be insulted, itwas fit that it should be degraded."

But it is very pertinent to our purpose to give a sketch ofthose good laws, as Wharton calls them, before seeing how theIrish preferred to submit to them rather than lose their faithby "conforming." The subject has been already investigated bymany writers, and of late far more completely than formerly. Butthe authors never presented the laws as a whole, contentingthemselves, for the most part, by transcribing them in thechronological order in which they were enacted, or, ifoccasionally they endeavored to combine and thus present a morestriking idea of the effect which such laws must have producedon the people, they were never, as far as is known to the writer,reduced to a plan, and consequently fail to bring forth theeffect intended to be produced by them.

It is impossible here to give the text of those various laws—impossible even to give a fairly accurate idea of the whole.They shall be classified, however, to the best of our ability,and as fully as circ*mstances permit.

Mr. Prendergast seems to consider their ultimate object alwaysto have been the robbing of the Irish of their lands, orsecuring the plunder if already in possession. That this was oneof the great objects always kept in view in their enactment, wedo not feel inclined to contest; but that it was their only oreven chief cause, we may be allowed to question, with thegreatest deference to the opinion of the celebrated author ofthe often-quoted "Cromwellian Settlement."

We believe those laws to have been produced chiefly by sectarianfanaticism; or, if some of their framers, such as Lord Wharton,possessed no religious feelings of any kind, and could not becalled fanatics, their intent was to pander to the realfanaticism of the English people, as it existed at the time, andparticularly of the colony planted in Ireland, which hatedPopery to the death, and would have given all its possessionsand lands for the destruction of the Scarlet Woman.

In order to attain the great result proposed, the aim of the"penal statute" was one in its very complexity. For it had todeal with complex rights, which it took away one after anotheruntil the unity of the system was completed by the suppressionof them all.

We classify these under the heads of political, civil, and humanrights. The result of the whole policy was to degrade the Irishto the level of the wretched helots under Sparta, with thisdifference: while the slaves of the Lacedaemonians numbered buta few thousands, the Irish were counted by millions.

The system, as a whole, was the work of time, and, under Williamof Orange—even under Queen Anne—it had not yet attained itsmaturity, though the principal and the severest measures werecarried and put in force from the very beginning. The ingeniouslittle devices regarding short and small leases, the possessionof valuable horses, etc., were mere fanciful adjuncts which thewitty and inventive legislators of the Hanoverian dynasty werehappy enough to find unrecorded in the statute-books, and whichthey had the honor of setting there, and thus adding a newpiquancy and vigorous flavor to the whole dish.

Toward the middle of the eighteenth century, the system may besaid to have reached its perfection. After that time it would,in all likelihood, have been impossible to improve further, andrender the yoke of slavery heavier and more galling to the Irish.The beauty and simplicity of the whole consisted in the factthat the great majority of these measures were not decreed in somany positive and express terms against Catholics in the form ofopen and persecuting statutes. It was merely mentioned in thelaws that, to enjoy such and such a particular right, it wasnecessary that every subject of the crown should take such andsuch an oath, which no Catholic could take. Thus, the entireIrish population was set between their religion and their rights,and at any moment, by merely taking the oath, they were atliberty to enjoy all the privileges which rendered the colonistsliving in their midst so happy and contented, and so proud oftheir "Protestant ascendency."

It was hoped, no doubt, that, if at first and for a certain time,the faith of the Irish would stand proof and prompt them tosacrifice every thing held dear in life, rather than surrenderthat faith, nevertheless, worn out at length, and disheartenedby wretchedness, unable longer to sustain their heavy burden,they would finally succumb, and, by the mere action of such aneasy thing as recording an oath in accordance with the law,though against their conscience, become men and citizens. It waswhat the French Conventionalists of 1793 called "desoler lapatience" of their victims.

This unholy hope was disappointed; and, with the exception of acomparatively few weak Christians among their number, the nationstood firm and preferred the "ignominy of the cross of Christ"to the enjoyments of this perishable life.

Their political rights were, as was seen, the first to be takenaway. The Parliament of 1691 required of its members the oathreferred to, and for the repudiation of which, all the Catholicmembers were compelled at once to withdraw. But the contrivanceof swearing being found such an excellent instrument to useagainst men possessed of a conscience, the ruling body—nowreduced to the former Protestant majority—required that thesame oath be taken by all electors, magistrates, and officers ofwhatever grade, from the highest to the lowest in the land.

The oath itself was an elastic formula, capable of beingstretched or contracted, according to circ*mstances, so that, bythe addition of an incidental phrase or two, it might be framedto meet new exigencies, and give expression to the livelyimagination of ingenious members of Parliament. It would becurious to collect an account of the variety of shapes itassumed, and to comment on the different occasions which gaverise to these different developments. A long history ofpersecuting frenzy might thus be condensed into a commentary ofa comparatively few pages. Even at the so-called CatholicEmancipation it was not abolished; on the contrary, it wassacredly preserved, and two new formulas drawn up, the one forthe Protestant and the other for the Catholic members of thelegislature, Lords and Commons, and so it remains, to this day,except that the most offensive clauses of the last century havedisappeared.

Imagine, then, the spectacle offered by the island whenever anelection for representatives, magistrates, or petty officers,took place; whenever those entitled to select holders of officeswhich were not subject to election, made known the persons oftheir choice. This vast array of aristocratic masters was chosenfrom the ranks of the English colonists, and had for its avowedobject to preserve the Protestant ascendency, and consequentlygrind under the heel of the most abject oppression the wholemass of the population of the island. There was no other meaningin all these political combinations and changes, recurringperiodically, and heralded forth by the voice of the press andthe thunder of the hustings. Politics in Ireland was nothingelse than the expression given to the despotism of aninsignificant minority over almost the entire body of the people.For, despite all their repressive measures, the enemies of theCatholic faith could never pretend even to a semblance in pointof numbers, much less to a majority, over the children of thecreed taught by Patrick. Ireland remained Catholic throughout;and its oppressors could not fail to feel the bitter humiliationof their constant numerical inferiority. Hence the words quotedin the speech of Wharton, the lord-lieutenant.

This has always been the case, in spite of the combination of amultitude of circ*mstances adverse to the spread of the Catholicpopulation. It may not be amiss to give room for the statisticsand remarks of Abbe Perraud on this most interesting subject,contained in his book on "Ireland under British rule."

"In 1672, the total population of Ireland was 1,100,000 (it isto be remembered that this was after the massacres andtransportations of Cromwell's period). Of that number

800,000 were Catholics.
50,000 " Dissenters.
150,000 " Church-of-Ireland men.

"In 1727, the Anglican Primate of Ireland, Boulter, Archbishopof Armagh, wrote to his English colleague, the Archbishop ofCanterbury, that 'we have, in all probability, in this kingdom,at least five Papists for every Protestant.' Those proportionsare confirmed by official statistics under Queen Anne.

"In 1740, according to a kind of official census, confirmed byWakefield, the number of Protestant heads of families did notexceed 96,067.

"Twenty-six years later, the Dublin House of Lords caused acomparative table of Protestant and Catholic families to bedrawn up for each county. The result was the following:

Protestant families . . 130,263
Catholic families . . 305,680

"In 1834, exact statistical returns being made of the members ofeach communion, the following was the result: The totalpopulation being estimated at 7,943,940, the Church-of-Irelandmembers amounted only to the number of 852,064. The remaining 7,091,876 were thus divided:

Presbyterians . . . . . . 642,350
Other Dissenters . . . . 21,808
Catholics . . . . . . . 6,427,718

"The censuses of 1841 and 1851 contained no information uponthis important question. Thirty years had therefore elapsedsince official figures had given the exact proportions of eachChurch.

"This silence of the Blue Books had given rise, among theProtestant press of England and Ireland, to the opinion, toohastily adopted on the Continent by publicists of great weight,that emigration and famine had resulted in the equalization ofthe numbers of Protestants and Catholics in Ireland. The evidentconclusion joyfully drawn from this supposed fact by thedefenders of the Anglican Church was, that the scandal of aProtestant establishment in the midst and at the expense of aCatholic people was gradually dying away.

"The forlorn hope of the Tory and Orange press went stillfurther. They boldly disputed Ireland's right to the title ofCatholic. So, although, ten years and twenty years before, thesesame journals furiously opposed the admission of religiousdenominations into the statistics of the census, yet, when thecensus of 1861 drew near, they quite as loudly demanded itsinsertion. They made it a matter of challenge to the Catholics.

"The ultramontane journals accepted the challenge. The Catholicsunanimously demanded a denominational census. The results weresubmitted to the representatives of the nation in July, 1861. Noshorter, more decisive, or more triumphant answer could havebeen given to the sarcasms and challenges of the old Protestantparty."

We confine ourselves here to the total sums, leaving out minordetails:

Catholics . . . . . . . . 4,490,583
Establishment . . . . . . 687,661
Dissenters . . . . . . . 595,577
Jews . . . . . . . . . . 322

Thus in this century, as throughout the whole of the century ofgloom, the island is truly and really Catholic.

By way of contrast, a few words on the same subject may not beout of place with reference to England. We have already stated,and given some of the reasons for so doing, that, at the deathof Elizabeth, England was already Protestant to the core.

In his "Memoirs," vol. ii., Sir John Dalrymple has published acurious official report of the numbers of Catholics in England,in the reign of William of Orange, found after his death in theiron chest of that vigilant monarch. From this authenticdocument we take the following extract:

Number of Freeholders in England.1 (1 Dr. Madden's "Penal Laws.")

Conformists. Papists. Non-Conformists.
Province of
Canterbury, 2,123,362 93,151 11,878

Province of
York, 353,892 15,525 1,978

Totals 2,477,254 108,676 13,856

It is known also that, under George III., the number ofCatholics in the whole of Great Britain did not exceed sixtythousand, so thorough had been the separation of England fromthe true Church.

To return to the ostracism of a whole nation from its politicalrights. No individual really belonging to it could take theslightest share in the administration of its affairs. They wereall left to the control of aliens, whose boast it was that theywere English; and whose chief object was to secure Englishascendency, and subject every thing Irish to the rule of force.

Yet all this while a new era was dawning on the world; amultitude of voices were proclaiming new social and politicaldoctrines; all were to be free, to possess privileges that mightnot be intrenched upon—to wit, a voice in the affairs of thenation, trial by their peers, no taxation without duerepresentation, and the like—while a whole nation by theunanimous consent of the loudest of these freedom-mongers wasexcluded from every benefit of the new ideas, was literallyplaced in bondage, and left without the possibility of beingheard and admitted to the enjoyment of the common rights,because the one voice which would have declared in their favor,which in former times had so often and so loudly spoken, when soto speak was to offend the powers of this world, was deprived ofthe right of being heard. The doctrine that the Papal supremacywas a usurpation, and the Pope himself an enemy of freedom, waslaid down as a cardinal principle. After such publicrenunciation of former doctrines, all these new and so-calledliberal theories were a mere delusion and a snare. There was nopossibility of effectually securing freedom, in spite of so muchpromised to all and granted to some; no possibility of reallyprotecting the rights of all. The public right newly proclaimedended finally in might. Majorities ruled despotically over theminorities, and, as the despotism of the multitude is everharsher and more universal than that of any monarch, the reignof cruel injustice was let in upon Ireland. And in her case theinjustice was peculiarly aggravated, inasmuch as it was a smallalien minority which trampled under foot the rights of a greatnative majority.

But, although the deprivation of political rights is perhapsmore fatal to a nation than that of any other, on account ofwhat follows in its train, particularly in the framing of thelaws, nevertheless the deprivation of civil rights is generallymore acutely felt, because the grievances resulting from it meetman at every turn, at every moment of his life, in his householdand domestic circle. In fact, the penal laws stripped Catholicsof every civil right which modern society can conceive, and itwas chiefly there that the ingenuity of their oppressors laboredduring the greater part of a century to make a total wreck ofIrish welfare.

Those rights may be classified generally as the right ofpossessing and holding landed property, the right of earning anhonorable living by profession or trade, the right of protectionagainst injustice by equal laws, the right of fair trial beforecondemnation: such are the chief. It is doubtful if there is anything of importance left of which a citizen can be deprived,unless indeed he be openly and unjustly deprived of life.

It has been already indicated how the policy of England, withregard to Ireland, from that first invasion, in the time ofHenry II., was prompted by the desire of gaining possession ofthe soil, and how after seven hundred years of struggle itsucceeded in attaining its object; so that the whole island hadbeen confiscated, and in some instances two or three times over.The object of the penal laws, therefore, could not be to deprivethe Irish of the land which they no longer possessed, but toprevent them acquiring any land in any quantity whatever, andfrom reentering into possession, by purchase or otherwise, ofany portion of their own soil and of the estates which belongedto their ancestors. So harsh and cunning a design, we doubt not,never entered the minds of any former legislators, even in paganantiquity.

The great stimulus to exertion in civil society consists of theacquisition of property, chiefly of land. In feudal timesseignorial estates could be purchased by none but those of nobleblood; but with allodial estates it was different all throughEurope. Yet just at the time when feudal laws were passing intodisuse the Irish were prevented, by carefully-drawn enactments,from purchasing even a rood of their native soil. "Theprohibition had been already extended to the whole nation by theCommonwealth government, and when the lands forfeited by thewars of 1690 came to be sold at Chichester House in 1703, theIrish were declared by the English Parliament incapable ofpurchasing at the auction, or of taking a lease of more than twoacres."—(Prendergast.)

The same author adds in a note: "But it was when the estate wasmade the property of the first Protestant discoverer, thatanimation was put into this law. Discoverers then became likehounds upon the scent after lands secretly purchased by theIrish. Gentlemen fearing to lose their lands, found it nownecessary to conform—namely, to abjure Catholicism. Between1703 and 1709 there were only thirty-six conformers in Ireland;in the next ten years (after the Discovery Act), the conformistswere one hundred and fifty."

But the full object was not only to prevent the Irish frombecoming even moderately rich in land; they were to be reducedto actual pauperism. Hence the prohibitory laws did not stop atthis first outrage; almost impossible occurrences were supposedand provided for, lest there might be a chance of theirrealization at some time. It was actually provided that, if theproduce of their farms brought a greater profit to the Irishthan was expected, notwithstanding all these measures againstthe possible occurrence of such an evil, the lease was void, andthe "discoverer" should receive the amount.

There was no loop-hole by which the people might escape fromthis degradation. But there was still the chance left ofengaging in trade, acquiring personal property by its practice,and becoming the owners of a sum of money in bank, or of adwelling-house in the city. The English law of succession wasunderstood to be a law for all, and consequently, in some out-of-the-way cases, a stray Irish family might be found in course oftime with an elder branch possessed of a fair amount of property,and able to emerge from the dead level of the common misery.Such a possibility could not of course be permitted by theEnglish colonists who ruled the land. So the law of gavelkind,to which the Irish had at one time been so attached, was now tobe forced upon them, and upon them alone of all the Britishsubjects. It was decreed that, upon the death of every Irishman,whatever of personal property he left behind him was to bedivided equally among all his children, who, being generallynumerous, would each receive but a trifle, and so perpetrate thepauperism of the race.

Where the surprise, then, in finding the whole nation reducedsince that time to a state of the most abject poverty? It wasthe will of the rulers that so it should be, and their scheme,guarded and enforced by so many legislative acts, could not failto succeed in producing the effect intended. Granting even thesmallest amount of truth in what is so often flung at the Irishas a reproach—their carelessness and want of foresight—howcould it be otherwise, to what cause can such failings, even ifthey exist, be assigned, save to the utter impossibility ofsucceeding in any effort which they chose to make?

The true origin of the state in which the Irish at home nowappear to the eyes of foreign travellers, is the deliberateintention, sternly acted upon for more than a century, to makethe island one vast poorhouse.

The wretched situation in which they have ever since remained,confessed by all to be without parallel on earth, is certainlynot to be laid at the door of the present population of England,nor even to the colony still intrenched on Irish soil; but withwhat right can it be brought forward as a reproach against theIrish themselves, when its real cause is so evident, and whenhistory speaks so plainly on the subject?

All sensible Englishmen of our days will readily acknowledgethat, without indulging in mutual recrimination, the duty of allis to repair the injuries of the past, and to do away with thelast remnants of its sad consequences. Wounds so deep and manyin a nation cannot be healed by half measures; and it is only athorough change of system, and a complete reversal oflegislation, that can leave the English of to-day withoutreproach.

Pauperism, then, is the necessary misfortune, not the crime ofIreland; we may even go further, and assert that, if millions ofIrishmen have lived and died paupers, owing to the barbarouslaws enacted for that special purpose, few indeed among themhave been reduced even by hard necessity and the extreme ofmisery to manifest a pauper spirit and a miserly bent.

There is no doubt that the almost invariable result of sufferingand want is to create selfishness in the sufferer, and cause himto cling desperately to the little he may possess. Selfpreservation and self-indulgence, in such a case, form the lawof human nature, and no one even expects to find a really poorman generous, when he can scarcely meet his bare necessities andthe imperious wants of his family. It is the peculiarity of theIrish to know how to combine generosity with the deprivationalmost of the common necessaries of life. When masters of theirown soil, a large hospitality and a free-handed "bestowing ofgifts"—such, we believe, was the Irish expression—wasuniversal among them; the poorest clansman would have beenashamed not to imitate, in his degree, the liberal spirit of hisprince. They often gave all they had, regardless of the future;and, when their chieftains demanded of the clansmen what theBook of Rights imposed upon them, their exclamation was, "Spendme but defend me."

Though the people of Erin have been reduced to the sad necessityof forgetting that old proverb of the nation, the spirit whichgave rise to it lives in their hearts and is proved by theirdeeds. What other nation, even the richest and most prosperous,could have accomplished what the world has seen them bring to-pass during this century? The laws which, so long ago, forbadethem to be generous, and prohibited them from providing openlyfor the worship of their God, for the education of theirchildren, for the help of the sick and needy among them, have atlast been made inoperative by their oppressors. But, when theywere at length left free to follow the freedom and generosity oftheir hearts, they found—what? In their once beautiful andChristian country, a universal desolation; the blackened ruinsof what had been their abbeys, churches, hospitals, and asylums;the very ground on which they stood stolen away from them, andthe Protestant establishment in full enjoyment of the revenuesof the Catholics. They found every thing in the same state thatthey had known for centuries. Nothing was restored to them. Theywere at liberty to spend what they did not possess, since theywere as poor as men could be. Every thing had to be done by themtoward the reestablishing of their churches, schools, andvarious asylums, and they had nothing wherewith to do it.

There is no need of going item by item over what they did. Thepresent prosperous state of the Irish Catholic publicinstitutioris— churches, schools, and all—is owing to theirpoorly-filled pockets. God alone knows how it all came about. Wecan only see in them the poor of Christ, rich in all gifts,"even alms-deeds most abundant."

It is only too evident that the degradation which the Englishwished to fasten upon them forever, could not be accomplishedeven by the measures best adapted to debase a people. The Celticnature rose superior to the dark designs of the most ingeniousopponents, and continued as ever noble, generous, andopenhearted. Nevertheless, the sufferings of the victims were attimes unutterable; and one of the inevitable effects of suchtyrannical measures soon made itself fearfully active anddestructive in the shape of those periodical famines which haveever since devastated the island.

In the days of her own possession, there was never mention offamine there. The whole island teemed with the grain of herfields, consumed by a healthy population, and was alive withvast herds of cattle and flocks of sheep. What were the heca-tombs of ancient Greece compared with the thousands of kineprescribed annually by the Book of Rights? Who ever heard ofpeople perishing of want in the midst of abundance such as this?Even during the fiercest wars, waged by clan against clan, weoften see the image of death in many shapes, but never that of alarge population reduced to roots and grass for food.

When, later on, the wars of the Reformation transformed Munsterinto a wilderness, and we read for the first time in Irishhistory of people actually turning green and blue, according tothe color of the unwholesome weeds they were driven to devour inorder to support life, at least it was in the wake of a terriblewar that famine came. It was reserved for the eighteenth centuryto disclose to us the woful spectacle of a people perishing ofstarvation in the midst of the profoundest peace, frequently ofthe greatest plenty, the food produced in abundance by the laborof the inhabitants being sold and sent off to foreign countriesto enrich absentee landlords. Nay, those desolating famines atlast grew to be periodical, so that every few years peopleexpected one, and it seemed as though Ireland were too barren toproduce the barely sufficient supply of food necessary for herscanty population. The people worked arduously and withoutintermission; the land was rich, the seasons propitious; yetthey almost constantly suffered the pangs of hunger, whichspread sometimes to wholesale starvation. This was anotherresult of those laws devised by the English colonists to keepdown the native population of the island, and prevent it frombecoming troublesome and dangerous. Such was the effect of thehumane measures taken to preserve the glory of Protestantascendency, and secure the rights and liberties of a handful ofalien masters.

It is proper to describe some of those awful scourges, whichhave never ceased since, and at sight of which, in our own days,we have too often sickened. For the Emancipation of 1829 was farfrom removing all the causes of Irish misery. On the 17th ofMarch, 1727, Boulter, the Protestant Archbishop of Armagh, wroteto the Duke of Newcastle: "Since my arrival in this country, thefamine has not ceased among the poor people. The dearness of cornlast year was such that thousands of families had to quit theirdwellings, to seek means of life elsewhere; many hundred perished."

At the same period Swift wrote: "The families of farmers who pay greatrents, live in filth and nastiness, on buttermilk and potatoes."

The following is a short and simple description of the famine of1741, given by an eye-witness, and copied by Matthew O'Connorfrom a pamphlet entitled "Groans of Ireland," published in thesame year:

"Having been absent from this country some years, on my returnto it last summer, I found it the most miserable scene ofdistress that I ever read of in history. Want and misery onevery face, the rich unable to relieve the poor, the roadsspread with dead and dying bodies; mankind the color of thedocks and nettles which they fed on; two or three, sometimesmore, on a car, going to the grave for want of bearers to carrythem, and many buried only in the fields and ditches where theyperished. The universal scarcity was followed by fluxes andmalignant fevers, which swept off multitudes of all sorts, sothat whole villages were laid waste. If one for every house inthe kingdom died—and that is very probable—the loss must beupward of four hundred thousand souls. If only half, a loss toogreat for this ill-peopled country to bear, as they are mostlyworking people. When a stranger travels through this country,and beholds its wide, extended, and fertile plains, its greatflocks of sheep and black cattle, and all its natural wealth andconveniences for tillage, manufacture, and trade, he must beastonished that such misery and want should be felt by itsinhabitants."

At the time these lines were written, the astonishment wassincere, and the answer to the question "How can this be?"seemed impossible; the phenomenon utterly inexplicable. In ourown days, when this same picture of woe has been so often presentedin the island, the reasons for it are well known; and what seemsinexplicable is that, the cause being so clear, and the remedyso simple, the remedy has not yet been thoroughly applied.

In 1756 and 1757, the same scenes were repeated, with the samefrightful results. Charles O'Connor, at that time the championof his much- abused countrymen, wrote thus, in his letter to Dr.Curry, May 21, 1756:

"Two-thirds of the inhabitants are perishing for want of bread;meal is come to eighteen-pence a stone, and, if the poor hadmoney, it would exceed by—I believe—double that sum. Everyplace is crowded with beggars, who were all house-keepers afortnight ago, and this is the condition of a country whichboasts of its constitution, its laws, and the wisdom of itslegislature."

These words, although sweeping enough, and universallyapplicable, are far from conveying to our minds, to-day, thereal picture of the state of the country. When the writer speaksof "meal," it must be understood to mean rye, oats, and, barley;and even this coarse and heavy food being, as he remarks,inaccessible to the poor, potatoes had become the only bread ofthe country, and the inhabitants were perishing for the want of it.

For the first time in the history of the two nations, theEnglish Government thought of relieving the distress of thepeople, and to this purpose applied the magnificent sum oftwenty thousand pounds. Such was the generous amount granted bya wealthy and prosperous country to procure food for theinhabitants of an island as large as Ireland is known to be. Asto effecting any change in the laws, which were really the causeof this unutterable misery, such an idea never entered into theheads of the legislators. Hence it is not surprising to hearthat "the distress in the interior of the country revived thefrightful image of the miseries of 1741, nor did the calamitycease, until the equilibrium between the population and themeans of subsistence was restored by the accumulated waste offamine and pestilence;" that is to say, until all those had beendestroyed whom the laws of the time could, as they had beendesigned to do, destroy.

These details appear calculated only to shock the feelings ofthe reader, already sufficiently acquainted with the lot of theIrish cottier and laborer, from the beginning of the lastcentury. Nevertheless, we cannot close this part of our subjectwithout giving publicity to the following description of themass of the Irish population in 1762, by Matthew O'Connor:

"The popery laws had, in the course of half a century,consummated the ruin of the lower orders. Their habitations,visages, dress, and despondency, exhibited the deep distress ofa people ruled with the iron sceptre of conquest. The lot of thenegro slave, compared with that of the Irish helot, washappiness itself. Both were subject to the capricious cruelty ofmercenary task-masters and unfeeling proprietors; but the negroslave was well-fed, well clothed, and comfortably lodged. TheIrish peasant was half starved, half naked, and half housed; thecanopy of heaven being often the only roof to the mud-builtwalls of his cabin. The fewness of negroes gave the West Indiaproprietor an interest in the preservation of his slave; asuperabundance of helots superseded all interest in the comfortor preservation of an Irish cottier. The code had eradicatedevery feeling of humanity, and avarice sought to stifle everysense of justice. That avarice was generated by prodigality, thehereditary vice of the Irish gentry, and manifested itself inexorbitant rack-rents wrung from their tenantry, and in the lowwages paid for their labor. Since the days of King William, theprice of the necessaries of life had trebled, and the day's hire--fourpence— had continued stationary. The oppression of titheswas little inferior to the tyranny of rack-rents; while thegreat landholder was nearly exempt from this pressure, a tenthof the produce of the cottier's labor was exacted for thepurpose of a religious establishment from which he derived nobenefit. . . . The peasant had no resource: not trade ormanufactures—they were discouraged; not emigration to France—the vigilance of government precluded foreign enlistment; notemigration to America —his poverty precluded the means. Ireland,the land of his birth, became his prison, where he counted thedays of his misery in the deepest despondency."

Is it to be wondered at that conspiracies, secret associations,and insurrections, were the result; or should the wonder be thatsuch commotions were less universal and prolonged?

The craving of hunger is perpetual in Ireland. Multitudes ofdetails from a multitude of different and independent sourcesmight be brought forward to show this.

Duvergier de Hauranne, a Frenchman who visited the island in1826, writes: "Ireland is the land of anomalies; the mostdeplorable destitution on the richest of soils. . . . Nowheredoes man live in such wretchedness. The Irish peasant is born,suffers, and dies—such is life for him."

In 1836, Dr. Doyle, Bishop of Kildare, being asked what was thestate of the population, wrote: "What it has always been; peopleare perishing as usual."

In 1843, Mr. Thackeray, as little a friend to Ireland as he wasa foe to his own country, recounting what he saw in his travels,said that, in the south and west of the island, the travellerhad before him the spectacle of a people dying of hunger, andthat by millions, in the very richest counties.

There is no need of repeating what has been written of thefearful scourge that swept over the country in 1846 and 1847.The details are too harrowing. At last even the London Times hadto acknowledge the cause of these calamities: "The ulcer ofIreland drains the resources of the empire. It was to beexpected that it should be so. The people of England have mostculpably and foolishly connived at a national iniquity. Withoutgoing back beyond the Union (in 1800), and only within the lasthalf-century, it has been notorious all that time that Irelandwas the victim of an unexampled social crime. The landlordsexercise their rights there with a hand of iron, and deny theirduty with a brow of brass. Age, infirmity, sickness, everyweakness, is there condemned to death. The whole Irish people isdebased by the spectacle and contact of beggars and of those whonotoriously die of hunger; and England stupidly winked at thistyranny. We begin now to expiate a long curse of neglect. Suchis the law of justice. If we are asked why we have to supporthalf the population of Ireland, the answer lies in the questionitself; it is that we have deliberately allowed them to becrushed into a nation of beggars!"

The writers of the Times laid the true cause of that appallingmisfortune at the door of the landlords. They would not traceback the origin of the evil beyond 1800: they could not or wouldnot appreciate the Christian heroism displayed by the nationwhile under the infliction of such a fatal scourge. But it mustnot be forgotten by all admirers of virtue that, in the midst ofa distress which baffles description, many of the victims offamine were at the same time martyrs to honesty and faith. "Comehere and let us die together," said a wife to her husband,"rather than touch what belongs to another."

The civil right of acquiring land and enjoying its products hasso far been the only one considered by us; and the subject hasbeen entered upon at some length, as agriculture has at alltimes formed the chief occupation of the Irish people. But thepenal laws embraced many other objects; and, as their intent wasevidently to debase the people and reduce it to a state ofactual slavery and want, other civil rights were equally invadedby their tyrannical provisions.

A portion of the population in all countries devotes itself tothe intellectual pursuits necessary for the life of everycultivated nation. Whoever chooses must have the right ofdevoting his life to the professions of medicine and law, ofentering the Church or the army, if his tastes run in any one ofthose directions. Not so in Catholic Ireland. The oath to betaken by every barrister prevented the Catholic Irishman fromdevoting his powers to such a purpose. There was only one Churchfor him, and that one proscribed. In the army not only could henot attain to any rank, but he was not allowed to enter it evenas a private, the holding of a musket being prohibited to him.So that, through mere fanatical hatred of every thing Catholic,England deprived herself for a whole century of the services ofa people, forming to-day more than half of her army and navy,whose efforts have helped to cover her flag with honor, andwhose memorable absence from the English ranks at Fontenoy wrungthat bitter expression from the heart of George II. when thevictorious tide of the English battle was rolled back by the Irishbrigade, "Cursed be the laws which deprive me of such subjects!"

These few words are enough to show that the penal laws were inreality a decree of outlawry against the Irish—stamping them,not as true subjects, but as mere slaves and helots, fit only tobe hewers of wood and drawers of water at the bidding of theirlords and masters.

But there are mere human rights, inalienable in man, and sacredamong all nations, which were trampled upon in that desolatedland together with all inferior rights. Such are the rights ofworshipping God, of properly educating children, of preserving ajust subordination in the family and promoting harmony andhappiness among its members. These natural rights were moreopenly and shamelessly violated, if that were possible, than allothers; and this in itself would have made the eighteenthcentury one of gloom and woe for Irishmen.

It was for their religion chiefly that the Irish had undergoneall the calamities and scourges which have been described. Hadthey only, at the very beginning of the Reformation, bowed tothe new dogma of the spiritual supremacy of the English kings;had they a little later accepted the Thirty-nine Articles ofQueen Elizabeth; had they, at a subsequent epoch, opined inchorus with the Scotch Presbyterians, and given the Bible astheir authority for all kinds of absurdities and atrocities,mental and moral; had they, in a word, as they remarked toSussex, changed their religion four times in twelve years, theywould have escaped the wrath of Henry VIII., the crafty andcruel policy of Elizabeth, the shifty expediency of the Stuarts,the barbarity of the Cromwellian era, and finally the ingeniousatrocities of the penal laws.

Even if, in the midst of some of the extremities to which theyhad been reduced, they had at any time resolved to conform andtake the oaths prescribed, all their miseries would have been atan end, and their immediate admission to all the rights andprivileges of British citizens secured. From time to time, inindividual cases, they witnessed the sudden and magical effectproduced by conformity on the part of those who gave upresistance altogether, and who, from whatever motive, bowed tothe inevitable conditions on which men were admitted to livepeaceably on Irish soil, and to the enjoyment of the blessingsof this life; such condition being the abjuration of Catholicity.But so few were found to take advantage of this easy chanceforever held out to them, that a man might well wonder at theirconstancy did he not reflect that they set their duty to Godabove all things. The fact is patent—they had a conscience, andknew what it meant.

Having then surrendered their all for the sake of their religion,the free exercise of that might at least have been left them;and since the choice lay between the two alternatives ofenjoying the natural right of worshipping their God orsubmitting to all the sacrifices previously mentioned (seeminglythe meaning of the various oaths prescribed by law), it can onlybe looked upon as an additional cruelty to violently deprivethem of what they chose to preserve at all cost. But the authorsof the statutes did not see the matter in this light. They couldnot lose such an opportunity of inflicting new tortures on theirvictims; on the contrary, they would have considered all theirlabor lost had they not endeavored to coerce the very thingleast subject to coercion, the religious feeling of the humansoul. Accordingly, the resolution was taken to deprive them ofevery possible facility for the exercise of their religion, thatthe fire within might give no sign of its warmth.

True, the Irish Catholics were not, as the Christians under theedicts of old Rome, to be summoned before the public courts andthere abjure their religion or die. It is strange that therulers of Ireland stopped short at this; that they inventednothing in their laws at least equivalent, unless the statutesthat compelled every person under fine to be present atProtestant worship on Sundays be interpreted to mean, what itvery much resembles, an attempt at coercion of the very soul.Still there was no edict openly proscribing the name of Catholic,and punishing its bearer with death.

But the measures adopted and actually enforced were in realityequivalent, and would more effectually than any pagan edict haveproduced the same result, if the Irish race had shown the leastwavering in their traditional steadiness of purpose.

The first of the measures devised for this end would have beencompletely efficacious with any other people or race. It was atwofold measure: 1. All bishops, priests, and monks, were todepart from the kingdom, liable to capital punishment shouldthey return. 2. All laymen were to be compelled to assist at theProtestant service every Sunday, under penalty of a fine foreach offence: the fine mounting with the repetition of theoffence, so that, in the end, it would reach an enormous sum.Only let such a policy as this be persevered in for a quarter ofa century in any country on earth except Ireland, and, in thatcountry the Catholic religion will cease to exist.

"The Catholic clergy," says Matthew O'Connor—and the readerwill remember he was a witness of what he described— "submittedto their hard destiny with Christian resignation. They repairedto the seaport towns fixed for their embarcation, and took aneverlasting farewell of their country and friends, of everything dear and valuable in this world. Many of them weredescending in the vale of years, and must have been anxious todeposit their bones with the ashes of their ancestors; they werenow transported to foreign lands, where they would find no fondbreast to rely upon, no 'pious tear' to attend their obsequies.Yet their enemies could not deprive them of the consolations ofreligion: that first-born offspring of Heaven still cheered themin adversity and exile, smoothed the rugged path of death, andclosed their last faltering accents with benedictions on theircountry, and prayers for their persecutors.

"Such as were apprehended after the time limited for deportation,were loaded with irons and imprisoned until transported, toattest, on some foreign shore, the weakness of the government,and the cruelty of their countrymen. Some few, disabled from ageand infirmities from emigration, sought shelter in caves, orimplored and received the concealment of Protestants, whosehumane feelings were superior to their prejudices, and whoatoned, in a great degree, by their generous sympathy, for thewanton cruelty of their party.

"The clause inflicting the punishment of death on such as shouldreturn from exile was suited only for the sanguinary days ofTiberius or Domitian, and shocked the humanity of an enlightenedage. William of Orange, whose necessities compelled him to givehis sanction to the clause, would never consent to its execution."

Nevertheless, it was afterward enforced on several occasions,and, during the whole century of penal laws, it not onlyremained on the statute-book ad terrorem, but whatever clergymandisregarded it could only expect to be treated with its utmostrigor. From Captain South's account, it appears that in 1698 thenumber of clergy in Ireland consisted of four hundred and ninety-five regulars and eight hundred and ninety-two seculars; and thenumber of regulars shipped off that year to foreign partsamounted to four hundred and twenty-four—namely, from Dublin,one hundred and fifty-three; from Galway, one hundred and ninety;from Cork, seventy-five; and twenty-six from Waterford.

But such a measure was of too sweeping a character to be carriedout to the letter; many of the proscribed priests, seculars forthe most part, escaped the pursuit of the government spies, andremained concealed in the country. The bishops had all beenobliged to fly; but a few years later, under Anne, severalreturned, for they knew that, without the exercise of theirreligious functions, the Catholic religion must have perished;and, in order that they might continue the succession of thepriesthood, confirm the children, and encourage the people tostand firm in their faith, they ran the hazard of the gibbet. Ofthis fact the persecutors soon became aware, and the Commons ofIreland declared openly that "several popish bishops had latelycome into the kingdom, and exercised ecclesiastical jurisdictionwithin the same, and continued the succession of the Romishpriesthood by ordaining great numbers of popish clergymen, andthat their return was owing to defect in the laws."

To cover this defect, they invented the "registry law." They didnot state in express terms their intention of exporting themagain, but their object was clearly manifested by the subsequentenactment of 1704. By the registry law "all popish priests thenin the kingdom should, at the general quarter sessions in eachcounty, register their places of abode, age, parishes, and timeof ordination, the names of the respective bishops who ordainedthem, and give security for their constant residence in theirrespective districts, under penalty of imprisonment andtransportation, and of being treated as 'high traitors' in caseof return."

It is clear that, with the execution of this law, the exertionsof the police and of informers would have been superfluous, asthe clergy were compelled to act as their own police and informon themselves. The act, moreover, seems to have been preparedwith a view to another bill, which was soon after passed, fortotal expulsion. It was therefore nothing else than apreliminary measure devised to insure the success of this secondact, and prevent the recurrence of the former "defect in thelaws."

A new explanatory statute was accordingly drawn up, requiringthe clergy to take the oath of abjuration before the 23d ofMarch, 1710, under the penalties of transportation for life, andof high-treason if ever after found in the country. This bill,then, set them the alternative of abandoning either theircountry or their principles.

At the same time, for the encouragement of informers, theCommons resolved that "the prosecuting and informing againstpapists was an honorable service." Never before had a likedeclaration issued from any body in any nation, least of all bylegislators, in favor of the confessedly meanest of alloccupations; and it is doubtful if the most tyrannical of theRoman Caesars would ever have thought of mentioning the"honorable service" of the delatores whom they employed for thespeedy destruction of those whose wealth they coveted. "Genushominum," says Tacitus, "publico exitio repertum."

While on this subject, it has been remarked that most of theIrish informers amassed wealth by their bills of "discovery,"whereas those of the days of Tiberius generally fell victims totheir own artifices.

The eagerness for blood-money tracked the clergy to theirloneliest retreats, and dragged them thence before persecutingtribunals, by whose sentence they were doomed to perpetualbanishment. They must all have finally disappeared from theisland, if the people, at last grown indignant at such basenessand cruelty, had not, by the loudness of their execrations,checked the activity of the priest-hunters. Wherever they daredshow themselves, they were pelted with stones, and exposed tothe summary vengeance of a maddened people.

The detestable "profession" became at last so infamous andunprofitable that foreign Jews were almost the only ones foundwilling to undertake this "honorable service;" and it is statedin the "Historia Dominicana," that one Garzia, a Portuguese Jew,was the most active of those human blood-hounds, and that, in1718, he contrived to have seven of the proscribed clergydetected and apprehended.

We cannot speak of the most revolting measure ever intended tobe taken against Catholic priests; namely mutilation, so longand with such energy denied by Protestants, who were themselvesindignant at the mere mention of it, but now clearly proved bythe archives of France, where documents exist showing that thenon-enactment of such an infamy was solely due to the severewords of remonstrance sent to England by the Duke of Orleans,regent of France during the minority of Louis XV.

As late as the middle of the century, in 1744, a sudden increaseof rigor took place; intentions of conspiracy were ascribed toCatholics as usual, and without any motive whatever, unless itwas caused by the sight of some religious houses, which had beenquietly and unobtrusively reopened during the few years previous.All at once the government issued a proclamation for "thesuppression of monasteries, the apprehension of ecclesiastics,the punishment of magistrates remiss in the execution of thelaws, and the encouragement of spies and informers by anincrease of reward."

It was a repetition of the old story; a cruel persecution brokeout in every part of the island. From the country priests fledto the metropolis, seeking to hide themselves amid the multitudeof its citizens. Others fled to mountains and caverns, and theholy sacrifice was again offered up in lone places under thebare heavens, with sentinels to watch for the "prowling of thewolf," and no other outward dignity than that the grandeur ofthe forest and the rugged mountains gave.

In the cities the Catholics assisted at the celebration of thedivine mysteries in stable-yards, garrets, and such obscureplaces as sheltered them from the pursuit of the magistrates. Onone occasion, while the congregation (assembled in an oldbuilding) was kneeling to receive the benediction, the floorgave way, and all were buried beneath the ruin; many were killed,the priest among others; some were maimed for life, andremained to the end of their lives monuments of the cruelty ofthe government. The dead and dying, and the wounded, werecarried through the streets on carts; and the sad spectacle atlast moved the Protestants themselves to sympathy. Thegovernment was compelled to give way, and allow the persecutedCatholics to enjoy without further molestation the privateexercise of their religion.

But that this was not a willing concession on the part of thereigning power is manifest enough from the steady, unswerving,contrary policy pursued until that time. It was simply forced togive way to outraged public opinion, then openly opposedthroughout Europe to persecution for conscience' sake.

With religion education was also proscribed. Already, underWilliam of Orange, had papist school-masters been forbidden toteach, but the penalty of their disobedience to the law did notgo beyond a fine of a few pounds. So that the Irish youth couldstill, with some precautionary prudence, find teachers of theGreek and Latin languages, of mathematics, history, andgeography. In Munster particularly schools and academies ofliterature flourished; the ardor of the people for theacquirement of knowledge could not be balked by such paltryobstacles as the laws of William III.

But the Irish Parliament under Anne could not rest satisfiedwith such mild measures. By the "Explanatory Act" of 1710, theschool-master in Ireland was subjected to the same punishment asthe priest whom he accompanied everywhere. Prison,transportation, death itself, became the reward of teaching. Andin proportion as other laws, severer yet, prevented the peoplefrom sending their children abroad to be educated, and theselaws were renewed occasionally and made more stringent andeffective, the result was the total impossibility of Catholicchildren receiving any education higher than that of the house.

The final result is known to all. The "hedge-school" wasestablished, that being the only way left of impartingelementary knowledge; and it required Irish ingenuity and Irishaptitude for shifts to invent such a system, for system it was,and carry it through for so long a time.

But even the last sanctuary of home was yet to be sacrilegiouslyinvaded; the most sacred of human rights could not be left tothe persecuted people, and the strongest bonds of familyaffection were if possible to be broken asunder. What tyrannyhad never yet dared attempt in any age or country was to becomea law in Ireland; and that holy feeling by which the members ofa family are held together, in obedence to one of the mostnecessary and solemn commandments of God, could not be leftundisturbed in the bosom of an Irish child. The father's ruleover his children and the honor and love due by the child to itsparent, were, in fact, declared by English legislation of novalue, and fit subjects for cruel interference, introducingirresistible temptation.

Yes, by the laws enacted in the reign of Anne, the son was to beset against the father, and this for the sake of religion! Itwas a part of the Irish statutes, and for a long time it tookoccasional effect, that any son of a Catholic who should turnProtestant at any age, even the tenderest, should alone succeedto the family estate, which from the day of the son's conversioncould neither be sold nor charged even with a debt of legacy.From that same day the son was taken from his father's roof anddelivered into the custody of some Protestant guardian. No tie,however sacred, no claim, however dear, was respected by thosestatesmen, who at the very time were the loudest to boast oftheir love for freedom, while trampling under foot the mostindispensable rights of Nature.

The wickedest ingenuity of man could certainly not go beyondthis to debase, degrade, and destroy a nation. Afterunprecedented calamities of former ages, we find millions of menreduced by other men, calling themselves Christians, to acondition of pagan helots, deprived of all rights and treatedmore barbarously than slaves. And all the while they wereallowed, induced, encouraged to put an end to their misery bysimply saying one word, taking one oath, "conforming " as theexpression had it. Nevertheless they steadily refused to speakthat word, to take that oath, to conform; that is to say, toabjure their religion. A few, weak in faith, or carried away bysudden passion, a burst of despair, subscribe to the requiredoath, assist as demanded at the religious services on Sunday,suddenly rise to distinction, are sure of preserving theirwealth, or even enter into sole possession of the familyproperty, to the exclusion of all its other members. But suchrare examples, instead of rousing the envy of the rest, exciteonly their contempt and execration. To them they are henceforthapostates, renegades to their faith, cast out from the bosom ofthe nation; and their countrymen hug their misery rather thanexchange it for honors and wealth purchased by broken honor,lost faith, and cowardly desertion of the cause for which theircountry was what it was.

While the cowards were so few, and the brave men so many, thelatter constituting indeed the whole bulk of the people, theywere knit together as a band of brethren, never to be estrangedfrom each other. If any thing is calculated to form a nation, togive it strength, to render it indestructible, imperishable, itis undoubtedly the ordeal through which they passed withoutshrinking, and out of which they came with one mind, one purpose,animated by one holy feeling, the love of their religion, andthe determination to keep it at all hazard.

Yes, at any moment throughout this long century, they might havechanged their condition and come out at once to the enjoyment ofall the rights dear to men, by what means is best expressed inthe few words of Edmund Burke:

"Let three millions of people" (the number of Irishmen at thetime he spoke) "but abandon all that they and their ancestorshave been taught to believe sacred, and forswear it publicly interms most degrading, scurrilous, and indecent, for men ofintegrity and virtue, and abuse the whole of their former lives,and slander the education they have received, and nothing moreis required of them. There is no system of folly, or impiety, orblasphemy, or atheism, into which they may not throw themselves,and which they may not profess openly and as a system,consistently with the enjoyment of all the privileges of a freecitizen in the happiest constitution in the world."

Thus does the reason of man commend their constancy; but thatconstancy required something more than human strength. God itwas who supported them. He alone could grant power of willstrong enough to uphold men plunged for so long a time in suchan abyss of wretchedness. To him could they cry out with truth:"It is only owing to Divine mercy that we have not perished;"misericordias Domini, quod non sumus consumpti!

But human reason can better comprehend the effect produced on avast multitude of people by oppression so unexampled in itsseverity. An immense development of manhood and self-dependence,an heroic determination to bear every trial for conscience' sake,and a certainty of succeeding, in the long-run, in breaking theheavy chain and casting off the intolerable yoke —such was theeffect.

It has been asserted by some authors, who have written on thatterrible eighteenth century in Ireland, that the spirit of thepeople was entirely broken, that there was no energy left amongthem, and that the imposition of burdens heavier still, weresuch a thing possible, could scarcely elicit from them even thesemblance of remonstrance. It was only natural to think so; but,in our opinion, this is only true of the external despondencyunder which the people was bowed, but utterly false with respectto a lack of mental energy.

There certainly was no general attempt at insurrection on theirpart; nor did they take refuge in that last resource of despair—death after a vain vengeance. If the writers referred to wouldhave preferred this last fatal resource of wounded pride, theyare right in their estimate of the Irish; but they forget thatthe victims were Christians, and could lend no ear to avengeance which is futile and a despair which is forbidden.There was a better course open before them, and they followed it:to resign themselves to the will of a God they believed in andfor whom they suffered, and wait patiently for the day ofdeliverance. It was sure to come; and if those then living weredoomed not to see that happy day, they knew that they wouldleave it as an inheritance to their children.

Those writers would doubtless have been satisfied of theexistence of a will among the people, and their conduct wouldhave met with greater approval, had the attempts of someindividuals at private revenge been more general and successful;if the bands of Rapparees, White Boys, and others, had wroughtmore evil upon their oppressors, although they could not preparethem to renew the struggle on a large scale with better prospectof success.

But this could not be; success could never have been reached bysuch a road, and it was useless to attempt it. At that time,there existed no possibility of the Irish recovering theirrights by force. Meanwhile Providence was not forgetful of thosewho were fighting the braver moral battle of suffering andendurance for their religion. It was preparing the nation for afuture life of great purposes, by purifying it in the crucibleof affliction, and preserving the people pure and undebased.

Nowhere has the period of calamity been so protracted and sosevere. Ireland stands alone in a history of wretchedness ofseven centuries' duration. She stands alone, particularlyinasmuch as, with her, the affliction has gone on continuallyincreasing until quite recently, unrefreshed by periods ofrelief and glimpses of bright hope. The sinking spirits of thepeople, it is true, have been buoyed up from time to time bysanguine expectations; but only to find their expectationscrowned with bitter disappointment and sink deeper again in thesea of their afflictions.

Nevertheless, through all that time the Irish continued morallystrong, and ready at the right moment to leap into the statureof giants in strength and resolution. How they did so will beseen, and the simplicity of the explanation will be matter forsurprise. But it is fitting first to set in the strongest lightthe assertion that the Irish were really debased by thecalamities of that age, that they possessed no self-dependenceat a time when that was the only thing left to them.

This view is thus expressed in Godkin's "History of Ireland:""Too well did the penal code accomplish its dreadful work ofdebasem*nt on the intellects, morals, and physical condition ofa people sinking in degeneracy from age to age, till all manlyspirit, all virtuous sense of personal independence andresponsibility was nearly extinct, and the very features—vacant,timid, cunning, and unreflective—betrayed the crouching slavewithin."

And the writer, a well-disposed Protestant, did not see how itcould well be otherwise, and took it for granted that every onewould admit the truth of his assertions without the slightesthesitation.

For he adds, a little farther on: "Having no rights of franchise--no legal protection of life or property—disqualified to handlea gun, even as a common soldier or a game-keeper— forbidden toacquire the elements of knowledge at home or abroad—forbiddeneven to render to God what conscience dictated as his due—whatcould the Irish be but abject serfs? What nature in theircirc*mstances could have been otherwise? Is it not amazing thatany social virtue could have survived such an ordeal—that anyseeds of good, any roots of national greatness could haveoutlived such a long tempestuous winter? "

Still Mr. Godkin was mistaken; the Irish had suffered no"debasem*nt of the intellects, of the morals, not even of thephysical condition," notwithstanding the plenitude of causesexisting to bring such results about.

Their intellect had been kept in ignorance. Unable to procureinstruction for their children, except by stealth and inopposition to the laws, few of them could acquire even the firstelements of mental culture. But the intellect of a nation is notnecessarily debased on that account. As a general rule, it istrue that ignorance begets mental darkness and error, and willoften debase the mind and sink the intellectual faculties to thelowest human level. But this happens only to people who, havingno religious substratum to rest upon, are left at the mercy oferror and delusions. One great thought, at least, was everpresent to their minds, and that thought was in itselfsufficient to preserve their intellect from being degraded; itwas this "Man is nobler than the brute and born to a higherdestiny." This truth was deeply engraved in their minds; and indefence of it they battled, and fought, and bled, all down thepainful course of their history.

Had the intellect of the nation been really debased, would nottheir religious principles have been the first things to bethrown overboard? Would they not have adopted unhesitatingly allthe tenets successively proposed to them by the various"reformers" of England? What is truth, when there is no mind toreceive it? It requires a strong mind indeed to say, "I willsuffer every thing, death itself, rather thin repudiate what Iknow comes from God." It is useless to dwell longer on theseconsiderations. The man who sees not in such an heroicdetermination proof of a strong and noble mind may be possessedof a great, but to common-sense people it will look like a verylimited intelligence.

Mr. Godkin cannot have duly weighed his expressions when hespoke of the debasem*nt of morals among the Irish. It is nohyperbole to speak of the nation as a martyr; a martyr in anysense of the word: to the Christian, a Christian martyr. And yetit is by that fact guilty of immorality, or, as he puts it,debased in morals! The point is not worth arguing. But incontrasting the two nations, the nation debased and the nationthat wrought its debasem*nt, we are irresistibly reminded of thewords used by Our Lord in reference to John the Baptist, then inprison and liable at any moment to be condemned to death: "Whatwent ye out in the desert to see? A man clothed in softgarments? Lo! they that are clothed in soft garments dwell inthe houses of kings."

If we would find a people really debased in morals, we must goto those whose material prosperity breeds corruption and givesto all the means of satisfying their evil passions. The orgiesof the Babylonians under their last king, of the effeminatePersians later on, of the Roman patricians during the empire,need no more than mention. The cause of the immoralityprevailing at these several epochs is well known, and has beentold very plainly by conscientious historians, some of thempagans themselves. But, that a people ground down so long undera yoke of iron, gasping for very breath, yet refusing tosurrender its belief and the worship of its God as its countlesssaints worshipped him, to follow the wild vagaries of sectariansand fanatics, should at the same time be accused of corruptionand debasem*nt of its morals, is too much for an historian toassert or a reader to believe.

But, beyond all argument, it has been generally conceded, inspite of prejudices, that the Irish, of all peoples, had beenpreeminently moral and Christian. No one has dared accuse themof open vice, however they may have been accused of folly.Intemperance is the great foible flung at them by many who,careful to conceal their own failings, are ever, ready to "castthe first stone" at them. It would be well for them to ponderover the rebuke of the Saviour to the accusers of the womantaken in adultery; when perhaps they may think twice beforerepeating the time-worn accusation.

Coming to the "people sinking in degeneracy from age to age;" ifby this is meant that, for a whole century, many of them havesuffered the direst want and died of hunger, that scanty foodhas impressed on many the deep traces of physical suffering andbodily exhaustion, no one will dispute the fact, while the blameof it is thrown where it deserves to be thrown. But it will be asource of astonishment to find that, despite of this, the racehas not degenerated even physically; that it is still, perhaps,the strongest race in existence, and that no other European, noEnglishman or Teuton, can endure the labor of any ordinaryIrishman. In the vast territory of the United States, the publicworks, canals, roads, railways, huge fabrics, immensemanufactories, bear witness to the truth of this statement, andthe only explanation that can be satisfactorily given for thisstrange fact is, that their morals are pure and they do nottransmit to their children the seeds of many diseases nowuniversal in a universally corrupt society.

There remains the final accusation of the "very features—vacant, timid, cunning, and unreflective—betraying thecrouching slave within."

Granting the truth of this—which we by no means do, everyschool-geography written by whatever hand attesting the contraryto-day—where would have been the wonder that they, subjected solong to an unbending harshness and never-slumbering tyranny,accustomed to those continual "domiciliary visits" so common inIreland during the whole of last century, dragged so oftenbefore the courts of "justice," to be there insulted, falselyaccused, harshly tried and convicted without proof—were obligedto be continually on their guard, to observe a deep reserve, thevery opposite to the promptings of their genial nature, toreturn ambiguous answers, full, by the way, of natural wit andmarvellous acuteness? It was the only course left them in theirforlorn situation. They pitted their native wit against awonderfully devised legislation, and often came off the victors.Suppose it were true, was it not natural that, under such asystem of unrelaxing oppression and hatred toward them, theirfaces should be "vacant, timid, cunning, and unreflective,betraying the crouching slave within?"

Could they give back a proud answer, when a proud look was anaccusation of rebellion? Are prudence, cunning, and just reserve,vacancy and want of reflection? The man who penned those wordsshould remember the choice of alternatives ever present to themind of an Irishman, however unjustly suspected or accused—theprobability of imprisonment or hanging, of being sent to theworkhouse or transported to the "American plantations."

The Irishman must have changed very materially and very rapidlysince Mr. Godkin wrote. The features he would stamp upon himmight be better applied to the Sussex yokel or the Englishcountry boor of whatever county. The generality of travellersstrangely disagree with Mr. Godkin. They find the Irishman thetype of vivacity, good humor, and wit; and they are right. For,under the weight of such a load of misery, under the ban of soterrible a fate, the moral disposition of the Irishman neverchanged; his manhood remained intact. To-day, the world atteststo the same exuberance of spirits, the same tenacity of purpose,which were ever his. This indeed is wonderful, that this peopleshould have been thus preserved amid so many causes for changeand deterioration. Who shall explain this mystery? What had they,all through that age of woe, to give them strength to supporttheir terrible trials, to preserve to them that tenacity whichprevented their breaking down altogether? Something there wasindeed not left to them, since it was forbidden under theseverest penalties; something, nevertheless, to which they clung,in spite of all prohibitions to the contrary.

It was the Mass-Rock, peculiar to the eighteenth century, nowknown only by tradition, but at that time common throughout theisland. The principal of those holy places became so celebratedat the time that, on every barony map of Ireland, numbers ofthem are to be found marked under the appropriate title of"Corrigan-Affrion"—the mass-rock.

Whenever, in some lonely spot on the mountain, among the cragsat its top, or in some secret recess of an unfrequented glen,was found a ledge of rock which might serve the purpose of analtar, cut out as it were by Nature, immediately the placebecame known to the surrounding neighborhood, but was kept aprofound secret from all enemies and persecutors. There on themorning appointed, often before day, a multitude was to be seenkneeling, and a priest standing under the canopy of heaven, amidthe profound silence of the holy mysteries. Though the surfaceof the whole island was dotted with numerous churches, built indays gone by by Catholics, but now profaned, in ruins, ordevoted to the worship of heresy, not one of them was allowed toserve for a place where a fraction even of the bulk of thepopulation might adore their God according to the rites approvedof by their conscience. Shut off from these temples so longhallowed by sweet remembrance as the spots once occupied by thesaints and consecrated to the true worship of their God, thisfaithful nation was consecrating the while by its prayers, byits blood, and by its tears, other places which in future timesshould be remembered as the only spots left to them for morethan a century wherein to celebrate the divine rites.

This was the only badge of nationality they had preserved, butit was the most sacred, the surest, and the sweetest. Who shalltell of the many prayers that went up thence from devoted mindsand hearts, to be received by angels and carried before thethrone of God? Who shall say that those prayers were nothearkened to when to-day we see the posterity of those holyworshippers receiving or on the point of receiving the fullmeasure of their desires?

There, indeed, it was that the nation received its new birth; insorrow and suffering, as its Saviour was born, but for that veryreason sacred in the eyes of God and man. Their enemies hadsworn complete separation from them, eternal animosity againstthem; the new nation accepted the challenge, and that completeseparation decreed by their enemies was the real means of theirsalvation and of making them a People.

As has already been observed, the various attempts to makeProtestants of them, attempts sometimes cunning and crafty, atothers open and cruel, always persevered in, never lost sight of,began to imbue the people with a new feeling of nationality,never experienced before, and constantly increasing in intensity.

This was witnessed under the Tudors. Their infatuation for theStuart dynasty served the same end, and it may be said that,from all the evils which that attachment brought upon them,burst forth that great recompense of national sentiment whichalmost compensated them for the terrible calamities whichfollowed in its train. It was under Charles I. that theConfederation of Kilkenny first gave them a real constitution,better adapted for the nation than the old regime of their Ard-Righs.

But it was chiefly under the English Commonwealth, when theywere so mercilessly crushed down by Cromwell and his brutalsoldiery, when there seemed no earthly hope left them, that thesolid union of the old native with the Anglo-Irish families,which had already been attempted—and almost successfull by theConfederation of Kilkenny yet never consummated was finallybrought about once for all; their common misery uniting them inthe bonds of brotherly affection, blotting out forever theirlong-standing divisions and antipathies which had never beenquite laid aside.

It was thus that the nation was formed and prepared by martyrdomfor the glorious resurrection, the greater future kept in storefor it by Providence; the people all the while remainingundebased under their crushing evils.

Lastly, the intensity of the suffering produced by the penallaws, during the eighteenth century, linked the nation in closerbonds of union still, and this time gave them a unanimity whichbecame invincible. Their final motto was then adopted, and willstand forever unchanged. In the clan period it was "Our sept andour chieftain;" under the Tudors, "Our religion and our nativelords;" under the Stuarts it suddenly became "God and the King;"—it changed once more, never to change again: it was embracedin one word, the name of Him who had never deserted them, whoalone stood firm on their side—"Our God!"

CHAPTER XIII.

RESURRECTION.-DELUSIVE HOPES.

By delusive hopes are here meant some of the various schemes inwhich Irishmen have indulged and still indulge with the view ofbettering their country. This chapter will aim at showing that,for the resurrection of Ireland, the reconstruction of her pastis impossible; parliamentary independence or "home rule,"insufficient, physical force and violent revolution, inconjunction with European radicals particularly, is as unholy asit is impracticable.

The resurrection of the Irish nation began with the end of lastcentury. As, to use their own beautiful expression, "'Tis alwaysthe darkest the hour before day," so the gloom had never settleddown so darkly over the land, when light began to dawn, and thefirst symptoms of returning life to flicker over the face of the,to all seeming, dead nation. Its coming has been best describedin the "History of the Catholic Association" by Wyse. On readinghis account, it is impossible not to be struck with the verysmall share that men have had in this movement; it was purely anatural process directed by a merciful God. As with all naturalprocesses, it began by an almost imperceptible movement among afew disconnected atoms, which, by seeming accident approachingand coming into contact, begin to form groups, which gatherother groups toward them in ever-increasing numbers, thus givingshape to an organism which defines itself after a time, to befinally developed into a strong and healthy being. This processdiffered essentially from those revolutionary uprisings whichhave since occurred in other nations, to the total change in theconstitution and form of the latter, without any correspondingbenefit arising from them.

Before entering upon the full investigation of this uprising, itmay be well to dispel some false notions too prevalent, even inour days, among men who are animated with the very bestintentions, who wish well to the Irish cause, but who seem tofail in grasp in the right idea of the question. Reconstruction,say they, is impossible-at least as far as the past history ofthe country goes. Where are her leaders, her chieftains, hernobility? Feudalism broke the clans, persecution put aneffectual stop to the labors of genealogists and bards. Where,to-day, are the O'Neill, the O'Brien, the O'Donnell, and therest? Until new leaders are found, offshoots, if possible, ofthe old families, more faithful and trustworthy than those whoso far have volunteered to guide their countrymen, how is itpossible to expect a people such as the Irish have always been,to assume once more a corporate existence, and enjoy a trulynational government?

I. That the Irish nobility has disappeared forever may begranted. In giving our reasons for believing in theimpossibility of connecting the present with the past throughthat class, and thus restoring a truly national government, andin strengthening this opinion by what follows, we shall show atthe same time that, in that regard, Ireland is on a par with allother nationalities, among whom the aristocratic classes havequite lost the prestige that once belonged to them, and can nolonger be said to rule modern nations.

The question of nobility is certainly an important one for theIrish—nay, for all peoples. Up to quite recently, profoundthinkers never imagined it possible for a people to enjoy peaceand happiness save under the guidance of those then held to benatural guides with aristocratic blood in their veins, who weredestined by God himself to rule the masses. We are far fromfalling in with the fashion, so common nowadays, of deridingthose ideas. Men like Joseph de Maistre, who was certainly anupholder of the theory, and who could not suppose a nation toexist without a superior class appointed by Providence to guidethose whose blood was less pure, have a right to be listened towith respect, and none of their deliberate opinions should betreated with levity.

And, in truth, no nobility ever existed more worthy of the title,as far as the origin of its power went, than the Irish. Itslast days were spent, like those of true heroes, fighting fortheir country and their God. It is a remarkable fact that they,the truest, were the first of the aristocratic classes to fall.After them, all the aristocracies of Europe, with the exceptionperhaps of the English, which still exists at least in name,gradually saw their power wrested from them, so that, to-day, itmay be said with truth that the "noble" blood has lost itsprerogative of rule.

Various are the theories on these superior classes; a few wordson some of them may be as appropriate as interesting.

Of all those advanced, Vico's are the least defensible, thoughthey seem to rest on a deep knowledge of antiquity. No Christiancan accept his view of a universal savage state of society afterthe Flood; and his explanation of the origin of aristocraticraces, and of the plebeians, their slaves, is purely the work ofimagination, however well read in classic lore may have been theauthor of "Scienza Nuova." To suppose with him that the primeval"nobles" reached the first stage of civilization by inventinglanguage, agriculture, and religion, and by imposing the yoke ofservitude on the "brutes" who were not yet possessed of thefirst characteristics of humanity, is revolting to reason, andcontradictory to all sound philosophy and knowledge of history.His aristocracy is a brutal institution which he does well todoom to extinction as soon as the plebs is sufficientlyinstructed and powerful enough to seize upon the reins ofgovernment, before it, in its turn, is brought under by theprogressive march of monarchy, with which his system culminates.

The feudal ideas concerning "noble" blood rested on an entirelydifferent basis. The feudal monarch is but the first of thenobles, and the possession of land is the true prerogative andcharter of nobility. The inferior classes being excluded fromthat privilege, are also excluded from all political rights, andare nothing more nor less than the conquered races which werefirst reduced to slavery. Christianity was the only power whicheffected a change, and a deep one, in the relations of these twoclasses to each other; the rigorous application of the system bythe Northmen being entirely opposed to the elementary teachingsof our holy religion.

From the change thus brought about resulted the Christian ideaof aristocratic and monarchical government which had the supportof some gifted writers of the last and present centuries. It wasin fact a return to the old system realized by Charlemagne inthe great empire of which he was the founder—a system whoseglorious march was interrupted by the invasion of feudalism inits severest form, which, according to what was before said,came down from Scandinavia in the time of Charlemagne'simmediate successors. Under the regime of the noble emperor, theChurch, the Aristocracy, and the People, formed three Estates,each with its due share in the government. This mode ofadministering public affairs became general in Europe, and stoodfor nearly a thousand years.

But is it the particular form of government necessary for thehappiness of a nation, as it was held to be by some powerfulminds? If it is, then are we born, indeed, in unhappy times; forthe corner-stone of the edifice, the aristocratic idea, hascrumbled away, and is apparently gone forever.

Any one, looking at Europe as it stands to-day, must feelconstrained to admit that its history for the last hundred yearsmay be summed up in the one phrase: admission of the middleclasses of society to the chief seat of government. Russia nowmakes the solitary exception to this rule; for in England, whichseems the most feudal of all nations, the middle classes haveattained to a high position, and, through their specialrepresentatives, have often taken the chief lead in publicaffairs, ever since the Revolution of 1688, a lead which is nowuncontested. And as individuals of the middle class are oftenadmitted into the ranks of the aristocracy, it would indeed be ahard thing to find purely "noble" blood in the vast majority ofaristocratic families now existing in Great Britain.

The history of the gradual decline of what is called thenobility in the various states of Europe would require volumes.In many instances it would certainly be found to have beenrichly merited, in France particularly, perhaps, where thecorruption of that class was one of the chief causes which ledto the first French Revolution.

But in Ireland the original idea of nobility was different fromthat entertained elsewhere; the action of the institution on thepeople at large was peculiar in its character; and if, in earlytimes, those rude chieftains were often guilty of acts ofviolence and outrage against religion and morality, they atonedfor this by that last long struggle of theirs, so nobly waged indefence of both. But the destruction of the order was final andcomplete, and seems to have left no hope of resurrection.

In our first chapter, when treating of the clan system, theorigin of chieftainship among the Celts was referred back to thefamily: all the chieftains, or nobles, were each the head of asept or tribe, which is the nearest approach to a family; allthe clansmen were related by blood to the chieftain. The orderof nobility among the Celts was therefore natural and notartificial; being neither the result of some conventionalunderstanding nor of brute force. Nature was with them theparent of nobility and chieftainship; and the ennobling, orraising a person by mere human power to the dignity of noble,was unknown to them: a state of things peculiar to the race.

In Vico's system, aristocracy sprang from physical force orskill; consequently, nobility was founded on no natural right,although the author does his best to prove the contrary, chieflyby ascribing to the aristocratic class the discovery orinvention of right (jus) which thus becomes a mere derivative offorce.

In feudalism, pure and unmixed, after it had penetrated farthersouth, under the lead of the Scandinavians, nobility was derivedfrom conquest and armed force. It is true that, by this system,the viking, monarch, or sovereign lord, was the one whodistributed the territory, won from conquered nations, among hisfaithful followers, and thus land and its consequence, nobility,were apparently the award of merit; but the merit in questionbeing equivalent to success in battle, it again resolved itselfinto armed force. In fact, the power of feudalism proper restedin the army; the chief nobles were duces or combats (dukes orcounts), the inferior nobles were equites (knights) and milites(men-at-arms). All power and title began and ended with force ofarms, which was the only foundation of right: jus captionis etpossessionis—the right of taking and of keeping.

Eventually feudal ideas underwent considerable change among thearistocracy of Christendom, by the gradual spread of Christianmanners; and the first establishment of nobility by Charlemagne,which was anterior to pure feudalism, afterward revived, andlasted a thousand years. Then it was conferred by the monarch onmerit of any kind, and it was understood that those whomsuperior authority had raised to the dignity had won their titleby their deeds, which were sufficient to prove their noble blood,and that they were empowered to transmit the title to theirposterity. The idea was a grand one, and gave proof of its vastpolitical and social usefulness in the immense benefits which itbrought upon Europe during so many ages. Unfortunately, theinroad of the Scandinavians, following closely on the death ofits great founder, introduced feudalism as better known to us,interfered with the institution which Charlemagne hadestablished in such admirable equipoise, and added to it manybarbarous adjuncts, which for a long time entered into the ideaof nobility itself. Thus the titles of feudal lords wereretained—duce, comites, equites, milites—with, all theparaphernalia of brute force which the harsh mind of northerndespotism had made divine. Thus was the holding of landedproperty allowed to the nobles alone; the great mass of thepopulation being composed of men—ascripti glebae— who wereincapable from their position of rising in the social scale; sothat all were duly impressed with the idea that the mass of thepeople had been conquered and reduced, if not to slavery, towhat greatly resembled it—serfdom. From this order of thingsarose that fruitful source of all modern revolutions, thedivision of Europe into two great classes antagonistic to eachother and separated by an almost impassable gulf—the lords andthe "villeins."

To be sure, the supreme lord had the power to raise even avillein to the rank of noble, after he had proved his superiorelevation of mind by heroic achievements; but what superhumanexertions did not those achievements call for; what a concourseof fortuitous circ*mstances rarely occurring, so as to renderalmost illusory the hope of rising held out by the feudal theory!The Church alone opened her highest grades to allindiscriminately; and, in her, true merit was really anassurance of advance.

Further details are not needed. The difference between the ideaof the nobility entertained in Celtic countries, and that heldby the rest of Europe, is already in favor of the former.

For this reason the action of the Irish aristocracy on thepeople at large was happily altogether free from those causes ofirritation so common in feudal countries. A close intimacy andpersonal devotion naturally existed between the chieftain of aclan and his men—an intimacy manifested by the free manners ofthe humblest among them, and that ease of social intercoursebetween all classes of people, which was a matter of so muchsurprise to the Norman barons at their primitive invasion.

At first sight, the Celtic system appears, in one respect atleast, inferior to that which prevailed throughout the rest ofEurope: the simple clansmen could never indulge in the hope ofattaining to the chieftainship, being naturally excluded fromthat high office. Only the actual members of the chieftain's ownfamily could hope to succeed him after his death, by election,and take the lead of the sept; thus nobility was entirelyexclusive, and regulated by the very laws of Nature. The officewas really not transferable, and no degree of exertion, ofwhatever nature, could win it for any person born out of the onefamily. But the difference was scarcely one in fact; and we knowhow illusory, often was that ambition which the system of meritinspired in the man born of an inferior class in other racesthan the Celtic. The broad assertion, that no man could risefrom the condition in which he happened to be born, remains truefor nearly all cases.

But, on the other hand, there were motives of ambition besidesthat of becoming chieftain, or entering on the road thereto, bybeing admitted into the ranks of the nobility, which lay open tothe Celt; and if the desire of a mere clansman to become achieftain lay within the bounds of possibility, the social stateof Celtic countries would have been broken up and becomeintolerable, and society would have been dissolved into itsprimitive elements. Two considerations of importance:

The whole of Irish history teaches one lesson, or, rather,impresses one fact: that every member of a clan took as muchpride in the sept to which he belonged, and labored as zealouslyfor its head, as he could have done had the advantage turned allto himself. The peculiar features engendered by the system weresuch that each man identified himself with the whole tribe andparticularly with its leader; and this is easily understood, aswe see the same sort of feeling existing to-day among families.It is in the very essence of natural ties to merge theindividual in the community to which he belongs, as in questionswhich affect the whole family to merge self in the whole, toforget one's own identity, to be ready for any sacrifice,particularly when the sacrifice is called forth in defence of abeloved parent.

To judge by the ancient annals of Ireland which are accessible,this was undoubtedly the sentiment pervading Celtic clans, andit is easy to conceive how, under such conditions, ambitiousthoughts of the chieftainship or nobility could not well enterthere. Moreover, we repeat, had such ambitious thoughts beenwithin the compass of realization, the whole system would havebeen destroyed.

The greatest source of quarrels, feuds, wars, and generalcalamities among the Irish people, was the insane aspirationamong the inferior members of a chieftain's family after supremepower. The institution of Tanist, or heir-apparent, particularly,which was general for all offices, from the highest to thelowest, was a constant source of trouble and contention to septswhich, without it, would have remained united and in harmony.Montalembert has well said that it seems as if an incurablefatality accompanied the Irish everywhere, and condemned nearlyall the highest among them to have their blood shed either byothers or by their own hand, and that few indeed are thoserenowned chieftains and kings who died quietly in their beds.Their annals are filled throughout with tales of blood; and,when we know of their strong attachment to religion, of theirtenderheartedness for women, children, old and feeble men, it ishard to conceive how they came to shed blood so often, and showthemselves proof against the simplest claims of humanity.

But the difficulty is sufficiently explained by their own annalsand the state of society under which they lived. The Tanistrywas the great source of all those evils. The position of achieftain was so honorable, so influential, and powerful, thatall natural sentiments, even those of family affection, wereoften extinguished by the insane ambition of attaining to it, inthose whom Nature had set on the road toward it.

It looks like a contradiction, yet nothing is so wellestablished as their deep affection for their near relatives andthe fury engendered against their nearest of kin when allured bythe prospect of the chieftainship. What the case might have been,had all the inferior clansmen been influenced by the samemotive, one shudders to think. Happily the possibility of such aposition was denied them, and thus were they spared all thecrime and horrors which it entailed. Let us now turn to the fallof the Irish nobility, in order to see how that fall was finaland decisive, leaving little or no room for the hope of theirresurrection.

The great wars of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth upon the islandoften drove some of the Irish chieftains to quit their countryfor a time; a thing scarcely ever known before, where the Palewas so contracted and the power of the English kings so limited.But those first voyages of Irish lords to foreign countries hadgenerally no other destination than England itself, whither theysometimes repaired to justify themselves in the presence of thesovereign against the imputations of their enemies, or to paycourt to him for the purpose of obtaining some coveted object.Occasionally their children were brought up at the English court,either with the view of instilling Protestantism into theirartless minds, or to make them friends of England, so that manyof them thus became king's or queen's men. In this manner theIrish nobility first came to look out beyond their own country.

When, as events went on, some great family was crushed or nearlyso, as were the Kildares by Henry Tudor and the Geraldines byElizabeth, the outraged nobility began to think of foreignalliances, and cast their eyes abroad over Spain, Belgium, orFrance, above all toward Rome, which was the centre of theirreligion, attachment to which was one of their chief crimes,where the Holy Father was ever ready to encourage and receivethem with open arms, Thus history tells us of the narrow escapeof young Gerald Desmond.

He was still a child of twelve years, and the sole survivor ofthe historic house of Kildare, when his life was sought afterwith an eagerness which resembled that of Herod, but thedevotion of his clansmen defeated all attempts at his capture."Alternately the guest of his aunts, married to the daughter ofthe chief of Offaly and Donegal, the sympathy everywhere feltfor him lead to a confederacy between the northern and southernchieftains, which had long been felt wanting, and never could beaccomplished. A loose league was formed, including the O'Neillsof both branches, O'Donnell, O'Brien, the Earl of Desmond, andthe chiefs of Moylurg and Breffni. The child, object of so muchnatural and chivalrous affection, was harbored for a time inMunster; then transported, through Connaught, into Donegal; andfinally, after four years, in which he engaged more the minds ofthe statesmen than any other individual under the rank ofroyalty, he was safely landed in France."-(A. M. O'Sullivan.)

But the intercourse between the Irish nobility and foreignpowers was chiefly increased during the reign of Elizabeth, whenby the great league of the Desmond Geraldines in the south,which was followed by that of the O'Neills and O'Donnells in thenorth, they entered into open treaty with the Popes and theKings of Spain; and, when reverses came, no other resource wasleft to the outlawed chieftains than flight to the Continent,where they abode till the storm blew over, sometimes for theremainder of their lives.

James Fitzmaurice stayed a long time in Italy, where, on hearingof the imprisonment of his cousins, the Desmonds, he planned thefirst great league in defence of religion, no longer for thepurpose only of righting family wrongs, but of waging a holy warwhich might draw the cooperation of all the Catholic powers.

These few details are here furnished, because they mark a newstarting-point in the history of the race, when the nobility ofthe land first went abroad to live with a view of finding alliesfor the Irish cause; while the Irish at home looked anxiously totheir chieftains abroad to return to them with the promisedsuccor.

A few words on the policy exercised toward the Irish nobility byHenry VIII., Elizabeth, and James I., at the beginning of hisreign, will give us a sufficiently clear insight into the meansadopted for the gradual attack upon them, which resulted firstin their partial subjugation, finally in their total destruction.Those monarchs thought that, to reduce Ireland to an Englishcolony, all they had to do was to destroy the chieftains, andthe subjugation of the country was complete. They werestrengthened in this opinion by the outbreak of Protestantism,which had deprived the lower classes not only of their materialcomfort and religious consolations, but of all the immunitiesand liberties which the middle ages had left to them. While themass of the nation was not only denied all political influence,but even all right to any consideration whatsoever on the partof the state, when the highest nobles were cowering at the feetof royalty, utterly at the mercy of the Tudor despots, how couldthe plebs of England and Ireland dare show its front even totestify to mere existence?

The English monarchs were aware that the spirit of the Irishnobles was not broken like that of their English vassals; andthey resolved on bringing the proud lords of the Pale and thechieftains of the old race to a like submission with their ownnobles. But of the common clansmen they made no more accountthan of the English rabble, and herein lay their great mistake.Subsequent history proved that the national leaders of the Irishrace might be utterly annihilated, and yet the Irish questionremain as great a difficulty as ever, owing to the stubborn,though sometimes passive resistance of the peasantry. But atthat time such a thing was not contemplated.

All the cunning of diplomacy, all the artifice of the law,finally all the material resources of England, were called in,one after the other, or together, to achieve that great objectof the policy of the Tudors and of the first Stuart. It is notnecessary to go over what every person conversant with thehistory of the time knows by heart; it is only proper toindicate, as briefly as possible, the gradual results of thatcrafty and stern policy.

The Geraldine war ended with the total destruction of theCatholic Anglo-Irish nobles of the south, whose place was filledby the younger sons of Protestant nobles from England. With theGeraldines, or shortly after them, fell the O'Sullivans of Beare,the McGeohegans, the O'Driscolls, and O'Connors of Kerry, whomSpain and Portugal received.

Then the whole efforts of Elizabeth were turned to thedestruction of the native chieftains of the north. She failed;and the war resulted in a peace which left their lands and theopen practice of their religion to the Ulster chiefs.

But James I., though he seemed willing to abide by the articlesof the treaty, was driven by hard pressure to employ deceit,fraud, intimidation, and force, to bring the northern nobilityinto his power, and "the flight of the earls" was theconsequence.

From this date the "Irish exiles" began in good earnest,originally consisting, for the most part, of families belongingto the first blood of the land, with minor chiefs and captainsin their retinue. Many letters written at the time, which havebeen preserved, as well as reports of spies and informers,dispatched to the court of England from Spain, Portugal, Belgium,France, and Italy, give us an insight into the life led bythose noblemen in foreign countries. They were sometimessupported by the sovereigns who received them; but at othersneglected and reduced to shifts for a living.

The "flight" itself and all its details are given by the Rev. C.P. Meehan. The entire number of souls on board the small vesselwhich bore them away was, according to Teigue O'Keenan, Ollamhof Maguire, "ninety-nine, having little sea-store, and beingotherwise miserably accommodated." This was indeed the firstemigration of the Irish nobles and gentry, which was to befollowed by many another, to their final extinction.

Sir John Davies took an English view of the subject when hewrote, about that time, to Lord Salisbury: "We are glad to seethe day wherein the countenance and majesty of the law and civilgovernment hath banished Tyrone out of Ireland, which the bestarmy in Europe, and the expense of two million pounds sterling,did not bring to pass. And we hope his Majesty's government willwork a greater miracle in this kingdom than ever St. Patrick did;for St. Patrick did only banish the poisonous worms, butsuffered the men full of poison to inhabit the land still; buthis Majesty's blessed genius will banish all those generationsof vipers out of it, and make it, ere it be long, a rightfortunate island."

Davies's prophecy ought to have been accomplished long ago, forit is long since all the Irish nobility, "those generations ofvipers," has been destroyed; yet the poor island is still farfrom being "right fortunate."

The chief means employed at the time to encompass thedestruction of the nobles was the infamous revelations of spiesand informers. The existence of these agents has long been knownto all; but the extent of their workings was not suspected evenuntil the state papers and the correspondence of political men,and holders of offices at the time, came to be examined bywriters desirous of investigating the whole truth.

It was then found that every man in the English Government,beginning from the highest, the king's ministers, through theLords-Lieutenants and Chief-Justices of Ireland, down to thelowest officials, one and all kept in their pay men of all ranksof life, who, at the bidding of their employers, were ready tocircumvent the victims of an odious policy, and under the guiseof friendship, interest, common acquaintance, to discover, andeven, if needed, to invent facts and circ*mstances which mightbe turned against them, or against any other persons obnoxiousto England, with the view of destroying them. So that, toEngland in Europe, and to Elizabeth in England, belongs thedubious honor of having invented that great agent of moderngovernments—the secret police.

But the operations of those informers were not confined toEngland and Ireland alone, although those two kingdoms may besaid to have literally swarmed with them; all foreign countrieswere made the scenes of their infamous machinations, wherever infact the Irish nobles or English Catholics fled for refuge frompersecution. At the courts of Spain and Rome they were to befound; in Brussels and Louvain, in Paris and Rheims, as well asin the by-lanes of London and the lowest quarters of Dublin. Theecclesiastical establishments particularly, which were foundedby the Irish Catholics for the education of their priesthood,were infested with them: they found means to penetrate intotheir most secluded recesses, and sometimes the vilest and mostshameful hypocrisy was resorted to in order to gain admittanceinto those holy cloisters devoted to science and virtue.

All the great houses and hotels in foreign countries, where thebanished nobility of Ireland passed the tedious hours, months,and years, of their exile, were the places easiest of access tothose base tools of the English Government.

On the reports furnished by these men the British policy wasbased, and the nobility and gentry still left in the island fellinto the meshes so cautiously spread around them. How many oftheir number were cast into the Tower of London or the Castle ofDublin, on the mere word of these pests of society! How many,suddenly warned of the treachery intended, had to fly in hastelest they should fall into the hands of their enemies! We knowthat the first "flight of the earls" was brought about by suchmeans as these, but our readers would be mistaken in imaginingthat that was an exceptional case, scarcely ever repeated. Itwas in reality the ordinary way of getting rid of this hatedrace of Irishmen.

The great misfortune was that, even among the Irish themselves,nay, among friars and priests belonging to the race, the EnglishGovernment sometimes, though Heaven be thanked! rarely, foundready tools and most useful informers. Mean and sordid souls areto be found everywhere; our Lord himself was betrayed by anapostle, while giving him the kiss of peace; but among the Irish,people this class was confined to a few needy adventurers,sometimes to men who, from some personal grievance, real orimaginary, were blinded by the spirit of revenge to deliverthose whose destruction they thirsted for into the hands oftheir common enemies, to their own eternal shame and perdition.The common people were too noble-hearted ever to join in suchinfamy, and to those who would have tempted them with gold tobetray the men concealed by them, the response was ever ready:"The King of England is not rich enough to buy me!"

Thus, piecemeal, as it were, during the reign of Elizabeth andJames I., and a part, at least, of that of Charles I., numbersof the Irish nobles were imprisoned or slain at home, orcompelled to go into exile.

Nor, when James I., going lower in the social scale, began todispossess the ordinary people, the clansmen, the tenants ofUlster, in order to make room for his Scotch Presbyterians, was,the war on the nobility discontinued on that account. The mostprominent and, in its results, universal feature of his reign,was the breaking up of the clans all over the island, whereby heeffected a complete change in the social state of the country.But the most efficacious means of bringing that result about wasthe total destruction of the nobility and gentry. The craftymonarch knew that so long as the Irish could see and conversewith their natural chieftains and lords, so long would it beimpossible to extinguish or abate, in the slightest degree, theclan-spirit. It was only when the key-stone which held theirsocial edifice together-the head of the sept-had disappeared,that the whole fabric would tumble into ruins.

After a long trial of this policy of treachery and craft, cameCromwell to complete the work with violence and brutal force.There still remained in the island a great number of noblefamilies, and the ollamhs and genealogists kept clear the rollsof the respective pedigrees. There is no doubt, at the time ofCromwell's war of extermination, even when the EnglishParliament had passed the Act of Settlement, that all the Irishsepts still knew where to find their lawful natural chiefs, who,if no longer on the island, were at the head of some regiment inFlanders, France, Austria, or Spain. But, as time went on, theIrish brigades naturally came to identify themselves more andmore with the countries into whose service they had passed, andwhere they had taken up their permanent abode; while in theisland itself, force came to degrade what was left of the nobles,and to annihilate forever the national state institutionspreserved by the genealogists and bards.

One of the features which most forcibly strikes the reader ofthe history of those times is, what took place all over theisland when the English Parliament issued that celebratedproclamation in which it was declared that "it was not theirintention to extirpate this whole nation."-(October 11, 1652.)

By that time the chief officers of Cromwell's army had alreadytaken possession of a great number of the castles and estates ofthe nobility who had not left the country. The rest had falleninto the hands of the adventurers of 1641, who had advancedmoney for the purpose of raising a private army to conquer landsfor themselves; while the body of Cromwell's troops looked on,awaiting the small pittance of a few hundred acres; which was tobe their share of the spoil. Here is the strange and awe-inspiring picture of the conquered island in the seventeenthcentury:

The nobles, who had survived the fighting and defeat, wereallowed to remain a short time until their transportation toConnaught. But, driven away from their mansions, where the new"landlords"-the word then came into use for the first time—occupied what had been their apartments, they had to live insome ruinous out-buildings, and to till with their own hands afew roods of land for the support of their perishing families. Afew garans (dray-horses), and a few cows and sheep, were theonly aid in labor and production left to them. They were allowed,by sufferance; to raise some small crops of grain and roots,but all their time had to be occupied in purely manual labor.

Such is the image which fixes itself indelibly on the memory ofany one who reads attentively the common occurrences of thosedays. It was a picture presented in every province of the island;in the most distant mountain-fastnesses as well as in the stillsmiling plains of the lowlands.

The nobles were, as a class, utterly destroyed; few of them fellto the inferior rank of yeomen; while the mass of the people—was at once plunged to the dead level of common peasants andlaborers. If some of the former class still retained a fewfaithful servants, their help was required for the drudgeryabout the farm or the miserable dwelling. None of them could bespared to keep up "the glory of the house." Would it not havebeen bitter irony to talk to this remnant of pedigree and theirlong line of ancestors? And would their enemies, who were nowtheir masters, have countenanced the proscribed offices of filesand shanachies, when laws against them specially had been solong enacted if not enforced? Now was the exact time for therigid execution of those laws so evidently designed for thetransformation of the freeborn natives into feudal serfs.

Hence, when the bitter day at last came, which was to deprivethem of even the sight of the hereditary territory of the family,which was to transplant them to Connaught-among countrymen,indeed, but none the less strangers to them, whose presencecould not fail to be unwelcome, and bring disturbance, confusion,and disorder-how, in such a case, could they hope to retain orrevive their prestige as the old lords of the country? It issaid that, for this, many of the Munster chieftains preferred togo into exile to Spain, or even to the islands of America,rather than take up their abode in Connaught, where they weresure to find bitter enemies in the old inhabitants of thatdesolate province.

This state of things knew no change, except with a very few ofthe Anglo-Irish, when Charles II. came to the throne, after thedeath of the Protector. He was in truth merely the executor ofthe great Act of Settlement, and carried into effect what hadbeen enacted by the Parliament which had brought his father tothe block, and driven himself into exile.

He only restored their estates to a few families of "innocentpapists." Such was the phrase applied to them in derision,doubtless. The generality of the old families continued to sinkdeeper and deeper in degradation, and the forgetfulness of allthey had once been.

It took the greater part of a century, from 1607 to 1689, toeffect the almost total disappearance of the Irish nobility. AsColonel Myles Byrne, in his "Irish at Home and Abroad," says:"Few facts in history are more surprising than the rapidity andcompleteness of the fall of the Irish families stricken down bythe penal laws. Reduced to beggary at once, and with habitsacquired in affluence, surrounded only by contemporariessimilarly crushed, or by the despoilers revelling and rioting inpossession of their forfeited lands, friendless and unpitied,regarded as 'suspects' from the reasons for discontent soabundantly furnished them, they seemed struck with stupor, andutterly incapable of any effort to rise out of the abyss intowhich they had been precipitated. Dispirited, heart-broken,unmanned, they suffered the little personal property left themto melt away; and, on its exhaustion, were compelled to resortto the most humiliating means to prolong existence, and toaccept for their helpless offspring the humblest condition whichpromised them a maintenance. A 'trade' was the general resortsought for the son of the chief of a clan, landholder, orgentleman.

"This gave rise to Swift's observation to Pope: 'If you wouldseek the gentry of Ireland, you must look for them on the coal-quay or in the liberty.'

"Thus, in my youth, 'the Devoy,' the head of one of the mostpowerful and distinguished of our septs, was a blacksmith, Ihave often seen a mechanic, named James Dungan, who was said tobe a descendant of James Dungan, Earl of Limerick; and 'theChevers' (Lord Mount Leinster) was the clerk of Mrs. Byrnes, whocarried on the business of a rope-maker.

"Maddened and embittered by humiliation and suffering,renouncing all hope of recovering their stolen lands, thosevictims of 'bills of discovery,' or of confiscation, burned ordestroyed, or threw aside, as worse than useless, the records oftheir former possessions, the proofs of their formerrespectability, and seemed, in fact, desirous to efface allevidence of it. I know one case in which the title-deeds of anestate were searched for an important occasion, and in which itappeared that they had been given to tailors to cut into stripsor measures for purposes of their trade.

"A claim was set up to a dormant peerage, and a relation of minehaving been applied to for information in support of it, he said:'You are positively in remainder; but you are in the conditionof the descendants of many Irish families, whose greatdifficulty is to prove who was their grandfather.'"

The reader is naturally struck, when the sudden appearance ofJames II. on the island presents to his eyes another Irish army,and a new Irish nation, fighting again for God and the king, butwith few of the old names among those who then appeared on thescene. The leaders throughout the three years' struggle, whichdecided the ultimate fate of the country, for the most part havenames unknown to Ireland, and unassociated with its formerhistory, so completely had the aristocracy of the islandperished and disappeared.

It may be well imagined, then, that, after the passage ofanother century of woe such as was described in the last chapter,it would be impossible to reconstruct the genealogies of theold families who might be entitled to lead the rising generation.Some few names are still advanced as entitled to the hereditaryhonors of once noble families, and thus we still hear ofpretensions to title of "the O'Brien," "the O'Donaghue," and afew others. That such pretensions are acknowledged by thegenerality of the nation, it would be questionable to assert.

To think, then, of reconstructing the Irish nation out of itsformer elements, as they once existed, would be an idle dream.Those elements are dissolved and forever destroyed, and all thatthe nation can do with respect to its past is to preserve inpious remembrance the former race of men who once shed down sucha glory over Irish annals. It was a happy and patriotic thoughtof the antiquarian societies of the island to investigate theold national records; to illustrate, explain, and bring thembefore the public in a language intelligible to the presentgeneration. It is doubtful if in any other country thearistocracy fell with a heroism and glory so pure and unalloyed.Among all modern nations, as was said previously, the old classof noblemen has either passed out of sight, or is fastdisappearing from living history. Ireland, then, does not standalone in that respect. She was the first to lose her nobility,and she lost it more utterly than any other nation. But in thevariety of movements, complications, revolutions, which now goto form the daily current of events in Europe, where do we findthe nobles regarded as a power, as an element calculated torestore or even to preserve? The "noblemen" are well enoughsatisfied nowadays, if they are not persecuted, proscribed, ordestroyed; if they are enabled to take their stand amid thecrowd of men of inferior rank and share in the affairs of theircountry; content to see their names once so exclusively glorious,set on a par with those of plebeians, to lead the modernizedpeoples into the new paths whither they are rapidly drifting.Nay, so low have the mighty fallen, that even dethroned kingsand princes sometimes ask to be admitted as simple citizens inthe countries which they or their ancestors once ruled.

Here the thought will naturally occur: If the phenomenon isuniversal with respect to the position allotted now to men of"noble blood"—since it is evident that for those nations whichfeel no veneration for it a future history is designed, and thatfuture is to be utterly independent of such an idea—thenIreland is no worse off than any other country in that regard,nay, the veneration for noble blood perhaps exists, in its rightsense, now in her bosom alone, and, though no longer availablefor any purpose, is still an element of conservatism worthy ofpreservation and far from despicable.

Therefore, when we number among false hopes the one entertainedby a few Irishmen whose thoughts still cling fondly to the past,and who would fain reconstruct it, it is not with the intentionof treating those aspirations slightingly, which we ought tohonor and would share, were there only the faintest possibilityof calling again to life what we cannot but consider passed awayforever.

II. Let us move on to the consideration of our second delusivehope, one of a much deeper import, which to-day of all othersoccupies public attention—a separate Irish Parliament and home-rule government.

The desire for a separate Irish Parliament is certainly anational aspiration, it may even be called a right; for thepeople of the island can justly complain of being at the mercyof a rival nation, of which they are supposed to form a part,and are consequently heavily taxed for the support of it withoutany adequate return. The day may not be far distant when thiswish of theirs will have to be complied with, as were so manyother rights once as strenuously denied.

Nevertheless it is our opinion, and we say it advisedly, thereis no reason for believing that this would prove a universalpanacea for Ireland's woes, sure to bring health, happiness, andprosperity to the nation, uniting in itself all blessings, allfuture success, all germs of greatness; nor is there reason tobelieve that with it the resurrection of the nation is assured,as without it, it would remain dead.

To speak still more clearly—the representation of a people byits deputies being according to modern ideas an element of freeconstitution for all nations, and Ireland having for so long atime enjoyed a privilege very similar to it under her ownnational monarchs, our object cannot be understood to depreciatea political institution which seems to have become a necessityof the times, owing to the eager aspiration of all minds andhearts toward it. But we think it a delusion to imagine that, byits possession, national happiness is necessarily and fullysecured.

Whatever may be the general experience of parliamentary rule,its record for Ireland is a sad one. The old Feis of the nationare not here alluded to; they had very little in common withmodern Parliaments, being merely assemblies of the chief headsof clans, to which were added in Christian times the prelates ofthe Church. Neither is the "General Assembly," which wasintrusted with legislative and executive powers by theConfederation of Kilkenny, alluded to; this could not bereproduced to-day exactly as it then existed.

The Parliament here meant is such as presents itself at once tothe mind of a man of the nineteenth century, with its members ofboth Houses elected by the people, as in America, or those ofthe Upper House in the nomination of the crown; its opposingparties often degenerating into mere factions; its views limitedto material progress, and its aims and aspirations altogetherworldly; deeply imbued with the modern ideas of liberalism, yetknowing very little, if any thing, of true liberty; oftenfollowing the lead of a few talented members, whose real meritsare seldom an index of conscience and sense of right.

Such a liberal institution as this, which, if proposed to-dayfor Ireland by the English Government, would be hailed withunbounded joy by all ranks of people in that country, wouldnevertheless be no sure harbinger of happiness to the nation,and, to repeat what was said above, the record of such aninstitution in Ireland is a sad one.

There is no need of entering upon a history of Irish Parliaments.If an impartial and fair-minded author were to take up such awork, it might serve to open the eyes of many, and show themthat it is after all better to rely on Divine Providence than onsuch an aid to national prosperity.

Dr. Madden, in his "Connection of Ireland with England,"conclusively shows that the right of a free and independentParliament similar to that of England was granted to Ireland byKing John at the very beginning of the "Conquest." Such aParliament was granted to the handful of Anglo-Normans, who werealready busy in building their castles for the purpose ofreducing the whole mass of the clans to feudal slavery afterhaving deprived them of all their free national assemblies andcustoms. For nearly four hundred years the Irish Parliaments,when not completely subjected to English control, as theyfinally were by "Poyning's Act," were mere legislative machinesdevised for the purpose of subduing, cowing, and finally rootingout every thing Irish in the land. The language of Sir JohnDavies was very clear on this subject.

This being such a well-known fact to-day, it seems strange thata writer who is so well informed, so acute and discerning, andso thoroughly Catholic, as Dr. Madden undoubtedly is, shouldattach such great importance to the institution of Parliament asfirst granted by the English monarchs. They had in their eyeonly the small English colony settled on the island, with alltheir feudal customs, and no thought of granting liberty to themass of the nation. The case of Molyneux, which is so oftenquoted and praised by Irish writers, should be set aside andforgotten by any man animated by a true love for Irishprosperity. It was merely a revival of the old parties ofEnglish by blood and English by birth, without a single thoughtof the rights of Irishmen. It was a case of siding with oneEnglish party against another, both aiming at making Ireland acolony of England, the while the unfortunate country was crushedbetween them, certain in either case to be the victim. Thenative race had nothing to say or do in the matter, beyondassisting at the spectacle of their enemies wrangling amongthemselves.

The same remarks will apply to the pamphlets of Dr. Lucas, whichcreated so much interest at the time, and which Dr. Maddenquotes at such length. Lucas, it will be remembered, was aviolent anti-Catholic, and consequently anti-Irish partisan.

Yet the Catholic Association made all the use they could of thearguments of Molyneux and Lucas, because these possessed somevestige of the national spirit, inasmuch as they spoke forIreland, whose very name was hated by the opposite party; and atthat time the Association was perfectly right: but matters havealtered since then.

It is certainly strange that, when serious attempts were made byHenry VIII. to introduce Protestantism into Ireland, not onlywere Anglo-Irish Catholics summoned to Parliament, but evennative chieftains also, some of whom spoke nothing but Irish, sothat their speeches required translating.

But, as was previously shown, this was nothing more nor lessthan a crafty device to make genuine Irishmen unconsciouslyconfirm, by what was called their vote, former decrees in whichthe Act of Supremacy had been passed; to make it appear thatthey had abjured their religion, and were now good Protestants;and, worse still, to set in the statute-book, as acknowledged byall, the law of spiritual supremacy vested in the king, ofabjuration of papal authority, of submission to all decreespassed in England with the purpose of effecting an entire changein the religion of the nation.

To such vile uses was the machinery of Parliament reduced.Thenceforth it became an engine for the issuing of decrees ofpersecution. Catholic members occasionally appeared in it when alull in the execution of the laws occurred, and they could taketheir seats without being guilty of apostasy. But, by makingclose boroughs of his Protestant colonies, James I. secured,once for all, the majority of representatives on the side of theProtestants, and, as a natural consequence, nothing moregrinding, sharp, piercing, and strong, could be imagined thanthis engine of law called the Irish Parliament, as it existedunder the Stuarts. "Nothing" would be incorrect: there wassomething worse; it came in with the Revolution of 1688, and itsresults have been witnessed in a previous chapter.

Owing to the various oaths imposed upon members in the time ofWilliam of Orange, no Catholic could any longer sit in the IrishParliament without abjuring his faith. And, thence-forth, thestate institution sitting in Dublin became more than ever apersecuting and debasing power, intent only on making, altering,improving, and enforcing laws designed for the completedegradation of the people.

There came, however, a period of eighteen years, called "theRise of the Irish Nation" by Sir Jonah Barrington. It would be apleasure to set this down as a real exception to the wholeprevious or later history of Ireland; but such pleasure cannotbe indulged in.

At the period referred to France had embraced the cause of theNorth American colonies of Great Britain, and the Englishvessels were not the only ones upon the seas. Large Frenchfleets were conveying troops to their new allies, and in 1779the English Government sent warning to Ireland that American orFrench privateers were to be expected on the Irish coast, and notroops could be dispatched for the protection of the island.Then arose the great volunteer movement. Every Irishman entitledto bear arms enrolled himself in some regiment raised with theostensible design of opposing a hostile landing, but reallyintended by the patriots to force the repeal of Poyning's Actfrom England, to obtain for the Parliament in Dublin realindependence of English dictation.

The result is well known. One hundred thousand Irishmen weresoon under arms, who not only took the field as soldiers, andformed themselves into regiments of infantry, troops of horse,and artillery, but, strange to say, as citizens, sent delegatesto conventions, and demanded with a loud voice that Englandshould not only grant free trade to the sister isle, butlikewise invest the Irish Parliament with independent powers.

This political open-air contest lasted two years, and, on thereceipt of the news that the British army had capitulated atYorktown, and that the American War had come to a successfultermination on the side of the colonists, the Ulster volunteersdecided to hold a national convention of delegates from everycity in the province. On Friday, February 15, 1782, the meetingtook place at Dungannon, County Tyrone, and there the delegatesswore allegiance to a new and as yet unwritten charter, refusingto acknowledge "the claim of any body of men, other than theKing, Lords, and Commons of Ireland, to make laws to bind thiskingdom."

The same resolution was adopted in successive meetings ofvolunteer delegates, municipal corporations, and citizensgenerally, all over the island.

The English Government could not resist the pressure. After someattempt at temporizing and delaying the concession, on April 15,1782, by the firmness of Grattan and his supporters in theDublin House of Commons, the great measure was finally carriedunanimously:

"That the kingdom of Ireland is a distinct kingdom, with aParliament of her own, the sole legislature thereof; that thereis no body of men competent to make laws to bind the nation, butthe King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland, nor any Parliamentwhich has any authority or power of any sort whatever in thiscountry, save only the Parliament of Ireland; that we humblyconceive that in this right the very essence of our libertyexists, a right which we, on the part of all the people ofIreland, do claim as their birthright, and which we cannot yieldbut with our lives." The italics are our own.

"The news," says Sir Jonah Barrington, "soon spread through thenation; every city, town, or village, in Ireland blazed with theemblems of exultation, and resounded with the shouts of triumph."

Within a month the whole had been accepted by the new Britishadministration. "The visionary and impracticable idea had becomean accomplished fact; the splendid phantom had become a gloriousreality; the heptarchy-the old Irish constitution-had not beenrestored; yet Ireland had won complete legislative independence."

Thus does the kind-hearted author of the "Rise and Fall of theIrish Nation" commemorate the great event. It is a pity that itso soon ended, as it deserved to end, in smoke; for the"unanimous vote" of the Dublin House of Commons was not sincere,but intended to exclude from the benefit of the newly-acquiredliberty the great mass of the people; that is, all Catholics,without exception.

Already, during the volunteer excitement, Catholics had lookedon at the movement with pleasure and hope that, at least, somerelaxation of the barbarous code enacted against them mightensue. Unable to take an active part in the movement, the lawsnot allowing them to bear arms and enlist, they willinglybrought such muskets as they possessed to give to theirProtestant neighbors. When the final burst of enthusiasm came atthe news that a free and independant Parliament was to meet atDublin, surely they were justified in expecting that, at last,their natural and civil rights might be restored them in an ageso enlightened. They had heard too of the success of theAmerican colonies in winning those rights for all in their happycountry, beyond the Atlantic; and we may be sure that not a fewof them had heard how, at the conclusion of the War ofIndependence, the chief officers of the American army had gonein state with their French allies to the Catholic Church inPhiladelphia, there to join in thanksgiving to the Almighty,before a Catholic altar. Moreover, they had Grattan and many ofthe volunteers on their side.

The all-comprehensive phrase, too, had been inserted in theresolution so unanimously carried, and made law by the BritishGovernment: "We humbly conceive that, in this right, the veryessence of our liberty consists, a right which we, on the partof all the people of Ireland, do claim as their birthright, andwhich we cannot yield but with our lives."

Was it possible for the originators and successful promoters ofthis great change in the government of the nation to interpretsuch a phrase in a restricted sense? Did not the Irish Catholics,the great bulk of the people, form a part, at least, of "all inIreland?" One would imagine so: yet what followed soon aftershowed the preposterousness of such an idea.

The new Parliament met; several measures favorable to the tradeand manufactures of the island had been carried; but it was soonfound that the electoral law, as it stood, failed to correspondwith the altered circ*mstances of the time. The legislative bodywas returned by an antiquated electoral system which could notbe said to represent the nation. Boroughs and seats were openlyand literally owned by particular families or private persons;the voting constituency sometimes not numbering more than adozen. As a matter of fact, less than one hundred persons ownedseats or boroughs capable of constituting a majority in theCommons!

As everywhere else in revolutionary times, the question ofparliamentary reform was not debated in the Parliament only;every man in the nation, each in his own sphere, took part inthe stormy contest which began to rage all over the island. Thevolunteers were still in their glory. Flushed with victory, theydid not cease from their political agitations. In September,1783, they met once more in convention at Dungannon, thespecific object of which, Dr. Madden tells us, was parliamentaryreform, and they then determined "to hold another grand nationalconvention of volunteer delegates in Dublin, in the month ofNovember following."

In that extraordinary assembly, the question of the rights ofCatholics was naturally brought up, and, to his honor be it said,the Protestant Bishop of Derry proposed to extend the electivefranchise to them.

That some fanatics would oppose this motion was only to beexpected; and it would have caused no surprise to find theopposition confined to a number of men of inferior station,still deeply imbued with narrow Protestant ideas. But when theleaders of the movement for national independence, LordCharlemont and Mr. Flood, appeared in the ranks of thedetermined opponents of the proposition, it was cause for wonderindeed. It was chiefly owing to the exertions and influence ofLord Charlemont that the efforts of the revolution had beenfinally turned to the side of freedom; while Flood was a greaternationalist than Grattan himself, whose eloquence was somemorable in the last momentous debates of the Irish House ofCommons. Flood carried his patriotism so far as to suspect theBritish Government of not being sincere in its concessions, whenGrattan thought that "nothing dishonorable and disgraceful oughtto be supposed in motives until facts render them suspicious."

Nevertheless, it was Charlemont and Flood who stood firm for theexclusion of Catholics from the franchise demanded for them by aProtestant bishop; and Flood's plan was the one finally adopted.

In order to make a stronger impression on the public mind, anumber of delegates, who were also members of Parliament,proceeded, on November 29th, directly from the convention to theHouse of Commons, some of them dressed in their volunteeruniforms, for the purpose of supporting the plan of Mr. Flood toexclude the Catholics from the franchise.

In the midst of the tumult, the bill of reform failed, seventy-seven voting for, and one hundred and fifty against it. Therewas therefore no change in the Parliament, and Catholicsremained in their old position, in consequence of the blundersof the chiefs of the volunteer movement for independence.

It is true that, at the same time, the whole volunteer movementit*elf fell to the ground. From that moment it dragged on adoomed life. "One would have thought," says Dr. Madden, "therewas national vigor in it for more than an existence of fifteenyears, and power to effect more than an ephemeral independencewhich lasted only eighteen years."

But the Catholics had their eyes opened; they saw that the dayof resurrection was not yet come for them. It was not to bebrought about by any Irish Parliament. So far, therefore, wewere right in stating that the parliamentary record for Irelandis a sad one. It should be said, however, that, from that time,many Protestants, like the Bishop of Derry, Grattan, and others,have always been firm in their demand for freedom to all, andhave remained the stanchest supporters of Catholic rights. Whatwe have hitherto called James I's Ulster colony, thus wasreduced to the Orange party; and, in that sense, the volunteermovement was a real and permanent benefit to the country. Thereis no need to mention the names of many distinguished Protestantsof our own times, whose whole life has been devoted by act, orspeech, or both, to the service of all. All honor to them!

But it is alleged that the Irish Legislature, as framed by theConstitution of 1782, gave to the country an uninterrupted flowof prosperity for eighteen years, and hence the volunteermovement was of great benefit to the race, at least temporarily.We will present the case in the strongest light possiblecontrary to our own opinion, and for this we can do no betterthan borrow the arguments of Mr. W.J. O'N. Daunt, in hispamphlet on the "Irish Question" (1869):

"Accustomed as we are," he says, "since the Union-in 1800-to thenational distress and chronic disturbance attested by the DevonCommissions, Famine Reports, and other official sources ofinformation, there seems something scarcely credible in theaccount of Irish pre-Union prosperity-a prosperity whichcontrasted so strongly with the condition of Ireland under aParliament which is called 'Imperial,' but which is essentiallyand overwhelmingly English. But the accounts are given onunimpeachable authority.

"Mr. Jebb, member for Callan in the Irish Parliament, thusspeaks of the advance of the country in prosperity, in apamphlet published in 1798:

"'In the course of fifteen years, our commerce, our agriculture,and our manufactures, have swelled to an amount that the mostsanguine friends of Ireland would not have dared toprognosticate.'

"The bankers of Dublin, tolerably competent witnesses, held ameeting on the 18th of December, 1798, at which they resolved,'that, since the renunciation of Great Britain, in 1782, tolegislate for Ireland, the commerce and prosperity of thiskingdom have eminently increased.'

"The Dublin Guild of Merchants did the same on the 14th of
January, 1797."

But this testimony and that of others whom we could quote wasthe testimony of men opposed to the "Union." Let us look at afew admissions made by the supporters of that measure:

"First comes its author, Mr. Pitt, who, in his speech in theEnglish House of Commons, January 31, 1799, having alluded tothe prosperous condition of Irish commerce in 1785, goes on tosay: 'But how stands the case now? The trade is at this timeinfinitely more advantageous to Ireland.'

"Lord Clare, one of Mr. Pitt's chief instruments in effectingthe Union, published, in 1798, a pamphlet containing, as quotedby Grattan, the following account of Irish progress subsequentlyto 1782: 'There is not a nation on the habitable globe which hasadvanced in cultivation and commerce, in agriculture andmanufactures, with the same rapidity in the same period.'

"Finally, Mr. Secretary co*ke, in a Unionist pamphlet, said atthat time: 'We have had the experience of these twenty years;for it is universally admitted that no country in the world evermade such rapid advances as Ireland has done in these respects.'"

All this was undoubtedly true; and it is not our intention toadmire what was called the Union, nor to advocate it. Those ofthe various writers cited, who spoke so dogmatically in theabove passages, had in their minds only material and externalprosperity, and that even of only one class of citizens. Thosewho wish well to Ireland cannot be satisfied with this.

Not a single name of the favorers or opposers of the Union, herequoted as witnesses, is Celtic. It would be interesting to knowwhat the Celts of the island, that is, the greater part of itsinhabitants, thought at the time, not of the Union, but of theirown Parliament, and how much of this great material prosperityfell to their portion.

Surely they were all opposed to a Union which for a variety ofreasons had grown odious in their sight; but, did they, couldthey, approve of the acts of their Legislature prior to theUnion with England? Were they satisfied with those tokens ofprosperity in favor of a class which had systematicallyoppressed them? Even granting that they were Christian enoughnot to feel envy at the success of their Protestant fellow-countrymen, did they not, and were they not right to, rue theday which, by an act of that same Legislature, shut them off asa body from all those advantages.

For it must be remembered that it was at the instigation of manyof those volunteers who had been so ready to receive the musketsfrom their Catholic neighbors, for the purpose of striking ablow for liberty, that none of the penal statutes were repealed,and the Irish Catholics continued to groan, at least as far asthe law went, under the fearful oppressions of which the lastchapter furnished a feeble sketch. Hence, to speak in theirpresence of their commerce, of their manufactures, of theiragriculture, of the increase of their wealth, and so on, was abitter mockery, which they could not but resent in their inmostsoul.

Was the cause of all their miseries removed by such a free andindependent Parliament? Where could be the agriculturalprosperity of a people which was not entitled, legally, to ownan inch of their soil, or lease more than two acres of it? Howcould they engage in prosperous trade when, at the suit of a"discoverer," they were liable to be compelled to hand over tohim the surplus of a paltry income? How could they evencontemplate engaging in any manufactures, when the laws reducedthem to the frightful state of pauperism which we haveshudderingly glanced at? And those laws were preserved, andretained on the statute-book, by the very men who vaunted of theprosperity of Ireland!

It cannot, then, be too strongly reasserted that the socialposition of Ireland had experienced no change whatever, and thatthe separation of classes, spoken of with such well-meritedrebuke by Edmund Burke, still stood unaltered:

"They divided the nation into two distinct parties, withoutcommon interest, sympathy, or connection. One of these bodieswas to possess all the franchises, all the property, all theeducation; the other was to be composed of drawers of water andcutters of turf for them.

Every measure was pleasing and popular just in proportion as ittended to harass and ruin a set of people who were looked uponas enemies to God and man; and, indeed, as a race of bigotedsavages, who were a disgrace to human nature itself.

"To render humanity fit to be insulted, it was fit that itshould be degraded."

And, even supposing the prosperity of which so much talk wasmade to have been universal, so that all had a real share in it,how long would it have remained so, if the Irish Parliament hadcontinued to exist, and not become merged in the English, or, asit was termed, Imperial Legislature? How long could the twoseparated bodies, sitting, the one in Dublin, the other inWestminster, have acted in concert, without breaking out intoviolent and mutual recrimination, with all its attendant evils?

The difficulty showed itself at the very outset, and when thefirst question of the relative status of both Legislatures arose.

Mr. Fox, the great Liberal minister of the king, endeavored tosolve this difficulty by making a distinction between internaland external legislation: Ireland was never to be interferedwith in her Parliament, with respect to her internal questions,while the English legislative body possessed the right to stepin in all measures regarding external legislation. This seemsvery much like what is now proposed by home-rule.

Here is the answer given to this in the tribune of Dublin by Mr.Walsh: "With respect to the fine-spun distinction of the Englishminister between the internal and external legislation, it seemsto me the most absurd position, and at the same time the mostridiculous one, that possibly could be laid down, when appliedto an independent people.

"Ireland is independent, or she is not; if she is independent,no power on earth can make laws to bind her, internally orexternally, but the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland."

Mr. Walsh, a very influential member of the Irish House ofCommons, saw, as doubtless did many others, cause of disturbancealready for the mutual tranquillity of the two nations. And,indeed, his fears soon showed themselves only too well grounded.Dr. Madden tells the story;

"A month had scarcely elapsed since the opening of the new IrishParliament in 1782, before Lord Abingdon, in the British Houseof Peers, moved for leave to bring in a declaratory bill, toreassert the right of England to legislate externally forIreland, in matters appertaining to the commerce of the latter.A similar motion was made in the British House of Commons by SirGeorge Young.

"One clause of Lord Abingdon's bill stated that Queen Elizabeth,having formerly forbade the King of France to build more shipsthan he then had, without her leave first obtained, it isenacted that no kingdoms, as above stated, Ireland as well asothers, should presume to build a navy or any ships-of-war,without leave from the Lord High Admiral of England."

It is easy to foresee the pretty quarrel preparing. Once again,then, it may be asserted that the record of Irish Parliaments isa sad one.

But could more have been expected of it? Is the scope ofmeasures, within the capabilities of any legislative assembly ofmodern times, comprehensive enough to embrace every thing ofimportance to a Catholic people, such as the Irish nation hasever been?

The general question of parliamentary rule is a very complicatedone. The modern Parliament is a very different thing from theold assemblies of the representatives of various orders in anystate. With the Church originated those ancient institutions,which in certain parts of Europe partook at once of the twofoldnature of councils and political assemblies.

This order has passed away, and no one thinks to-day of revivingthose time-honored institutions, however much political writersmay be inclined to favor despotism on the one hand, or anarchyon the other. What, then, is the origin of the modernParliament? It grew into being in England during the seventeenthand eighteenth centuries, emanating as it were, slowly, out ofthe decomposition of the old Parliaments; the aristocracy, andthe Church chiefly, losing more and more the influence oncebelonging to them, which, in old times, made them paramount inthose state deliberations. This is one of the chief features ofthe newly-modelled British Constitution, which is of very recentgrowth, and became fixed and settled only after the downfall ofthe Stuart dynasty, receiving additional modifications in thecontest of parties under the Brunswick and Hanover lines ofkings.

It is, consequently, an altogether British growth of recent date,particularly well adapted for England, whose prosperity sinceits establishment has ever been on the increase. But it is verydoubtful whether other countries have derived equal benefit fromits adoption.

Toward the end of last century, some few Frenchmen of noteattempted, with Mounier at their head, to reproduce a feeblecopy of it in France. Their failure is too well known to theworld: how their English ideas were scouted by the people, whilea far more radical revolution swept away every vestige of theold French Constitution, without substituting in its stead anything save crude and infidel ideas, which resulted in anarchy.

The lamentable failure of the first attempt was nodiscouragement to other political theorists; and the century haswitnessed and still witnesses every day essays at Englishlegislation, as embodied in the constitution of its Parliamentschiefly, all over Europe; and all, as sanguine writers wouldhave us believe, to serve as the stepping-stone for the"Universal Republic," which is to regenerate the world.

The great questions in all those assemblies are of materialinterests, material prosperity, material projects. Of the moralwell-being of the people seldom or never a word is heard; and,whenever a moral question does come up for discussion, thevagueness of the theories advanced and discussed, the indecisionof the measures proposed, the want of unity in the viewsdeveloped, show how unfit are modern legislators for eventouching on what concerns the soul of man. The legislatorsthemselves feel that their character is far from being a sacredone, and that the spiritual element is not comprehended in theirworld. And they are certainly right.

Even the measures of external policy are not universallysuccessful in securing the material well-being of the people. InFrance, at least, the various legislatures which have succeededone another have perhaps been productive of as much harm in thatregard as the liberty of the press and freedom of publicdiscussion, which have always had and always will have theirardent advocates, and the existence of which is compatible withpublic order in some countries, but not in others.

The same, with certain reservations, is true of the Spanish-American republics, Brazil, and now of Spain, Italy, and otherEuropean nations. The legislative machine which is found to workso well in England, and what were or still are her colonies,seems to get out of order in climates and among nationsunaccustomed to it, even as far as material prosperity isconcerned.

But it is neither our object to write a history of Parliaments,nor absolutely to condemn those modern institutions by the fewwords devoted to them. All we wish to insist upon is, that allthe evils of nations are not cured by them, and that they shouldnot be taken as in themselves absolutely desirable and all-sufficient.

As to their probable fate in the future, their modern dress isnot yet two centuries old, and the seeds of decay already appearin many places. A few questions are sufficient to demonstratethis: Can a Parliament, as understood to-day, last for anylength of time and work successfully, when composed for a greatpart of corrupt legislators who have been returned by corruptelectors? Has not the progress of corruption on both sides,elected and electors, been of late alarmingly on the increase?What space of time is requisite for legislation to come to astand-still, and prove to modern nations the impossibility ofcarrying on even material affairs with such corrupt machinery?It requires no great foresight to reply to these questions.

And yet it is on this tottering institution that the Ireland ofour days has set her hope. She imagines that, this once gained,prosperity and happiness are insure; that, without it, shecannot but be discontented, as she is and must be if shepossesses any feeling. And such is the anomaly of her positionthat, with this conviction firmly set before us, we believe sheis right in demanding home-rule, and that by insisting upon itshe will eventually attain it; yet are we convinced that, havingobtained it, her evils will not be cured, nor her happinessserved. We prize her highly enough to think her worthy ofsomething better, which "something" we are sure God keeps inreserve for her.

Suppose her earnest wish granted, and a home Parliament givenher. Suppose even the old question of her relations with theEnglish Legislature determined. A great difficulty has beensettled satisfactorily, though it is difficult to see how thismay come about. But supposing the questions for her discussionand free-determination being clearly defined, home-rule becomespossible without exciting the opposition of the rival Parliamentof Great Britain.

What is likely to be the composition of her state institution?and what the programme of its labors?

In the composition of her two Houses, if she have two, theCatholics will not be excluded as they were in 1782; a greatchange certainly, and fraught no doubt with great benefit to thecountry. But will the English element cease to predominate? Thenative race has been kept so long in a state of bondage that fewmembers of it certainly will take a leading part in thediscussions. How many even will be allowed to influence theelection of members by their votes or their capacity? Universalsuffrage can scarcely be anticipated, perhaps even it would notbe desirable. The question is certainly a doubtful one. Of onething are we certain regarding the composition of an IrishParliament: it would not really represent the nation.

For the nation is Catholic to the core; the sufferings of morethan two centuries have made religion dearer to her than life;all she has been, all she is to-day, may be summed up in oneword—Catholic. Nothing has been left her but this proud andnoble title, which of all others her enemies would have wrestedfrom her. The nation exists to-day, independently ofparliamentary enactments, in spite of the numberlessparliamentary decrees of former times; she is living, active,working, and doing wonders, which shall come under notice. Seehow busy she has been since first allowed to do. Her altars, herreligious houses, her asylums, every thing holy that was inruins—all have been restored.

Not satisfied with working so energetically on her own soil, shehas crossed over to England, where the great and unexpectedCatholic revival, which has struck such awe and fear into thehearts of sectarians, is in great measure due to her.

Cross the broad Atlantic, and even the vast Southern Ocean, andthe contemplation of Irish activity in North America, Australia,and all the English colonies, the intense vitality displayed bythis so long down-trodden people is amazing. But all thisactivity, all this vitality, is employed in establishing on afirm and indestructible basis everywhere the holy CatholicChurch.

Looking on all this, say then whether Ireland is truly Catholic,whether the nation is any thing but Catholic.

But can her new Parliament be Catholic?

No! No one imagines such a thing possible; no one thinks, no onedreams of it. It is clear, then, that it cannot represent thenation.

Who will go to compose it? Men who will discard-such is themodern expression-discard their creed, and leave it at the door.Nothing better can be expected. It is true that the bitterfeeling engendered for so long a time by religious questions isnot likely to show itself again; or though, to speak morecorrectly, a religious question never was raised in Ireland, thewhole people being one on that subject; but it may be hoped thatthe bitter persecution against every thing Catholic is notlikely to recur, whatever may be the composing elements of thenew Houses of Parliament.

In the impossibility of even guessing at the probable opinionsof the men who are to have the future fate of Ireland in theirhands, it may be fairly predicted that, within their legislativehalls, religious and consequently moral questions will only beapproached in the spirit of liberalism. Probably, the only thingattempted will be the rendering of the people externally happyand prosperous, supposing the majority of the members animatedby true patriotic principles; and indeed the aspirations of allwho wish well to Ireland are limited to external or materialprosperity; and, for our own part, we do not consider this ofslight moment. But is this all that the Irish people require?

They have been brought so low in the scale of humanity thatevery thing has to be accomplished to bring about theirresurrection; and the "every thing" is comprised in substitutingflesh-meat for potatoes and good warm clothing for rags. Whoeversays that the Irish people can be contented with such arestoration as this, knows little of their noble nature, and hasnever read their heart.

Assuredly, they have a right to those worldly blessings of whichthey have been so long deprived; and we would not be understoodas saying that one of the primary objects of good government isnot to confer those material blessings on the people; nay, it isour belief that, when a whole nation has been so long subjectedto all the evils which not only render this life miserable, butabsolutely intolerable, it is incumbent on those intrusted withthe direction of affairs to remedy those evils instantly, andendeavor to make the people forget their misfortunes by, atleast, the enjoyments of this life's ordinary comforts.Forgetfulness of the past can be obtained by no other means. Andthis is a very simple, but, at the same time, very satisfactoryanswer to the question so often put and so often replied to insuch a variety of ways, "Why is Ireland discontented?"

But, while admitting the truth, nay, the necessity of all this,the government of a Catholic people has not fulfilled its wholeduty when it has exerted itself to the utmost to procure, andfinally succeeded in procuring, the temporal happiness of thenation. In addition to this, it must consult its moral andreligious wants, or a great part of its duty remains neglected.

This, indeed, does not nowadays occur to the minds of themajority of men, who have, it would appear, agreed amongthemselves to consider it an axiom of government that the rulersof a people should have no other object in view than thematerial comfort and welfare of the masses. They do not reflectthat the wants of a nation must be satisfied in their entirety,and that its moral and religious needs are of no less importance,to say the least, than the temporal. This is evident in allthose countries where, in imitation of England, or at herinstigation, parliamentary governments are now in operation—countries which include not only Europe, without exceptingGreece and her chief islands, but Southern Africa at the Cape,America, North and South, Australia, and the, large islands ofJamaica, Tasmania, New Zealand, and several groups of Polynesia,preparing Asia for the boon which, probably, is destined to showitself in Japan first, spreading thence all over the largestcontinent of the world.

Wherever modern Parliaments flourish, there material interestsalone are consulted. This is a new feature of Japhetism; and Godalone knows how long nations will be satisfied with such a stateof things!

But if non-Catholic nations thus limit their aspirations, thereis all the more reason why a Catholic people cannot imitate themin such a course, particularly if that people has for centuriessubmitted to every evil of this life in order to preserve itsreligion, showing that, in its eyes, religious blessings rankfar above all imaginable material advantages; and we all knowsuch to be the case for Ireland.

But, it may be asked, what are those religious wants which mustbe satisfied, and how are we to know them? The answer, to aCatholic, is plain, and nothing is easier of recognition. Whatthe spiritual guides of the nation consider of paramountimportance and of absolute necessity, is of that character, andthe government which neglects to listen to remonstrances comingfrom such a quarter, shows thereby that it is ignorant of, orslights, its plain duty. Ever since the load of tyranny, whichweighed down the Irish people, has been removed, if not entirely,at least suffered a very appreciable reduction, since therulers of the Church in that unhappy country have been able tolift up their voice, and proclaimed what they considered ofsupreme importance to those under their charge, is it not astrange truth that their voice has never ceased remonstrating,and that, at this very moment, it is as loud in protestation asever? When has it been listened to as it should be? Is it likelyto meet more regard if Ireland obtains home-rule? It grieves usto say that the only answer which can be given to this lastquestion is still an emphatic "No!"

And for the very simple reason, already given, that Irelandcannot have a truly Catholic Parliament, and that all the greatmeasures which would occupy the attention of the Catholicmembers, in the event of their meeting at Dublin, would beshemes for the advancement of manufactures, trade, theconstruction of ships, tenant-right laws, etc.; all veryexcellent things in their way, and to which Ireland has anundoubted right, which will be strongly contested, and in thestruggle for which she may again be worsted; which, even if sheobtains, will not enable her to compete with England, and which,after and above all, do not correspond to the heart-beat of thenation—the restoration complete and entire of the CatholicChurch all over her broad land.

It may be well to remark that the broad assertion just laid downinvolves no reprisals against the rights of the minority. Thatminority, backed by the English Government, has enjoyed nearlythree centuries of oppression and tyranny, has taxed humaningenuity to the utmost for the purpose of concocting schemes ofdestruction against the majority: it has failed. The majority,which at last breathes freely, can well afford not to raise afinger in retaliation, and to leave what is called freedom ofconscience to those who so long refused it. The result may beleft to the operation of natural laws and the holy workings ofProvidence. But their religious rights ought, at east, to besecured to them entire; the rights of their Church to be leftforever perfectly free and untrammelled.

But, how much has been done against this, even of late? Why hasa Protestant university so many privileges, while a similarCatholic institution is refused recognition? To answer whatpurpose have the Queen's Colleges been established? The Catholicbishops certainly possess rights with regard to the education oftheir flocks; with what persistence have not those rights beeneither attacked or circumvented! If the Protestant Establishmenthas been finally abolished, have not its ministers obtained bythe very act of abolition concessions which give them stillgreat weight, morally and materially, in the scale opposed toCatholic proselytism, nay, preservation? Is it not a stain evenyet, if not in the eye of the law, at least in that of theEnglish colonized in Ireland, to be a "Roman Catholic?" Is"souperism" so completely dead that it never can revive? Howmany means are still left in the hands of the Protestantminority to vex, annoy, and impoverish the supposed freemajority?

Whoever considers the matter seriously cannot but acknowledgethat in Ireland there exists still a vast amount of open orsilent opposition to the Church of the majority, and a Churchwhich the majority loves with such deep affection that, so longas the least remnant of the old oppression remains, so long mustIreland remain discontented.

And it is more than doubtful whether home-rule would be asufficient remedy for such a state of things, owing to the fact,already insisted upon, that the new Parliament could not be aCatholic Parliament.

The reader may easily perceive what was meant by saying that theentire restoration of the Catholic Church in the island does notsuppose the consequent extirpation of heresy; but it clearlysupposes the perfectly free exercise of all her rights by theChurch. Nothing short of this can satisfy the Irish people.

III. We pass on to the consideration of a third delusive hope,that of the people regaining all their rights by theoverwhelming force of numbers and armed resistance to tyranny—the advocacy of physical force, as it is called; in other words,the right and necessity of open insurrection, or underhand andsecret associations, evidently requiring for success thecooperation of the numerous revolutionary societies of Europe: acriminal delusion, which has brought many evils upon the country,and which is still cherished by too many of her sons. Though wepurpose speaking freely on this subject, we hope that ourlanguage may be that of moderation and justice.

To a Catholic, who has either witnessed or heard of thefrightful evils brought on modern nations by the doctrine of theright of insurrection, of armed force, of open rebellion,against real or fancied wrong, that doctrine cannot but beloathsome and detestable.

True, there is for nations, as for individuals, somethingresembling the right of self-defence. No Catholic theologian canassert that a people is bound to bow under the yoke of tyranny,when it can shake that tyranny off; and it is this truth whichaffords a pretext to many advocates of what is called the rightof insurrection. Moreover, there is no doubt that, in the caseof Ireland particularly, the Irish had for many centuries alegitimate government of their own, and when attacked byforeigners, who landed on their shores under whatever pretext,they had a perfect right, nay, it was the duty of the heads ofclans, the provincial kings and princes, to protect the wholenation, and the part of it intrusted to their special care inparticular, against open or covert foes. The name of "rebels"was given them by the invaders, with no shadow of possiblepretext, and the name was as justly resented as it was unjustlyapplied.

Under the Stuart dynasty the state of the case is still moreclear: for then they were fighting on the side of the Englishsovereigns to whom they had submitted; and, in waging waragainst the enemies of their king and country, they were notonly enforcing their right, but performing a highly-meritoriousand in some cases heroic duty. Yet the name of "rebels" wasagain applied to them, and its penalty inflicted upon them, ashas been seen.

After their complete subjugation, the right of retaliating ontheir oppressors, even if justifiable in theory, was oftenillusory and indefensible in fact, because of the impossibilityof successful resistance; and the secret associations knownunder the names of "Tories," "Rapparees," "White Boys,""Ribbonmen," were, with the exception of the first, condemned bythe Church.

But in modern times the right of insurrection cannot possibly bedefended, if, as can scarcely be avoided, the cause of aCatholic nation is linked with the various revolutionarysocieties and conspiracies which disgrace modern Europe,endanger society, and have all been condemned by the sovereignPontiff.

An extensive discussion of both cases—the stubborn resistancemade after the fall of the Stuarts, and some of the attempts atindependence of later times—would show at once the differencebetween the two cases, and prevent thinking men from ranking the"Tories" of ancient times with the avowed revolutionists of ourdays. Mr. Prendergast has given a fair sketch of the former inthe second edition of his "Cromwellian Settlement."

The reader who may peruse this very interesting account cannotice a remarkable coincidence; one, however, which to ourknowledge has not yet been pointed out: the very scenes enactedin Ireland, during the long resistance offered to oppressionafter the downfall of the Stuart dynasty, were reenacted inFrance during the Reign of Terror, and for some time after,throughout the districts which had risen in insurrection againstthe tyranny of the Convention, and both cases were certainlyexamples of right warring against might.

In fact, to a person acquainted with the history of the violentchanges which, during the last century, modern theories,metaphysical systems, and, above all, the working of secretsocieties, have caused, the reading of the history of Englandand Ireland, from the Reformation down, offers new sources ofinterest, by showing how the last frightful convulsion in Francewas merely a copy of the first in England, at least as far asthe means employed in each go, if not in the ultimate object.

In England the revolution was begun by the monarch himself, witha view of rendering his power more absolute and universal by therejection of the papal supremacy, and, consequently, thedestruction of the Catholic Church. In France the revolution wasbegun by the leaders of the middle classes, who made use of theimmense power given them by the secret societies which thenflourished, and the influence of an unbridled press, to destroyroyalty and aristocracy, that they might themselves obtain thesupreme power and rule the country. The object of the tworevolutions was therefore widely different; but the meansemployed in bringing them about, when considered in detail, arefound to have been perfectly identical.

In both countries, on the side of the revolutionary party or ofthe National Assembly, various oaths were imposed and enforced,troops dispatched, battles fought, devastating bands ravaged thecountry while in a state of insurrection, the same barbarousorders in La Vendee as in Ireland, so that the language evenemployed in the second case is an exact counterpart of that inthe first. There is destruction resolved upon; then theauthorities desisting and resolving on a change of policy,though with a rigid continuance of the police measures,including in both cases "domiciliary visits," inquests bycommissioners, courts-martial in the first case, revolutionarytribunals in the second—consequent wholesale executions on bothsides. There were the decrees of confiscation carried out withthe utmost barbarity, resulting in sudden changes of fortune,the class that was aristocratic being often reduced to beggary,while its wealth was enjoyed by the new men of the middleclasses. The peasants derive very little benefit from therevolution in France—none whatever, or rather the very reverseof benefit, in Ireland. And, to go into the minutest details,there are the same informers, spies, troops of armed police, oradventurers on the hunt to discover, prosecute, and destroy thelast remnants of the insurgents in France as well as in Ireland.

In considering the religious side of the question, the parallelwould be found still more striking, as the proscribed ministersof religion were of the same faith in France as in the BritishIsles, while the means adopted for their destruction wereexactly similar.

On the side of the insurgents the same comparison holds good. Inboth cases there is the first refusal to obey unjust decrees,the same stubborn opposition to more stringent acts oflegislature, the emigration of the aristocratic classes, thedevotedness of the clergy, with here and there an unfortunateexception, the same mode of concealment resorted to—false doors,traps, secret closets, disguise, etc.; the flying to thecountry and concealment in woods, caves, hills, or mountains;and, when the burden grows intolerable, and open resistance,even without hope of success, becomes inevitable, there are thesame resources, method of organization, attack, call to arms,call to Heaven, the same heroism: yes, and the same approval ofreligion and admiration of all noble hearts throughout the world.

The only difference consists in the fact that in France thestruggle lasted a few years only; in Ireland, centuries. InFrance the fury of the revolution soon spent itself in horrors;in Ireland the sternness of the persecuting power stood grim andunrelaxing for ages, adding decree to decree, army to army. InFrance, numerous hunters of priests and of "brigands," as theywere called, flourished only for a short decade of years; inIreland similar hunters of priests and of "Tories" carried ontheir infamous trade for more than a century.

In the case of the latter country, too, the confiscation wasmuch more thorough and permanent, the emigration complete andfinal; but, in both cases, the Catholic religion outlived thestorm, and lifted up her head more gloriously than ever as soonas its fury had abated.

Finally, to come to the point, which calls now more immediatelyfor attention, if the campaigns of Owen Roe O'Neill, ofBrunswick, and Sarsfield, were the models of the greatinsurrection of La Vendee and Brittany, the bands of "Tories"and "rebels," scattered through Ireland at the time of theCromwellian settlement, gave an example for the "Chouan" raidswhich in France followed the blasted hopes of the royalists.

How ought both cases to be considered with reference to thegeneral rules of morality? How were they considered at the timeby religious and conscientious men?

There is no doubt that excesses were committed by Tories inIreland, and Chouans in France, which every Christian mustcondemn; but there can also be little doubt that such of them aswere not deranged by passion, but allowed their inborn religiousfeelings to speak even in those dreadful times, were restrained,either by their own consciences or by the advice of the men ofGod whom they consulted, from committing many crimes which wouldotherwise have resulted from their unfortunate position. Allthis, however, resolves itself into a consideration ofindividual cases which cannot here be taken into account.

Our only question is the cause of both Tories and Chouans in theabstract. From the beginning it was clearly a desperate cause,and, admitting that the motive which prompted it was generous,honorable, and praiseworthy, nothing could be expected to ensuefrom its advocacy but accumulated disaster and greatermisfortunes still. Of either case, then, abstractly considered,religion cannot speak with favor.

But, when an impartial and fair-minded man takes intoconsideration all the circ*mstances of both cases, particularlyof that presented in Ireland, as given by Mr. Prendergast, withall the glaring injustice, atrocious proceedings, and barbarouscruelty of the opposing party taken into account, who will daresay that men, driven to madness by such an accumulation ofmisery and torture, were really accountable before God for allthe consequences resulting from their wretched position?

In the words quoted by the author of the "Cromwellian Settlement:""Had they not a right to live on their own soil? were theyobliged in conscience to go to a foreign country, with theindelible mark left on them by an atrocious and originallyillegitimate government?" And, if the simple act of remaining intheir country, to which they had undoubtedly a right, forcedthem to live as outlaws, and adopt a course of predatory warfare,otherwise unjustifiable, but in their circ*mstances the onlyone possible for them, to whom could the fault be ascribed? Arethey to be judged harshly as criminals and felons, worthy onlyof the miserable end to which all of them, sooner or later, weredoomed? Is all the reproach and abuse to be lavished on them,and not a breath of it to fall on those who made them what theywere? Who of us could say whether, if placed in the same position,he would not have considered the life they led, and the inevitabledeath they faced, as the only path of duty and honor?

We are thoroughly convinced that the first Irish "Tories" deemedit their right to make themselves the avengers of Ireland'swrongs, and consider themselves as true patriots and the heroicdefenders of their country, and that many honorable andconscientious men then living agreed with them. And the people,who always sided with and aided them, had after all certainly aright to their opinion as the only true representatives of thecountry left in those unfortunate times.

Thus far we have considered the right of resistance on the partof the old "Tories;" we now come to what has been called thesecond case—the right of insurrection advocated by modernrevolutionists, chiefly when connected with the unlawfulorganizations so widely spread to-day. This, indeed, is thegreat delusive hope of to-day, which must be gone into morethoroughly, in order to show that Ireland, instead ofencouraging among her children the slightest attachment to themodern revolutionary spirit, ought to insist on their all, iffaithful to the noble principles of their forefathers, opposingit, as indeed the great mass of the nation has opposed it,strenuously, though it has met with the almost constant supportof England, who has spread it broadcast to suit her own purposes.Ireland's hope must come from another quarter.

Let us look clearly at the origin and nature of thisrevolutionary spirit, so different from the lawful right ofresistance always advocated by the great Catholic theologians.

The nature of this spirit is to produce violent changes ingovernment and society by violent means; and it originated infirst weakening and then destroying the power of the Popes overChristendom. Two words only need be said on both theseinteresting topics—words which, we hope, may be clear andconvincing.

The very word revolutionary indicates violence; and it is sounderstood by all who use it with a knowledge of its meaning. Arevolutionary proceeding in a state, is one which is sanctionedneither by the law nor the constitution, but is rapidly carriedon for any purpose whatever. Violence has always been used inthe various revolutions of modern times, and, when people talkof a peaceful revolution, it is at once understood that the termis not used in its ordinary significance.

On this point, probably, all are agreed; and, therefore, thereis no need of further explanation. On the other hand, many willbe inclined to controvert the second proposition; and, therefore,its unquestionable truth must be shown.

That the position held by the Popes at the head of Christendomfor many ages was of paramount influence, and that to them, infact, is due the existence of the state of Europe, known asChristendom, is now admitted almost by all since theinvestigations of learned and painstaking historians,Protestants as well Catholics, have been given to the world. Buthad the Popes any particular line of policy, and did they favorone kind of government more than another? This is a very fairquestion, and well worthy of consideration.

Any kind of government is good only according to thecirc*mstances of the nation subjected to it. What may suit onepeople would not give happiness to another, and democratic,aristocratic, or monarchical governments, have each theirrespective uses, so that none of them can be condemned orapproved absolutely. No one will ever be able to show that theRoman Pontiffs held any exclusive theory on this subject, andadopted a stern policy from which they did not recede.

But a positive line of policy they did hold to, namely, theinsuring the stability of society by securing the stability ofgovernments.

Whoever reads the life of Gregory VII side by side with that ofWilliam the Conqueror, is at first astonished to find Hildebrand,who, though not yet Pope, was already powerful in the counselsof the Papacy, favoring the Norman king, although Williameventually proved far from grateful. But, when the reader comesto inquire what can have moved the great monk to take up thisline of action, he will find that a deep political motive lay atthe bottom of it, which throws a flood of light over the policyof the Popes and the history of Europe during the middle ages.He finds Hildebrand persuaded that William of Normandy possessedthe true hereditary right to the crown of England, and thepolicy of the Popes was already in favor of hereditary right inkingdoms, thereby to insure the stability of dynasties, andconsequently that of society itself.

Harold, son of Godwin, belonged in no way to the royal race ofAnglo-Saxon kings. The Dukes of Normandy had contractedalliances by marriage with the Anglo-Saxon monarchs, and werethought to be more nearly related to Edward the Confessor thanHarold, whose only title was derived from his sister.

What had been the state of Europe up to that time? Since theestablishment and conversion of the northern races, a constantchange of rulers, an ever-recurring moving of territorial limit,and consequently an endless disturbance in all that secures thestability of rights, was common everywhere: in England, underthe heptarchy; in France, under the Carlovingians; in thevarious states of Germany; everywhere, except, perhaps, in apart of Italy, where small republics were springing up frommunicipal communes, which were better adapted to the wants ofthe people.

The great evils of those times were owing to these perpetualchanges, which all came from the undefined rights of successionto power, as left by Charlemagne; a striking proof that amonarch may be a man of genius, a great and acceptable ruler,and still fail to see the consequences to future times of thelegacy he leaves them in the incomplete institutions of his owntime. Well has Bossuet said, that "human wisdom is always shortof something."

Those rapid, and, to us, wonderful partitions of empires andkingdoms; those loose and ill-defined rules of succession inGermany, France, England, and elsewhere; productive ofrevolution at the death of every sovereign, and often duringevery reign, showed the Popes that hereditary rights ought to beclear and fixed, and confined to one person in each nation. Fromthat period, date the long lines of the Capetians in France, thePlantagenets in England; while rights of a similar kind areintroduced into Spain and Portugal; likewise into the variousstates of Northern Germany, or Scandinavia; and Southern Italy,or Norman Sicily—the rest of Italy and Germany are placed on adifferent footing, the empire and the popedom being bothelective.

Such was the grand policy of the Popes inaugurated by Hildebrand,which came out in all its strong features, at the same time,under his powerful influence. Such was the policy which insuredthe stability of Europe for upward of six hundred years; a setof views to which a word only can be devoted here, but on whichvolumes would not be thrown away.

In consequence of it, for six hundred years dynasties seldomchanged; the territorial limits of each great division of Europeremained, on the whole, settled; and an order of society ensued,of such a nature that any father of a family might rest assuredof the state of his children and grandchildren after him.

In this respect, therefore, as in many others, the papacy wasthe key-stone of Christendom.

But as soon as Protestantism came to contest, not only thetemporal, but even the spiritual supremacy of the Popes; when,taking advantage of the trouble of the Church, the so-calledCatholic sovereigns, while pretending to render all honor to thespiritual supremacy of the sovereign Pontiffs, refused toacknowledge in them any right of lifting their warning voice,and calling on the powers of the world to obey the great andunchangeable laws of religion and justice, then did the long-established stability of Europe begin to give way, while thewhole continent entered upon its long era of revolution, whichis still in full way, and, as yet, is far from having producedits last consequences.

England, the most guilty, was the first to feel the effect ofthe shock. The Tudors flattered themselves that, by throwingaside what they called the yoke of Rome, they had vastlyincreased their power, and so they did for the moment, while thedynasty that succeeds them sees rebellion triumphant, and thehead of a king fall beneath the axe of an executioner.

She is said to have benefited, nevertheless, by her greatrevolution, and by the subsequent introduction of a new dynasty.She has certainly chanted a loud paean of triumph, and at thismoment is still exultant over the effects of her modern policy,from the momentary success of the new ideas she has disseminatedthrough the world, and above all from that immense spread ofparliamentary governments which have sprung into existenceeverywhere under her guidance, and mainly through her agency.

And the cause of her triumph was that, after a few years ofcommotion, she seemed to have obtained a kind of stability whichwas a sufficiently good copy of the old order under the Popes,and won for her apparently the gratitude of mankind; but thatstability is altogether illogical, and cannot long stand. Thereis an old, though now trite, saying to the effect that when you"sow the wind you must reap the whirlwind," and no one can failto see the speedy realization of the truth of this adage on herpart. Over the full tide of her prosperity there is a mighty,irresistible, and inevitable storm visibly gathering. At lastshe has come to nearly the same state of mental anarchy whichshe has been so powerful to spread in Europe. After reading"Lothair," the work of one of her great statesmen, allintelligent readers must exclaim, "Babylon! how hast thou fallen!" Within a few years, possibly, nothing will remain of herformer greatness but a few shreds, and men will witness anotherof those awful examples of a mighty empire falling in the midstof the highest seeming prosperity.

When a nation has no longer any fixed principle to go by, whenthe minds of her leaders are at sea on all great religious andmoral questions, when the people openly deny the right of thefew to rule, when a fabric, raised altogether on aristocracy,finds the substratum giving way, and democratic ideas seatedeven upon the summit of the edifice, there must be, as is said,"a rattling of old bones," and a shaking of the skeleton of whatwas a body.

How long, then, will the mock stability established by the deepwisdom of England's renowned statesmen have stood? A century ortwo of dazzling material prosperity succeeded by long ages ofwoe, such as the writer of the "Battle of Dorking," with all hisimagination, could not find power enough to describe; for noPrussian, or any other foreign army, will bring that catastropheabout, but the breath of popular fury.

But our purpose is not to utter prophecies—rather to rehearsefacts already accomplished.

England, then, was the first to feel the shock of the earthquakewhich was to overthrow the old stability of Europe. It is knownhow Germany has ever since been a scene of continual wars,dynastic changes, and territorial confusion. What evils have notthe wars of the present century brought upon her! Yet, owing tothe phlegmatic disposition, one might call it the stolidity ofthe majority of Germans, the disturbances have been so farexternal, and the lower masses of society have scarcely beenagitated, except by the first rude explosion of Protestantism,and the sudden patriotic enthusiasm of young plebeians, in 1814.But mark the suddenness with which, in 1848, all the thrones ofGermany fell at once under the mere breath of what is called"the people!" It is almost a trite thing to say that, wherereligion no longer exists, there no longer is security or peace.Impartial travellers, Americans chiefly, have observed of latethat, in certain parts of France, there is, in truth, verylittle religious feeling; while in all Protestant Germany,particularly in that belonging to Prussia, there is none at all.How long, then, is the "new Germanic Empire," so loudly trumpetedat Versailles, and afterward so gloriously celebrated at Berlin,without the intervention of any religion whatever, likely to stand?How long? Can it exist till the end of this century? He would bea bold prophet who could confidently say, "Yes."

As to France, formerly the steadiest of all nations, so deeplyattached to her dynasty of eight hundred years, although some ofher kings were little worthy true affection; many of whosecitizens have been born in houses a thousand years old, fromfamilies whose names went back to the darkness of heroic times;which was once so retentive of her old memories, living in hertraditions, her former deeds of glory, even in the monumentsraised in honor of her kings, her great captains, herillustrious citizens; which was chiefly devoted to her time-honored religion, mindful that she was born on the day of thebaptism of Clovis; that she grew up during the Crusades; that avirgin sent by Heaven saved her from the yoke of the stranger;that, on attaining her full maturity, it was religion whichchiefly ennobled her; and that her greatest poets, orators,literary men, respected and honored religion as the basis of thestate, and, by their immortal masterpieces, threw a halo aroundCatholicism—France, which still retains in her externalappearance something of her old steadiness and immutability, sothat to the eye of a stranger, who sees her for the first time,solidity is the word which comes naturally to his mind, asexpressive of every thing around him, has only the look of whatshe was in her days of greatness, and on the surface of theearth there is not to-day a more unsteady, shaky, insecure spot,scarcely worthy of being chosen by a nomad Tartar as a placewherein to pitch his tent for the night, and hurry off at thefirst appearance of the rising sun on the morrow. Can theshifting sands of Libya, the ever-shaking volcanic mountains ofequatorial America, the rapidly-forming coral islands of thesouthern seas, give an idea of that fickleness, constantagitation, and unceasing clamor for change, which have madeFrance a by-word in our days? Who of her children can be surethat the house he is building for himself will ever be thedwelling of his son; that the city he lives in to-day willtomorrow acknowledge him as a member of its community? Who canbe certain that the constitution of the whole state may notchange in the night, and he wake the next day to find himself anoutlaw and a fugitive?

It is a lamentable fact that for the last hundred years a greatnation has been reduced to such a state of insecurity, that noone dares to think of the future, though all have repudiated thepast, and thus every thing is reduced for them to the presentfleeting moment.

And what is likely to be the future destiny of a nation of fortymillion souls, when their present state is such, and such theuncertainty of their dearest interests? They are unwilling toquit the soil; for they have lost all power of expansion bysending colonies to foreign shores; it is difficult for them totake a real interest in their own soil, for the great movingspring of interest is broken up by the total want of security.May God open their eyes to their former folly; for the folly wasall of their own making! They have allowed themselves to be thusthoroughly imbued with this revolutionary spirit—the firstrevolution they hailed with enthusiasm; when they saw it becomestained with frightful horrors, they paused a moment, and wereon the point of acknowledging their error; but scribblers andsophists came to show them that it failed in being a gloriousand happy one only because it was not complete; another and thenanother, and another yet, would finish the work and make them agreat nation. Thus have they become altogether a revolutionarypeople; and they must abide by the consequences, unless theycome at last to change their mind.

But the worst has not been said. This terrible example, insteadof proving a warning to nations, has, on the contrary, drawnnearly all of them into the same boiling vortex. England andFrance have led the whole European world captive: people ask fora government different to the one they have; revolution is theconsequence, and, with the entry of the revolutionary spirit,good-by to all stability and security. Let Italy and Spain bearwitness if this is not so.

And the great phenomenon of the age is the collecting of allthose revolutionary particles into one compact mass, arrangedand preordained by some master-spirits of evil, who would beleaders not of a state or nation only, but of a universalrepublic embracing first Europe, and then the world. So we hearto-day of the Internationalists receiving in their "congresses"deputies not only from all the great European centres, not onlyfrom both ends of America, which is now Europeanized, but fromSouth Africa, from Australia, New Zealand, from countries whicha few years back were still in quiet possession of acomparatively few aborigines.

To come back, then, to the point from which we started, it is inthis revolutionary spirit, in those conspiracies for revolutionsto come, that some Irishmen set their hopes for the regenerationof their country. It would be well to remind them of the sayingsof our Lord: "Can men gather grapes from thorns?" "By theirfruits ye shall know them."

Let the Irish who are truly devoted to their country reflectwell on the kind of men they would have as allies. What hasIreland in common with these men? If they know Ireland at all,they detest her because of her Catholicism; and, if Irelandknows them, she cannot but distrust and abominate them.

It has seemed a decree of kind Providence that all attempts atrebellion on her part undertaken with the hope of such help,have so far not only been miserable failures, but mostdisgracefully miscarried and been spent in air, leaving onlyridicule and contempt for the originators of and partakers inthe plots.

If the vast and unholy scheme which is certainly being organized,and which is spreading its fatal branches in all directions,should ever succeed, it could not but result in the mostfrightful despotism ever contemplated by men. Ireland in such anevent would be the infinitesimal part of a chaotic system worthyof Antichrist for head.

But we are confident that such a scheme cannot succeed and cometo be realized, unless indeed it enter for a short period intothe designs of an avenging God, who has promised not to destroymankind again by another flood, but assured us by St. Peter thathe will purify it by fire.

As a mere design of man, intended for the regeneration ofhumanity and the new creation of an abnormal order of things, itcannot possibly succeed, because it is opposed to the nature ofmen, among whom as a whole there can be no perfect unity ofexternal government and internal organization, owing to theinfinite variety of which we spoke at the beginning, which is asstrong in human beings as elsewhere. No other body than theCatholic Church can hope to adapt itself to all human races, andgovern by the same rules all the children of Adam. The decreeissued of old from the mouth of God is final, and will last aslong as the earth itself. It is contained in Moses' Canticle:

"When the Most High divided the nations, when he separated thesons of Adam, he appointed the bounds of each people, accordingto the number of the children of Israel," or, as the Hebrew texthas it, "He fixed the limits of each people." On this passageAben Ezra remarks that interpreters understand the text asalluding to the dispersion of nations (Genesis xi.). Thoseinterpreters, were clearly right, although only Jewish rabbies.

When God deprived man of the unity of language, he took away atthe same time the possibility of unity of institutions andgovernment; and it will be as hard for men to defeat that designof Providence as for Julian the apostate to rebuild the Templeof Jerusalem, of which our Saviour had declared that thereshould not remain "a stone upon a stone."

But, though the monstrous scheme cannot ultimately succeed, itcan and will produce untold evils to human society. By alluringworkmen and other people of the lower class, it draws into theintricate folds of conspiracy, dark projects, and universaldisorder, an immense array of human beings, whom therevolutionary spirit had not yet, or at least had scarcely,touched; it undermines and disturbs society in its lowest depthsand widest-spread foundations, since the lower class always hasbeen and still is the most numerous, including by far the greatmajority of men. It consequently renders the stability of ordermore difficult, if not absolutely impossible; it opens up a newera of revolutions, more disastrous than any yet known; for, ashas already been remarked, and it should be well borne in mind,in order that the whole extent of the evil in prospect may beseen, so far, all the agitations in Europe, all the convulsionswhich have rendered our age so unlike any previous one, andproductive of so many calamities, private as well as public,have been almost exclusively confined to the middle classes, andshould be considered only as a reaction of the simplebourgeoisie against the aristocratic class. Those agitations andconvulsions are only the necessary consequence of the secularopposition, existing from the ninth and tenth centuries andthose immediately following, between the strictly feudalnobility, which arrogated to itself all prerogatives and rights,and the more numerous class of burghers, set on the lower stepof the social ladder. These latter wanted, not so much to get upto the level of their superiors, as to bring them down to theirown, and even precipitate them into the abyss of nothingnessbelow. They have almost succeeded; and the prestige of nobleblood has passed away, perhaps forever, in spite of Vico's well-known theory. But the now triumphant burgher in his turn seesthe dim mass, lost in the darkness and indistinctness of thelowest pool of humanity, rising up grim and horrible out of theabyss, hungry and fierce and not to be pacified, to threaten thenew-modelled aristocracy of money with a worse fate than that itinflicted upon the old nobility.

And, to render the prospect more appalling, the chief means,which so eminently aided the bourgeoisie to take their position,namely, the wide-spread influence of secret societies, whoseworkings even lately have astonished the world by the facile andapparently inexplicable revolutions effected in a few days, arenow in the full possession of the lower classes, who, no longerrude and unintelligent, but possessed of leaders of experienceand knowledge, can also powerfully work those mighty engines ofdestruction.

In the presence of those past, present, and coming revolutions,the face of heaven entirely clouded, the presence of Godabsolutely ignored, his rights over mankind denied, the designsof his Providence openly derided, and man, pretending to decidehis own destiny by his own unaided efforts, scornfully rejectingany obligation to a superior power, not looking on high forassistance, but taking only for his guide his pretended wisdom,his unbounded pride, and his raging passions; such is now ourworld.

Is Ireland to launch herself on that surging sea of wild impulse,in whose depths lies destruction and whose waves never kiss apeaceful coast? When she claimed and exercised a policy of herown, she wisely persisted in not mixing herself up with thetroubles of Europe, content to enjoy happiness in her own way,on her ocean-bound island, she thanked God that no portion ofher little territory touched any part of the Continent of Europe,stretching out vainly toward her shores. So she stood when,under God, she was mistress of her own destiny. If ever shethought of Europe, it was only to send her missionaries to itshelp, or to receive foreign youth in her large schools whichwere open to all, where wisdom was imparted without restrictionand without price. But to follow the lead of European theoristsand vendors of so-called wisdom and science; to originate newschemes of pretended knowledge, or place herself in the wake ofbold adventurers on the sea of modern inventions, she was eversteadfast in her refusal.

And now that her autonomy is almost once again within her grasp,now that she can carve out a destiny of her own, would she handover the guidance of herself to men who know nothing of her, whohave only heard of her through the reports of her enemies, andwho will scarcely look at her if she is foolish enough to ask tobe admitted within their ranks?

Every one who wishes well to Ireland ought to thank God that sofar few indeed, if any, of her children have ever joined in theplots and conspiracies of modern times, and that in this lastscheme just referred to, not one of them, probably, has fullyengaged himself. In the late horrors of the Paris Commune, noIrish name could be shown to have been implicated, and, when thecontrary was asserted, a simple denial was sufficient to set thequestion at rest. Let them so continue to refrain from sullyingtheir national honor by following the lead of men with whom theyhave nothing in common.

After all, the great thing which the Irish desire is, with theentire possession of their rights, to enjoy that peace andsecurity in their own island, which they relish so keenly whenthey find it on foreign shores. But no peace or security ispossible with the attempt to subvert all human society by wildand impracticable theories, in which human and divine laws arealike set at naught. Further words are unnecessary on thissubject, as the simple good sense and deep religious feeling ofthe Irish will easily preserve them from yielding to suchtemptation.

Yet, a last consideration seems worthy of note. When, later on,we present our views, and explain by what means we consider thatthe happiness of the Irish nation may be secured, and itsmission fulfilled, a more fitting opportunity will be presentedof speaking of the ways by which Providence has already led themthrough former difficulties, and the consideration of those holydesigns and past favors may enable us better to understand whatmay be hoped and attempted in the future.

Here it is enough to observe that, in whatever progress theIrish have made of late in obtaining a certain amount of theirrights, insurrection, revolution, plots, and the working ofsecret societies condemned by the Church, have absolutely gonefor nothing, and the little of it all, in which Irishmen haveindulged, really formed one of the main obstacles to theenjoyment of what they had already obtained, and to the securingof a greater amount for the future.

There is no doubt that revolutions abroad and dangers at homehave been the greatest inducements to England to relax her graspand change her tyrannical policy toward Ireland. The success ofthe revolt of the North American colonies was the main cause ofthe volunteer movement of 1782, and of the concessions thentemporarily granted. The fearful upheaval of revolutionaryFrance, which filled the English heart with a wholesome dread,was also a great means of obtaining for Ireland the concessionof being no longer treated as though it were a lair of wildbeasts or a nest of outlaws. The act of Catholic Emancipation in1829 was certainly granted in view of immediate revolutionsready to burst forth, one of which did explode in France in theyear following. But, in all those outbursts of popular fury,Ireland never joined; and if she found in them new ground forhope, if she awaited anxiously the anticipated result turning inher favor, she never took any active part whatever in them. Sheonly relied on God, who always knows how to draw good from evil;she, however, profited by them, and saw her shackles fall off ofthemselves, and herself brought back, step by step, to liberty.

But so soon as any body of Irishmen entered into a scheme of asimilar nature, imitating the secret plottings and deeds ofEuropean revolutionists, Ireland never gained a single inch ofground, nor reaped the slightest advantage from such attempts.On the contrary, ridicule, contempt, increase of burdens,penalties, and harsh treatment, were the only result which evercame from them, and, worst of all, no one pitied the victims ofall those foolish enterprises. There is no need of entering hereinto details. The first of those attempts failed long ago; thelast is still on record, and cannot be yet said to belong topast history.

CHAPTER XIV.

RESURRECTION.-EMIGRATION.

To the eye of a keen beholder, Ireland to-day presents theappearance of a nation entering upon a new career. She isemerging from a long darkness, and opening again to the freelight of heaven. Whoever compares her present position with thatshe occupied a century ago, cannot fail to be struck with wonderno less at the change in her than at the agencies which broughtthat change about. And when to this is added the furtherreflection that she is still young, though sprung from so old-an-origin-young in feeling, in buoyancy, in aspirations, in purityand simplicity-the conclusion forces itself upon the mind that ahigh destiny is in store for her, and that God proposes a longera of prosperity and active life to an ancient nation which isonly now beginning to live.

In such cases, whether it be a people or an individual, which isentering upon its life, crowds of advisers are ever to be foundready to display their wisdom and lay down the plans whoseadoption will infallibly bring prosperity and happiness to theindividual or people in question.

Ireland, to-day, suffers from no lack of wise counsellors andardent well-wishers. Unfortunately, their various projects donot always harmonize; indeed, they are sometimes contradictory,and, as their number is by no means small, the only difficultyis where to choose which road the nation should take in order tomarch in the right direction.

In entering upon this portion of our work, where we have to dealwith actual questions of the day, and if not to draw thehoroscope of the future, at least to give utterance to our ideasfor the promotion of the welfare of the nation, we shall appearto come under the same catalogue of advisers, fully persuaded,with the rest, that our advice is the right, our voice the onlyone worthy of attention.

Our purpose is far humbler; our reflections take another shape;we merely say

During the last hundred years, Ireland has changed wonderfullyfor the better; and although the old wounds are not yet quitehealed up, though they still smart, though she is still poor anddisconsolate, and her trials and afflictions far from beingended; nevertheless, though sorely tried, Providence has beenkind to her. Many of her rights have been restored, and she isno longer the slave of hard task-masters. When she now speaks,her voice is no longer met by the gibe and sneer, but with akind of awe akin to respect, her enemies seeming to feelinstinctively that it is the voice of a nation which no longermay be safely despised.

This fact being indisputable, the conviction forces itself uponus that her improved condition is mainly, perhaps solely, due toProvidence; and that the career upon which she has entered, andwhich she is now pursuing with a clear determination of her own,has been marked out, designed, and already partially run, underthe guidance of that God for whom alone she has suffered, andwho never fails in his own good time to dry up the tears shedfor his sake, and crown his martyrs with victory.

Our task is merely to examine the progress made, the manner ofits making, the direction toward which it tends, with the aim,if possible, of adding to its speed. We have no new plan tooffer, no gratuitous advice to give. The plan is alreadysketched out—God has sketched it; and our only aim is to seehow man may cooperate with designs far higher than any proposedby human wisdom.

The first thing that strikes us, standing on the verge of thisnew region, opening out dimly but gloriously before our eyes, isone great fact which is plain to all; which is greater than allEngland's concessions to Ireland, more fruitful of happyconsequences, not alone to the latter country itself, but to theworld at large; a fact which is the strongest proof of thevitality of the Irish race, which now begins to win for itrespect by bringing forth its real strength, a strength toastonish the world; which began feebly when the evils of thecountry were at their height, but has gone on constantlyincreasing until it has now grown to extraordinary proportions;and which instead of, as their enemies fondly supposed, wrestingIreland from the Irish, has made their claim to the native soilsecurer than ever, by spreading strong supporters of theirrights through the world. This great fact is emigration.

At this moment, Irishmen are scattered abroad over the earth. Inmany regions they have numbers, and form compact bodies.Wherever this occurs, they acquire a real power in the landwhich they have made their new home. That power is certainlyintended by Almighty God to be used wisely, prudently, butactively and energetically; not only for the good of those whohave been thus transplanted in a new soil, but also for the goodof the mother-country which they cannot, if they would, forget.How can they utilize for such a purpose the power so recentlyacquired, the wealth, the influence, the consideration theyenjoy, in their new country? How may such a course benefit theland of their nativity as of their origin? These are importantquestions; they are not airy theories, but rise up clearly froma standing and stupendous fact. The turning their power ofexpansion to its right use, the reproduction with Christian aimof that old power of expansion peculiar to the Celtic race threethousand years ago, is what we call the first true issue of theIrish question:- Emigration and its Possible Effects.

In order to judge with proper understanding of the prospectiveeffects of Irish emigration, it is fitting to study the fact inall its bearings; to examine the origin and various phases ofthe mighty movement, the religious direction it has invariablytaken, the immediate good it has produced, and the specialconsideration of the vast proportions which it has finallyassumed. The task may be a long one; but it is certainlyimportant and interesting; and it is only after the details ofit have been thoroughly sifted that one may be in a position tojudge rightly of the aid it has already furnished, and which itis destine to furnish in a still greater degree, to the uprisingof the nation.

The movement originated with the Reformation. It began with theflight of a few of the nobility in the reign of Henry VIII.;their number was increased under Elizabeth, and grew to largerproportions still under James I.; but a far greater number,sufficient to make a very sensible diminution in the populationof the country, was doomed to exile by Cromwell and the LongParliament. It then became a compulsory banishment.

The next following movement on a large scale occurred after thesurrender of Kilkenny, when the Irish commanders, ColonelFitzpatrick, Clanricard, and others, could obtain no betterterms than emigration to any foreign country then at peace withEngland. The Irish troops were eagerly caught up by the variousEuropean monarchs, so highly were their services esteemed. Thenumber that thus left their native land, many of them never toreturn, amounted, according to well-informed writers, to fortythousand men, of noble blood most of them, many of the firstnobility of the land, and almost all children of the old race.The details of this first exodus are to be found in the pages ofmany modern authors, particularly in Mr. Prendergast's"Cromwellian Settlement."

The example thus given was followed on many occasions. TheTreaty of Limerick, October 3, 1691, gave the garrison underSaarsfield liberty to join the army of King William or enter theservice of France. Mr. A.M. O'Sullivan has given a spiritedsketch of the making of their choice by the heroic garrison asit defiled out of the city:

"On the morning of the 5th of October the Irish regiments wereto make their choice between exile for life or service in thearmies of their conqueror. At each end of a gently-rising groundbeyond the suburbs were planted on one side the royal standardof France, and on the other that of England. It was agreed thatthe regiments, as they marched out with all the honors of war,drums beating, colors flying, and matches lighted, should, onreaching the spot, wheel to the left or to the right, beneaththat flag under which they elected to serve. At the head of theIrish marched the Foot Guards, the finest regiment in theservice, fourteen hundred strong. All eyes were fixed on thissplendid body of men. On they came, amid breathless silence andacute suspense; for well both the English and Irish generalsknew that the choice of the first regiment would powerfullyinfluence all the rest. The Guards marched up to the criticalspot, and in a body wheeled to the colors of France, barelyseven men turning to the English side! Ginckle, we are told, wasgreatly agitated as he witnessed the proceeding. The nextregiment, however (Lord Iveagh's), marched as unanimously to theWilliamite banner, as did also portions of two others. But thebulk of the Irish army defiled under fleur-de-lys of King Louis,only one thousand and forty-six, out of nearly fourteen thousandmen, preferring the service of England."

From that time out a large number of the Irish nobility andgentry continued to enlist under French, Spanish, or Austriancolors; and the several Irish brigades became celebrated allover Europe until the end of the eighteenth century. It is saidby l'abbe McGeohegan that six hundred thousand Irishmen perishedin the armies of France alone. The abbe is generally veryaccurate, and from his long residence in France had every meansat his disposal of arriving at the truth. Some pretend thatdouble the number enlisted in foreign service. There is no doubtthat in all a million men left the island to take service underthe banners of Catholic sovereigns, and it is needless to dwellon the bravery and devotion of those men whom the persecution ofan unwise and cruel Protestant government drove out of Irelandduring the eighteenth century-it is needless to dwell upon it,for the record is known to the world.

Without following the fortunes of the Irish brigades, thehistory of one of which, that in the service of France, has beengiven us in the very interesting and valuable narrative of JohnR. O'Callaghan-its various fortunes and final dissolution at thebreaking out of the French republic, when the English Governmentwas glad to receive back the scattered remnants of it-thequestion which bears most on our present subject is: What wasthe occupation of those Irishmen on the Continent when notactually engaged in war? What service did their voluntary orcompulsory exile do their native country? Was that longemigration of a century productive of something out of whichProvidence may have drawn good?

The first departure of a few under Hugh O'Neill and HughO'Donnell had already spread the name of Ireland through Spain,Italy, and Belgium. The reports of the numerous English spies,employed to dog their steps and watch their movements, reportssome of which have been finally brought to light, conclusivelyprove that most of the exiles held honorable positions in Spainand Portugal, at Valladolid and Lisbon, where the O'Sullivansand O'Driscolls lived; at the very court of Spain, or in theSpanish navy, like the Bourkes and the Cavanaghs.

In Flanders, under the Austrian archdukes, were stationed theMcShanes, on the Groyne; the Daniells at Antwerp; the posterityof the earls themselves with that of their former retinue. Allheld rank in the Austrian army, and even in times of peace wereoccupied in thinking of possible entanglements whereby theymight serve their country, while they made the Irish namehonored and respected all over that rich land. In Italy, atNaples, Leghorn, Florence, and Rome, in the great centres of thepeninsula, the same thing was taking place, and there, at least,the calumnies, everywhere so industriously circulated aboutIreland, could not penetrate, or, if they did, only to bereceived with scorn.

But, when the next emigration, at the end of the Cromwellian andWilliamite wars, landed forty thousand soldiers, and twelvethousand more a few years afterward, on the European Continent,these armed men proved to the nations, by their bravery, theirdeep attachment to their religion, their perfect honor andgenerosity, that the people from which a persecuting power haddriven them forth could not be composed of the outlaws and blood-thirsty cutthroats which the reports of their enemies would makethem. How striking and permanent must have been the effectproduced on impartial minds by the contrast between the aspectof the reality and the base fabrications of skilfully-scatteredrumor!

And be it borne in mind that those men founded families in thecountries where they settled; as well as those who continued toflock thither during the whole of the eighteenth century. Theycarried about with them, in their very persons even, the historyof Ireland's wrongs; and the mere sight of them was enough tointerest all with whom they came in contact in favor of theircountry. Hence the esteem and sympathy which Ireland and herpeople have always met with in France, where the calumnies andridicule lavished on them could never find an entrance.

It would be a great error to imagine that they were to be foundonly in the camp or in the garrisons of cities. They madethemselves a home in their new country, and their childrenentered upon all the walks of life opened up to the citizens ofthe country in which they resided. Thus, at least, the name ofIreland did not die out altogether during that age of gloom,when their native isle was only the prison of the race, where itwas chained down in abject misery, out of the sight of the world,the life of it stifled out in the deep dungeon of oblivion.

In all honorable professions they became distinguished-in theChurch and in trade, as in the army. Thus, speaking only ofFrance, an Irishman-Edgeworth-was chosen by Louis XVI. toprepare him for death and stand by him during his last ordeal ofignominy; another-Lally Tollendal-would have wrested India fromEngland, if his ardent temperament had not brought him enemieswhere he ought to have met with friends; another yet-Walsh-during the American War, employed the wealth acquired by trade,in sending cruisers against the English to American waters.

It would take long pages to record what those noble exilesaccomplished for the good of their country and religion, quiteapart from the heroism they displayed on battle-fields, andtheir fidelity to principle during times of peace. Their verypresence in foreign countries was, perhaps, the best protestagainst the enslavement of their own. They showed by theirbearing that they owed no allegiance to England, and that bruteforce could never establish right. By identifying themselveswith the nations which offered them hospitality and a new rightof citizenship, they proved to the world that their native islecould be governed by native citizens. Their honorable conductand successful activity in every pursuit of life showed that, asthey were capable of governing themselves, so likewise couldthey claim self-government for their country.

The moral condition of France during the eighteenth century, andthe depths of corruption into which the higher class sank in soshort a time, are known to all. To the honor of the Irishnobility and gentry then in France, not a single Irish name isto be met with in that long list of noble names which havedisgraced that page of French history. Not in the luxuriousbowers and palaces of Louis XV. were they to be found, but onthe battle-fields of Dettingen and Fontenoy. It was a Scotchman-Law-who infected the higher circles of the natives with the ragefor speculation, and the folly of gambling in paper. It was anItalian- Cagliostro-who traded on the superstitious credulity ofmen who had lost their faith. It was an Englishman-LordDerwentwater-and another Scotchman-Ramsay-who, by theintroduction of the first Masonic Lodge into France, opened thefloodgates of future revolutions.

Among those of foreign birth, no Irishman was found in France tocontribute to the corruption of the nation, and give his aid toset agoing that long era of woe not yet ended.

And needless is it to add that never is one of them mentioned,among those who were so active in propagating that broadinfidelity peculiar to that age. If a few of them shared to someextent in the general delusion, and took part with the vastmultitude in the insane derision, then so fashionable, of everything holy, their number was small indeed, and none of themacquired in that peculiar line, the celebrity which crowned somany others. -the Grimms, the Gallianis, and later on the Paines,the Cloots, and other foreigners.

As a body, the Irish remained faithful to the Church of theirfathers, honoring her by their conduct, and their respectfuldemeanor toward holy names and holy things. Eventually they, incommon with all Frenchmen, had to share in the misfortunes,brought on by the subversion of all the former guidingprinciples; but, though sharing in the punishment, they took nopart in the great causes which called it down.

These few words will suffice for the emigration of the Irishnobility, and its effects on foreign countries; as well asIreland itself.

But another class of noblemen had emigrated to the Continentside by side with those of whom we have just spoken; namely,bishops, priests, monks, and learned men. England would notsuffer the Catholic clergy in Ireland; she was particularlycareful not to allow Irish youth the benefit of any but aProtestant education. Irish clergymen were compelled to fly andopen houses of study abroad. Their various colleges in Spain,France, Belgium, and Italy, are well known; they have alreadybeen referred to, and it is not necessary to enlarge on thesubject. But, though mention has been made of the renown thusacquired by Irishmen then residing on the Continent, it isfitting to speak of them again in their character of emigrants.

They took upon themselves the noble task of making theliterature and the history of their nation known to all people;and in so doing they have preserved a rich literature which mustotherwise have perished.

What was their situation on the Continent? They had been drivenby persecution from their country, sometimes in troops of exilesto be cast on some remote shore; sometimes escaping singly andin disguise, they went out alone to end their lives under aforeign sky. Behind them they left the desolate island; theirfriends bowed down in misery, their enemies triumphant and infull power. The convents, where they had spent their happiestdays, were either demolished or turned to vile uses; theirchurches desecrated; heresy ruling the land, truth compelled tobe silent. All the harrowing details given by the "Prophet ofLamentations" might be applied to their beloved country.

True, they could find peace and rest among those who offeredthem their hospitality; at least, the worship of God would befree and untrammelled there. But it was not the place of theirbirth, where they had received their first education; it was notthe mission intrusted to them when they consecrated their livesto God. They would bear another language, see around themdifferent manners, begin life anew, perhaps, in their old age.What a contrast to their former hopes! What a sad ending to theclosing days of their life!

Nevertheless, they might be of use to their countrymen. It wasnot for them now to convert Europe, and preach Christianity tobarbarous tribes, as did their ancestors of old. The world whichreceived them was languishing with excess of refinedcivilization; corruption had entered in, and was fast destroyingit; and they could scarcely hope to hold it back from itsdownward career. But, at least, they might open houses for thereception of the youth of their own country, where they shouldreceive an education according to the teachings of the trueChurch, which was denied them at home. So they went to Salamanca,to Valladolid, to Paris, Louvain, Douai, Rheims, Rome, whereverthere was hope or possibility of directing Irish youth in theways of true piety and learning.

The labors to which they devoted themselves, though unknown toposterity, were of great utility at the time. They saw the youththey educated grow up under their care; when their studies wereconcluded, they sent them to labor in the ministry among theircountrymen; they heard of them from time to time of theirarduous life, the dangers they braved, the many persecutionsthey underwent, their imprisonment when captured, theirconviction, torture often, and death by martyrdom. And thus,through the exertions of those emigrant monks and priests, thetrue Gospel was preached in Ireland, and the faith of the peoplekept alive and strong.

A few of them chose another path, and consecrated the remainderof their days to literary labors, which have shed down on theirpersecuted country a halo of immortal glory.

Some Franciscan friars (two of them the brothers O'Cleary) hadalready begun this work in the island itself, when driven fromtheir quiet homes to take refuge in the obscure "convents," thatis, out-of-the-way farm-houses mentioned before, where they werereceived and hidden away from the world. The literature ofIreland was fast perishing; the rage of their enemies being asviolently directed against their books as against their housesand churches. Precious manuscripts were every day given to theflames and wantonly destroyed, seemingly for the mere pleasureof destruction. A very few years would have sufficed to renderthe former history of the country a perfect blank. In no spot ofthe same size on earth had so many interesting books ever beenwritten and treasured up; but before long there would remain nofriars on the island to preserve them, no library to containthem, no one to care for them in the least. The brothersO'Cleary saw this with dismay; and they, with two companions,became known as the "Four Masters." They interested in theirwork the faithful Irish who still retained possession of a farm,or a cabin with a few acres of ground attached; the men, andwomen even, were to search the country round for every volumeconcealed or preserved, for every parchment and relic, forvellum manuscripts, even a stray solitary page, did one remainalone. The annals of Ireland were thus saved by the literarypatriotism of poor and unknown peasants. All that remains ofIrish lore was collected together in the rural convent of theO'Clearys, and an ardent flame was enkindled which lasted thewhole of the seventeenth century.

To this initiative must be referred the subsequent labors ofWard, Colgan, Lynch, and others; herculean labors truly, whichhave enabled antiquarians of our days to resume the thread, sonear being snapped, of that long and tangled web of historywherein is woven all that can interest the patriot and theChristian of the island.

Knowing the position in which the writers found themselves, itis astonishing to see what they wrote. It was not a work offancy to which their pens were devoted: A strong, feeling heartand an active imagination were certainly theirs; but of littleservice could either prove to them in the ungrateful task ofcollecting manuscripts, classifying, reading them through,ascertaining their age and authenticity, and finally using themfor the purpose of preserving the annals and hagiography of thenation.

The large libraries they found in the various cities whichreceived them could be of little use to them. They had first tocollect their own libraries, to summon their authorities fromdistant lands; many books were to be procured from Irelanditself. With what precautions! It was real, (though lawful)smuggling; for the export of Irish books was not only undertariff, but strictly prohibited; the mere sight of them was morehateful to a British custom-house officer of those days than thesight of a crucifix to a Japanese official of Nagasaki. It wouldbe interesting to know the various stratagems devised to concealthem, tarry them away, and convey them triumphantly to Louvain,Paris, or Rome.

But Ireland was not the only repository of Irish books. Manyletters, official documents, copies of old MSS., interestingrelics of antiquity, had been gathered ages before and duringall the intervening time, in convents, churches, houses ofeducation, on the Continent, along the Rhine chiefly. It is saidthat even to-day the richest mines of yet unexplored lore ofthis character are scattered along both sides of the greatGerman river. The frequent movements of various armies, thesieges of cities, the horrors of war which have raged thereconstantly from the days of Arminius and Varro down, have notdestroyed every thing, could not exhaust the rich deposit ofIrish manuscripts there concealed. But the labor of striking themine!-of' opening those musty pages falling to pieces betweenthe fingers and leaving in the hand nothing but illegiblefragments of half-blackened parchment; and the further labor ofdeciphering them, of discovering what they speak about, and ifthey are likely to prove useful to the purposes.

It is needless to descant on such a theme. It is impossible togive any true idea of the literary labors of those men, withouthaving seen and perused their huge folios, many of which havenot yet been published to the world. Poor Colgan could give uslittle more than his "Trial Thaumaturga and that was onlydestined to form the portal of the edifice he purposed erectingas a shrine to the memory of the whole host of saints nurturedin the island-the Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae

The grand idea, which first germinated in the minds of those men,expanded afterward in others under circ*mstances more favorable.Did they not suggest to Bollandus and his fellows the thoughtwhose realization has immortalized them?

In tasks such as these were the Irish emigrant monks of the timeemployed.

There was yet another class of involuntary Irish exiles thoseshipped to the " plantations" of America, to the 11 tobacco" and11 sugar" islands, to Virginia and Jamaica, but principally tothe Barbadoes. The origin of this new kind of emigration,already touched upon, is worthy of the times and of the men whocalled it forth.

After forty thousand soldiers had been allowed, or rathercompelled, by Cromwell to enlist in foreign armies, it was foundthat many had left behind them their wives and children. Whatwas to be done with these " widows" whose husbands and numerousoffspring were still living ? They could not be sent to Coff aswomen, with children only, could not be expected to "plant" thatdesolate province; they could not be expected to "plant" thatdesolate province; they could not be allowed to remain in theirnative place, as the decree had gone forth that all the Irishwere to "transplant" or be transported: it would have beeninconvenient and inexcusable to do what had been so often donein the war-massacre them in cold blood-as the war was over.

To relieve the government of this difficulty, Bristol merchants,and merchants probably from other English cities, trading withthe new British colonies of North America, thought it aprovidential opening for a great profit to accrue to the soilsof the benighted Irish women and children, and likely at thesame time to add something to their own purses and those oftheir friends, the West India planters.

It was only under Elizabeth that permanent colonies were sentout from England to the continent and islands of the New World.The Cavaliers of Virginia are as well known in the South as thePuritans of New England in the North. This last colony datedonly from the time of the Stuart dynasty. The great question forall those transatlantic establishments was that of labor; but inthe South it was more difficult of solution than in the North,where Europeans could work in the fields, a thing scarcelypossible in the tropics. The natives as we know, were firstemployed in the South by the Spaniards, and soon succumbed tothe demands of European rapacity.

In the West Indies, natives of two different races existed: thesoft and delicate Indian of Hayti and Cuba, and the ferociousCaribs of many other islands. The first race soon disappeared;the other continued refractory, indomitable, choosing to perishrather than labor; and some remnants of it still remain, savedby the Catholic Church. As yet, African negroes had not beenconveyed there in sufficient numbers.

A brilliant thought struck the minds, at once pious, active, andbusiness-like, of those above-mentioned Bristol merchants-athought which was the doom of thousands of Irish women andchildren.

The names of a few of those Bristol firms deserve to be handeddown. Those of Messrs. James Sellick and Leader, Mr. RobertYeomans, Mr. Joseph Lawrence, Dudley North, and John Johnson,are furnished by Mr. Prendergast, who tells us that-

"The Commissioners of Ireland under Cromwell gave them ordersupon the governors of garrisons to deliver them prisoners of war. . . . upon masters of work-houses, to hand over to them thedestitute under their care, `who were of an age to labor,' or,if women, those 'who were marriageable, and not past breeding;'and gave directions to all in authority, to seize those who hadno visible means of livelihood, and deliver them to these agentsof the Bristol merchants; in execution of which latterdirections, Ireland must have exhibited scenes in every partlike the slave-hunts in Africa."

A contract was signed on September 14, 1653, by the Commissioners of Ireland and Messrs. Sellick and Leader, "to supplythem (the merchants) with two hundred and fifty women of theIrish nation, above twelve years and under the age, of forty-five."

The fate reserved for the human cattle, as they must have beenlooked upon by the godly gentlemen who bartered over them, maybe well imagined. It is calculated that, in four years, thoseEnglish firms of slave-dealers had shipped six thousand and fourhundred Irish men and women, boys and maidens, to the Britishcolonies of North America.

The age requisite for the females who were thus shipped off maybe noted; the boys and men were not to be under twelve or overfifty. These latter were condemned to the task of tilling thesoil in a climate where the negro only can work and live. As allthe cost to their masters was summed up in the expense oftransportation, they were not induced to spare them, even by theconsideration of the high price which, it is said, caused themodern slave-owners of America to treat their slaves with whatmight be called a commercial humanity. It is easy to imagine,then, the life led by so many young men forced to work in theopen fields, under a tropical sun. How long that life lasted, wedo not know; as their masters, on whom they entirely depended,were interested in keeping the knowledge of their fate a secret.It is well understood that, when the unfortunate victims, hadonce left the Irish harbor from which they set sail, no one everheard of them again; and, if the parents still lived in the oldcountry, they were left to their conjectures as to the probablesituation of their children in the new.

Sir William Petty says that "of boys and girls alone "-exclusive,consequently, of men and women-" six thousand were thustransplanted; but the total number of Irish sent to perish inthe tobacco-islands, as they were called, was estimated in someIrish accounts at one hundred thousand."

The "Irish accounts" may have been exaggerated, but the Englishatoned for this by certainly falling below the mark, as is clearfrom the fact that, according to them, the Commissioners ofIreland required the "supply" for New England alone to come from"the country within twenty miles of Cork, Youghall, Kinsale,Waterford, and Wexford;" that "the hunt lasted four years," andwas carried on with such ardor by the agents of many Englishfirms that those men-catchers employed persons "to delude poorpeople by false pretenses into by-places, and thence they forcedthem on board their ships; that for money sake they were foundto have enticed and forced women from their husbands, andchildren from their parents, who maintained them at school; andthey had not only dealt so with the Irish, but also with theEnglish." For this reason, the order was revoked, and the "hunt"forbidden.

When agents were reduced to such straits after the governmenthad used force, as Henry Cromwell acknowledged, the large extentof country mentioned above must have been well scoured anddepopulated; and certainly a far greater number of victims musthave been secured by all those means combined than is given inthe English accounts. We believe the Irish.

One other source of supply deserves mention. Not only women andchildren, but priests also, were hunted down and shipped off tothe same American plantations; so that persons of every classwhich is held sacred in the eyes of God and man for itscharacter and helplessness, were compelled to emigrate, orrather to undergo the worst possible fate that the imaginationof man can conceive.

In 1656 a general battue for priests took place all over Ireland.The prisons seem to have been filled to overflowing. "On the 3dof May, the governors of the respective precincts were orderedto send them with sufficient guards, from garrison to garrison,to Carrickfergus, to be there put on board of such ships asshould sail with the first opportunity to the Barbadoes. One mayimagine the sufferings of this toilsome journey by the petitionof one of them. Paul Cashin, an aged priest, apprehended atMaryborough, and sent to Philipstown, on the way toCarrickfergus, there fell desperately sick; and, being alsoextremely aged, was in danger of perishing in restraint fromwant of friends and means of relief. On the 27th of August, thecommissioners having ascertained the truth of his petition, theyordered him sixpence a day during his sickness, and (in answer,probably, to this poor prisoner's prayer to be saved fromtransplantation) their order directed that the sixpence shouldbe continued to him in his travel thence (after his recovery) toCarrickfergus, in order to his transplantation to the Barbadoes."— (Cromwellian Settlement.)

In that burning island of the West Indies, deprived of all means,not only of exercising their ministry among others, but even ofpractising their religion themselves, of fulfilling their holyobligation of prayer and sacrifice, these victims of such anatrocious persecution were employed as laborers in the fields:their transplantation had cost money, and the money had to berepaid a hundred-fold by the sweat of their brow.

Ship-loads of them had been discharged on the inhospitable shoreof that island; each with a high calling which he could nolonger carry out; each, therefore, tortured in his soul, withall the sweet or bitter memories of his past life crowding onhis mind, and the dreary prospect spreading before him, to theend of his life, of no change from his rude and slavishoccupation under the burning sun, hearing no voice but that ofthe harsh taskmaster; his eyes saddened and his heart sickenedby the open and daily spectacle of immorality and woe, with noending but the grave.

It seems, however, that these holy men found some means offulfilling their sacred duty as God's ministers, for the inhumantraffic in such slaves as these to the Barbadoes lasted but oneyear. In 1657 it was decreed that this island should no longerbe their place of transportation, but, instead, the desolateisles of Arran, opposite the entrance to the bay of Galway, andthe isle of Innisboffin, off the coast of Connemara. Mr.Prendergast thinks that this change of policy in their regardmay have been caused by the price of their transportation, whichprobably mounted to a high aggregate sum. But he must bemistaken. They certainly cost no more than women and children,and their labor in the West Indies surely covered this expense.The reason for the change is more plainly visible in the natureof the site substituted for the Barbadoes as their place ofexile. The "holy isles" of Arran and the isle of Innisboffinwere then, as now, bare of every thing—almost of inhabitants.The priests could be there kept as in a prison, and, though theymight be of no profit to their masters, they could not hear avoice or see a face other than those of their fellow-captives.In the West India islands there existed an already thickpopulation, and the very women and children who had beentransported thither before them would be consoled by theirministry, though practised by stealth, and strengthened in theirfaith, which might thus have not only been kept alive among them,but spread over the whole country.

Who can say if the faith, preserved among the many Irish livingin the island until quite recently, was not owing to theirexhortations?

"The first Irish people who found permanent homes in America,"says Thomas D'Arcy McGee, "were certain Catholic patriotsbanished by Oliver Cromwell to Barbadoes. . . . In this island,as in the neighboring Montserrat, the Celtic language wascertainly spoken in the last century,1 (1 The Celtic language—that sure sign of Catholicity—was not only spoken there lastcentury, but is still to-day. The writer himself heard last year(1871), from two young American seamen, who had just returnedfrom a voyage to this island, that the negro porters and whitelongshoremen who load and unload the ships in the harbor, knowscarcely any other language than the Irish, so that often thecrews of English vessels can only communicate with them by signs.)and perhaps it is partly attributable to this early Irishcolonization, that Barbadoes became 'one of the most populousislands in the world.' At the end of the seventeenth century, itwas reported to contain twenty thousand inhabitants."

Although Barbadoes is the chief island concerned in the presentconsiderations, nevertheless nearly all the British coloniesthen existing in America, received their share of thisemigration. Several ship-loads of the exiles were certainly sentto New England, at the very time that New-Englanders wereearnestly invited by the British Government to "come and plantIreland;" Virginia, too, paid probably with tobacco for theyoung men and maidens sent there as slaves. The "Thurloe StatePapers" disclose the fact that one thousand boys and onethousand girls, taken in Ireland by force, were dispatched toJamaica, lately added to the empire of England by Admiral Penn,father of the celebrated Quaker founder of Pennsylvania.

Thus, then, began the first extensive emigration of the Irish tovarious parts of British America—a movement quite compulsory,which in our days has become voluntary, and is productive of thewonders soon to claim our attention.

The involuntary emigration of soldiers and clergymen to theContinent of Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies, was, as has been seen, the cause of great advantagesto Ireland, and became, in the designs of a merciful Providence,a powerful means of drawing good from evil. At first sight, itseems impossible to discover a similar advantage in this othermost involuntary emigration to the plantations of America.

A pagan has declared that "there is no spectacle more gratefulto the eyes of God than a just man struggling with adversity;"and where, except in the first ages of Christianity, could moreinnocent victims, and a more cruel persecution, be witnessed?

After the horrors of a civil war, horrors unparalleled perhapsin the annals of modern nations, the children and young peopleof both sexes are hunted down over an area of several Irishcounties, dragged in crowds to the seaports, and there jammed inthe holds of small, uncomfortable, slow-going vessels. Whatthose children must have been may be easily imagined from thespecimens of the race before us to-day. We do not speak of theirbeauty and comeliness of form, on which a Greek writer of theage of Pericles might have dilated, and found a subject worthyof his pen; we speak of their moral beauty, their simplicity,purity, love of home, attachment to their family, and God, evenin their tenderest age. We meet them scattered over the broadsurface of this country—boys and girls of the same race, comingfrom the same counties, chiefly from sweet Wexford, thebeautiful, calm, pious south of Ireland. Who but a monster couldthink of harming those pure and affectionate creatures, somodest, simple, and ready to trust and confide in every one theymeet? And what could be said of those maidens, now so well knownin this New World, of whom to speak is to praise, whom to see isto admire? Such were the victims selected by the Bristol firms,by "Lord" Henry Cromwell, Governor-General of Ireland, or byLord Thurloe, secretary and mouth-piece of the "Protector." Theywere to be violently torn from their parents and friends, fromevery one they knew and loved, to be condemned, after survivingthe horrible ocean-passage of those days, the boys to work onsugar and tobacco plantations, the girls to lead a life of shamein the harems of Jamaica planters!

Such of them as were sent North, were to be distributed amongthe "saints" of New England, to be esteemed by the said "saints"as "idolaters," "vipers," "young reprobates," just objects of"the wrath of God;" or, if appearing to fall in with their newand hard task-masters, to be greeted with words of dubiouspraise as "brands snatched from the burning," "vessels ofreprobation," destined, perhaps, by a due imitation of the"saints," to become some day "vessels of election," in the meantime to be unmercifully scourged by both master and mistresswith the "besom of righteousness" probably, at the slightestfault or mistake.

Such was the sorrowful prospect held out to them; there was nopossibility of escape, no hope of going back to the only countrythey loved. In the South they soon, very soon, sank into anobscure grave. In the North a prolonged life was only aprolongation of torment. For, who among them could ever think ofbecoming a "convert?" They had been taken from their island-homewhen over twelve years of age; they had already received fromtheir mothers and hunted priests a religious education, whichhappily could never be effaced; they were to bury in theirhearts all their lives long the conviction of their holy faith,supported by the only hope they now had, the hope of heaven.

Could the eyes of God, looking down over the earth, and markingin all places with deep pity his erring children, find soulsmore worthy of his vast paternal love? Can we imagine that theears of Heaven were deaf to their prayers poured out unceasinglyall those long days and nights of trials and of tears? Can weread in the designs of Providence the blessed decrees which suchscenes called forth? Blind that we are, unable often to judgerightly of our own thoughts, often an enigma to ourselves, howshall we dare to judge of what is so far above us? No Christianat least can pretend that all those miseries, accumulated on theheads of so many innocent victims, had no other object than tomake them suffer. Ireland will yet profit by all the merits,unknown and untold, gained by so many thousand human hearts andsouls and bodies given over to misfortunes which baffleexpression.

And as yet we have said nothing of those cargos of priestsshipped from Carrickfergus to Barbadoes, and afterward to Arranand Innisboffin. Deprived of all means of making their newcountry in America a witness of Catholic prayer and worship—notone of them probably being able to offer the holy sacrifice evenfor a single day, nor administer any sacrament unless perhapsthat of penance-by stealth; not one dared open his mouth andpreach the truth publicly to all. What could they do? Theyoffered the sacrifice of themselves; the very sight of thempossessed almost the virtue of a sacrament, and their livespreached a sermon more eloquent than any of those which entrancethe vastest audience of a solemn cathedral.

No! the first emigration of 'the Irish to America was notunfruitful in its results. And were we to attribute the greatprogress made by Catholicity on the American Continent in thepresent age to the merits of those numerous victims ofpersecution, who could prove us to be in error, and say thatbetween the sufferings of innocence in the seventeenth and theglorious success of their countrymen in the nineteenth centurythere is no connection? The old phrase of Tertullian, "Sanguismartyrum, sem*n Christianorum," has been proved true too oftenin the annals of the Catholic Church to be falsified in this oneinstance; yet, if what our days witness be not the result offormer sufferings and sacrifices, those trials were barren, andare consequently inexplicable. Every cause must have its effect;and it is a truth which no Christian can hesitate to admit, thatthe most efficacious source of blessings is the tear of theinnocent, the anguish of the pure of heart, the humble prayer ofthe persecuted servant of God.

When we come to speak of the emigration of the race to theAmerican Continent, which is now in progress, the stupendousfacts which will make our narrative and excite our admirationmust be regarded and accounted for from a religious and Catholicstand point, and we shall then be able to refer to this firstand apparently barren emigration. Many losses, spiritual as wellas temporal, may stagger the unreflecting, particularly when thewhole designs of Providence are as yet scarcely in theirinceptive stage; but the more they are developed before our eyes,the more the truth is made clear; every difficulty vanishes;and the soul of the beholder exclaims "Yes, God is truly wiseand merciful!"

But it is time at last to enter on the consideration of what weesteem the first great issue involved in the resurrection ofIreland, namely, all the probable consequences of the presentemigration, which is the true point we are aiming at, as ourpurpose is to show the benefit that Ireland has already derived,and is sure to derive later on, from that incessant flow of thegreat human wave starting from her shore to oversweep vastcontinents and islands of the sea. What aid will it afford toher own resurrection at home, in order to render that completeand lasting? This may be said to have been our main object inwriting these pages; for, although it may be impressive enoughfor those who regard the subject attentively, and although itwill certainly be a source of wonder to those who come after us,nevertheless it fails to strike as it ought the great mass ofbeholders.

Often in the history of nations, while the mightiest revolutionsare in progress, they are scarcely perceptible to the actors inthem; all their circ*mstances, their most active and effectiveoperations, being like the silent workings of Nature, scarcelysensible to those around, until the end comes and the greatresult is achieved; then history records the event as onefraught with the greatest blessings, or misfortunes, to mankind.So will it be, we have no doubt, with that strange concatenationof small domestic facts which now form the universal phenomenonof all English-speaking countries: the spread of the Irisheverywhere.

What were its beginnings? Nothing at all. What good effectsfollowed it? None perceptible for a long time. These tworeflections claim our attention first, for we must study thephenomenon, in all its circ*mstances and bearings.

This new emigration we call voluntary, to distinguish it fromthe first, which was forced upon large portions of the Irishrace. But, in reality, the Irish undertook it at the beginningwith reluctance; the intolerable state of existence which theywere compelled to undergo in their own land acting upon themwith a kind of moral compulsion amounting to an almostirresistible force. For it was either the famine or persecutionof the century preceding which first drove them to emigrate.

Necessity of expansion is a great characteristic of their race,an instinctive impulse which three thousand years ago carried apart of it into the heart of Asia. But this particular branchhad been rooted to the soil for so many centuries, by the sternnecessity of repelling a series of successive invasions, thatthis great characteristic appeared for a long time to be totallyextinct in it. They seemed neither to know nor care any more forforeign countries; and no race in Europe, from the ninth to theeighteenth century, showed itself so completely wedded to thesoil, and incapable of the thought of spreading abroad.

At last they began to move. And what was the first origin of thenew movement? No one can say precisely. Only, in variousaccounts of occurrences taking place in the island during thelast century, we occasionally meet with such entries as thefollowing by Matthew O'Connor, in his "Irish Catholics:"

"The summer of 1728 was fatal. The heart of the politician wassteeled against the miseries of the Catholics; their numberexcited his jealousy. Their decrease by the silent waste offamine must have been a source of secret joy; but the Protestantinterest was declining in a proportionate degree by the ravagesof starvation. . .

"Thousands of Protestants took shipping in Belfast for the WestIndies. . . . The policy that would starve the Catholics at homewould not deny them the privilege of flight."

This is the first mention of emigration, on any extensive scale,which we could find in the records of last century; and, at thetime when the Protestant Irish went to America, where theydoubtless met with congenial minds in the Puritans of NewEngland, the Catholics still turned, as before, to Spain andFrance.

But a new entry in 1762 unfolds a new aspect. This timeCatholics alone are spoken of: "No resource remained to thepeasantry but emigration. The few who had means sought an asylumin the American plantations; such as remained were allowedgenerally an acre of ground for the support of their families,and commonage for a cow, but at rents the most exorbitant."

This is the first instance we meet with of Irish Catholicsemigrating to America, at least in comparatively large bodies.They were no doubt encouraged to take this step by the accountswhich reached them of the success of the Ulster Protestants whohad gone before, and whose posterity is now to be found in theSouth chiefly, as low down as Carolina and Georgia.

But the relative prospects of the Protestants and Catholic wereat that time far from being equally good. The first, driven fromhome by famine, found a land of plenty awaiting them, a genialclimate, perfect toleration of their religious tenets everywhere,and in some districts they gained real political influence.They were received with open arms by the colonists, who wereunable to occupy the land alone, and ready to welcome new fellow-citizens, who would aid them in their contests with the Indians,and add materially to their prosperity and resources. Allpersons and all things then smiled on the new-comer, and withina very short time he found himself possessed of more than he hadever expected. Thus others were induced to follow from the northof Ireland, and famine was no longer the only motive power whichimpelled them to leave their native land. Mr. Bancroft tells usthey were called Scotch-Irish.

On the other hand, the Irish Catholics found a fertile soil andan inviting climate; Nature welcomed them, but man recoiled,inflamed by a bitter hostility against their faith and theirvery name. This feeling of opposition, on both accounts, wasalready fast wearing away in Europe; but the "liberality"springing up in the Old World, owing to a variety ofcirc*mstances, had not yet penetrated into the British coloniesof North America. They were still, in this respect, in the statein which the Revolution of 1688 had left them: Catholicity wasproscribed everywhere, and the penal laws of the Old World wereattempted to be enforced in the New, as far as the differentstate of the country would permit. A few details, taken mainlyfrom Mr. Bancroft's history, will give us a tolerably exact ideaof the situation in which the newly-arrived Irish Catholic foundhimself in that future land of liberty.

The consequences of the downfall of James II. were soon fullyaccepted by the British colonies, throughout which changes ofgreater or less degree took place in the laws, not only withoutany great opposition, but in the main with the full applause ofall parties. The Stuart dynasty was thrown over more easily inAmerica than it had been in the British Isles.

It is universally admitted that one of the greatest consequencesof that downfall was the renewed persecution of Catholics inEngland and Ireland. In the words of Mr. Bancroft:

"The Revolution of 1688, narrow in its principles, imperfect inits details, frightfully intolerant toward Catholics, forms anera in the liberty of England and of mankind."

It will be no surprise, then, on coming to review the variouscolonies, to find the oppression of the Catholic Church commonto all without one exception.

Beginning with the South, we find the new governor of SouthCarolina, Archdale, a Quaker, and, on that account, personallywell disposed toward all, desirous of showing that a Quakercould respect the faith of a "Papist," commencing hisadministration by sending back to the Spanish Governor ofFlorida four Indian converts of the Spanish priests, who wereexposed as slaves for sale in Carolina. He likewise enfranchisedthe Huguenots of South Carolina, who, up to this time, had beenkept under by the High Church oligarchy. Yet, when he came tourge the adoption of liberal measures toward all in the state,the colonial Legislature consented to confer liberty ofconscience on all Christians, with the exception of "Papists."

In North Carolina, the Church of England was actually made thestate Church, in 1704, and the Legislature enacted that "no onewho would not take the oath prescribed by law should hold aplace of trust in the colony."

Of Virginia, Spotswood, the governor, could write to England, in1711: "This government is in perfect peace and tranquillity,under a due obedience to royal authority, and a gentlemanlyconformity to the Church of England."

Of Maryland, Mr. Bancroft writes that the English Revolution wasa Protestant revolution.

"A convention of the associates 'for the defence of theProtestant religion' assumed the government, and, in an addressto King William, denounced the influence of the Jesuits, theprevalence of popish idolatry, the connivance by the previousgovernment at murders of Protestants, and the danger from plotswith the French and Indians."

Hence, a little farther on, we read: "The Roman Catholics alonewere left without an ally, exposed to English bigotry andcolonial injustice. They alone were disfranchised on the soilwhich, long before Locke pleaded for toleration, or Penn forreligious freedom, they had chosen, not as their own asylum only,but, with Catholic liberality, as the asylum of everypersecuted sect. In the land which Catholics had opened forProtestants, the Catholic inhabitant was the sole victim toAnglican intolerance. Mass might not be said publicly. NoCatholic priest or bishop might utter his faith in a voice ofpersuasion. No Catholic might teach the young. If the waywardchild of a Papist would but become an apostate, the law wrestedfor him from his parents a share of their property. Thedisfranchisem*nt of the proprietary related to his creed, not tohis family. Such were the methods adopted 'to prevent the growthof Popery.'"

Mr. Bancroft adds with much truth and force: "Who shall say thatthe faith of the cultivated individual is firmer than the faithof the common people? Who shall say that the many are fickle,that the chief is firm? To recover the inheritance of authority,Benedict, the son of the proprietary, renounced the CatholicChurch for that of England; the persecution never crushed thefaith of the humble colonists."

Pennsylvania appears to form an exception to that universalanimosity against Catholics. It is said that, owing to WilliamPenn, "religious liberty was established, and every publicemployment was open to every man professing faith in JesusChrist. . . . In Pennsylvania human rights were respected: thefundamental law of William Penn, even his detractors concede,was in harmony with universal reason, and true to the ancientand just liberties of the people."

Such may have been the written law—the theory; but the law asexecuted—the fact—was far from realizing those fine promises.As late as the end of the Revolutionary War, the Catholics ofPhiladelphia were compelled to hide away their worship in asmall chapel, surrounded by buildings whose only access was adark and winding alley still in existence a few years back.

It is known, moreover, that Penn himself, in 1708, forbade massto be celebrated in the colony. According to T. D. McGee,Governor Gordon, in 1734, prohibited the erection of a Catholicchurch in Walnut Street; and, in 1736, a private house havingbeen purchased at the corner of Second and Chestnut streets forthe same object, it was again prohibited.

New Jersey showed her liberality in the form sacred to all theother colonies: "Liberty of conscience was granted to all butpapists."

There was as yet no hom*ogeneity in New York, the Dutch stillpreserving great power, and, consequently, "the idea oftoleration was still imperfect in New Netherlands; equalityamong religious sects was unknown." If this was the case withseveral Protestant organizations, what must it have been withthe Catholics? It is well known that no one dared openly avowhis faith in the true Church, and that John Ury was hanged in1741 for being a priest, though whether he was a priest or notis still a question.

Rhode Island had proclaimed in the beginning "entire freedom ofmind;" but, after the Revolution of 1688, the colony"interpolated into the statute-book the exclusion of papistsfrom the established equality."

The spirit of Connecticut is well expressed in the words of theaddress sent by the colony to King William of Orange, on hisaccession: "Great was the day when the Lord who sitteth upon thefloods did divide his and your adversaries like the waters ofJordan, and did begin to magnify you like Joshua, by thedeliverance of the English dominions from popery and slavery."We wonder how the taciturn Hollander received this effusion ofConnecticut? There is nothing more to add on the situation ofthe Catholics in the land of the "blue laws."

In Massachusetts it will be no surprise to hear that "every formof Christianity, except the Roman Catholic, was enfranchised."

This short sketch is eloquent enough with reference to theposition in which the poor Irish immigrant found himself onlanding on the shores of the New World. His faith he foundproscribed as severely almost as in his own country. He wascompelled to conceal it; and, even had he been free to make openprofession of it, he could find no minister of his creedtolerated anywhere. The country was a perfect blank as far asthe ceremonies of his religion went. In his native land he knewwhere to find a priest; he was advised of the day and of theprecise place where he might assist at the sacred mysteries ofhis religion; and, were it in the cave or on the mountain-top,in the bog or the morass, he knew that there he could adore andreceive his God as truly and as worthily as in the magnificentdomes looking proudly to heaven under Catholic skies. But inBritish North America, except in a few counties of Maryland,where the true faith had once been openly planted and taken root,where some clergymen of his own creed were even still to befound, though forced to conceal, or at least not exposethemselves too freely, he knew that elsewhere it was useless forhim to inquire, not only for a sacred edifice where he might goto thank his God on landing, but even to look for a priestshould he find himself at the point of death.

At the present day it is almost impossible to give any detailsand move the reader by a picture of the complete spiritualdestitution of the Irish immigrant in his new home. Here andthere, however, we meet, in reading, facts apparentlyinsignificant in themselves, which at first sight seem to haveno connection whatever with the subject on hand, yet which, withthe aid of reflection, throw quite a flood of light on it, asconvincing as it is unexpected. Take, for instance, thefollowing:

"In the last year of the administration of Andros inMassachusetts," says Mr. Bancroft, "the daughter of John Goodwin,a child of thirteen years, charged a laundress with havingstolen linen from the family. Glover, the mother of thelaundress, a friendless immigrant, almost ignorant of English,like a true woman, with a mother's heart, rebuked the falseaccusation. Immediately, the girl, to secure revenge, becamebewitched. The infection spread. Three others of the family, theyoungest a boy of less than five years old, soon succeeded inequally arresting public attention. . . . Cotton Mather went topray by the side of one of them, and, lo! the child lost herhearing till prayer was over. What was to be done? The fourministers of Boston and the one of Charlestown assembled inGoodwin's house, and spent a whole day of fasting in prayer. Inconsequence, the youngest child, the little one of five yearsold, was 'delivered.' But if the ministers could thus by prayer'deliver' a possessed child, there must have been a witch. Thehonor of the ministers required a prosecution of the affair; andthe magistrates, William Stoughton being one, with a 'vigor'which the united ministers commended as 'just,' made 'adiscovery of the wicked instrument of the devil.' The culpritwas evidently a wild Irishwoman, of a strange tongue. Goodwin,who made the complaint, 'had no proof that could have done herany hurt;' but the 'scandalous old hag,' whom some thought'crazed in her intellectuals,' was bewildered, and made strangeanswers, which were taken as confessions, sometimes, inexcitement, using her native dialect. . . . It was plain theprisoner was a Roman Catholic; she had never learned the Lord'sPrayer in English; she could repeat the Pater Noster fluentlyenough, but not quite correctly; so, the ministers and Goodwin'sfamily had the satisfaction of getting her condemned as a witchand executed."

The position of this poor woman, who had never openly declaredherself a Catholic, but which fact the people were led to inferfrom various circ*mstances, expresses the condition of all Irishimmigrants at the time. A further fact recorded by the samehistorian shows what the feeling toward Catholics was at thetime in Massachusetts:

"The girl, who knew herself to be a deceiver, had no remorse,and to the ministers it never occurred that vanity and love ofpower had blinded their judgment."

The reason was plain: Glover was a Catholic. How could the girlbe expected to feel remorse for having brought about her death?How could the ministers feel the least concern because their"vanity and love of power" had effected the hanging of such acreature?—"a vessel of wrath," in any case; a "predestinedreprobate," beyond doubt, whose ignominious death on earth andeternal punishment afterward were "a true source of joy inheaven and an increase of glory for the infinite justice of God," if there was any truth in Calvinism.

Another fact, as suggestive as the above, is found in McGee's"Irish Settlers in America:" "The first Catholic church that wefind in Pennsylvania, after Penn's suppression of them in 1708,was connected with the house of a Miss Elizabeth McGauley, anIrish lady, who, with several of her tenantry, settled on landon the road leading from Nicetown to Frankfort. Near the site ofthis ancient sanctuary stood a tomb, inscribed, 'John MichaelBrown, ob. 15th December, A. D. 1750. R. I. P.' He had been apriest residing there incognito."

Miss E. McGauley was not poor, like Glover. On coming to Americawith some of her tenantry, she secured herself beforehandagainst the difficulty of practising her religion; and, knowingwell that no priest was to be found in the country, she broughtone with her. All the remainder of his life did this minister ofGod reside in her house incognito, keeping the ministryintrusted to him for the service of all a profound secret. Henever attempted, probably, to enlighten his prejudiced andignorant neighbors; the knowledge of his character and thebenefits arising from his presence were confined to the lady ofthe house and her faithful tenantry. Even after his death thesecret was still kept, and only the cabalistic characters "R. I.P." remain to tell an intelligent reader that he was neitherQuaker nor Protestant; and, probably, tradition alone, preserveddoubtless in the neighborhood, could assure us that he was apriest.

How many Catholics scattered over the broad colony ofPennsylvania, immigrants like Miss McGauley, but unlike her intheir poverty, and therefore unable to hire a clergyman, neverknew that they might unburden their consciences and enjoy theconsolations of their religion, by travelling a hundred miles orso to the house "on the road leading from Nicetown toFrankfort?" How many lived and died within a short distance, andnever knocked at the door, owing to their ignorance of the classof inmates? Thus, although there were some ministers of God inthe country, their number was so small, and they were so fardistant from each other, that their labors were utterlyunavailing for the great body of the Catholic immigrants, whowould have rejoiced to throw themselves at their feet, and easetheir hearts and purify their souls by confession.

Some Irishmen, it is true, had emigrated before such concealmentwas requisite, in Maryland at least, where an asylum for all hadbeen opened by Lord Baltimore, a Catholic. Thus, the Carrollshad settled in Prince George County. They were at liberty tomake open use of the services of the English fathers of theSociety of Jesus, who for a long time officiated undisguisedlyamong their English Catholic flocks; but, as was seen, after theRevolution of 1688, Catholics were disfranchised in Marylandeven, their religious rites proscribed, and penalties enactedagainst the open profession of their worship.

Thus, concealment became a necessity, there also; the policy ofkeeping the existence of clergymen and the celebration of theholy mysteries secret had to be adopted there as in othercolonies. The Carroll family, like Miss Elizabeth McGauley, gaverefuge in their house to a minister of their own religion, andit was in such a chapel-house that John Carroll was born, on the8th of January, 1735—the first Bishop and Archbishop ofBaltimore.

It is therefore no matter for wonder that the number of childrenof the Church in North America did not increase in proportion tothe number of Catholic immigrants; on the contrary, theposterity of the majority of those who chose the Britishcolonies, for their home was lost to her. The immigrantsthemselves, we are confident, never lost their faith. Althoughliving for years without any exterior help, without receiving aword of instruction or advice, without the celebration of anyreligious rite whatever, or the reception of any sacrament, yet,faith was too deeply rooted in their minds and hearts to be evereradicated, or shaken even.

But, though they themselves clung fast to their faith in themidst of so many adverse circ*mstances, what of their children?

There is no doubt that many of them did, individually, everything possible to transmit that faith to their children; but allthey could do was to speak privately, to warn then againstdangers, and set up before them the example of a blameless life.Not only was there no priest to initiate them into the mysteries,granted by Christ to the redeemed soul; there was not even aCatholic school-master to instruct them. Even the "hedge-school"could not be set on foot. Books were unknown; Catholicl*terature, in the modern sense, had not yet been born; therewas no vestige of such a thing beyond, perhaps, an occasionalold, worn, and torn, yet dearly-prized and carefully-concealedprayer-book, dating from the happy days of the Confederation ofKilkenny.

There is no reason, then, for surprise in the fact that,although the families of those first Irish settlers werenumerous and scattered over all the district which afterwardbecame the Middle and Southern States, only a faint traditionremained among many of them that they really belonged to the oldChurch and "ought to be Catholics." How often was this the casethirty years ago, particularly in the South!

It would not be right to conclude that all this was a pure andunmitigated loss to the Church of Christ. Later on, we shallhave to speak of more numerous and serious losses: but a fewwords on this first one may not be thrown away.

As in the material world an infinite number of germs are lost,and quantities of seeds, wafted on the breeze from giant treesand humble plants, fall and perish on a barren rock, in theeddies of a swift-running brook, or, oftener still, on the hardand unkind soil on which they have happened to alight; so that,out of a thousand germs, a few only find every thing congenialto their growth, and attain to the full size allotted them byNature —nevertheless, despite this loss, the species is notonly preserved, but so multiplied as to produce on the beholder,in after-time, the impression that, not only no loss has beensustained, but that much has been gained. So is it with theCatholic Church in general, and in particular with the momentousevents now being considered.

The cultivated field of the "father of the family" was about tobe extended over a new and vast area. A whole continent was tobe "fenced around," and "olive-trees," and "fig-trees," and allplants useful and ornamental, were destined to flourish in thatvast garden to the end of time. The great and eternal Father was,by his providence, directing the mighty operation from above,and marking the various points of the compass to which thefloating germs were to be wafted. He knew that he was planting anew garden for his Son, who would, as usual, be the firsthusbandman, and employ many workmen to help him.

How could it be expected that all would be gain without loss,when the harvest-time had not yet arrived, and the "enemy" wasbusy sowing "tares" in all directions? Was not the work human aswell as divine? and, as human, did not the work partake of theimperfection of human things?

The continent had evidently been predestined to form one of thestrongest branches of the great Catholic tree. Discovered beforethe modern heresies of Protestantism had shown themselves, itwas to bring into the fold of Christ new nations, when some oldones were to be cut off and wither away. This has long ago beenpointed out; but another mighty design of Providence there waswhich only now begins to show itself.

Columbus was in search of Asia and the holy sepulchre when hestumbled on the New World. Nor was the idea of his great mindaltogether a delusion. The new continent was in future ages tobe used as the highway from Europe to the Orient; China, Japan,India, vast regions filled with innumerable multitudes of humanbeings, had, so far, scarcely been touched, could scarcely betouched, by Catholicism coming from Europe. In fact it was toofar away, and the means of intercommunication were tooinadequate. The holy Catholic Church increases as "things whichgrow;" a few husbandmen—missionaries—are required to set thefirst seedlings and plants in the soil, to water them, watchover them, and see that they thrive and flourish; the rest ofthe process is a matter of seeds wafted by the wind, falling andtaking root in a fertile soil, which has been already preparedfor their reception. If there were no other means of propagationthan the toil and sweat of the husbandman, how long would ittake to cover the whole earth with vegetation? The firstpropagation of Christianity was done in this way; hence it tookmore than ten centuries to Christianize Europe. In the fifthcentury, Rome was still thoroughly pagan. Were the vast regionsof that dim, far-away East to undergo a similar slow and painfulprocess, necessitating an immense amount of labor, centuries andcenturies in duration? God hastened the process by adding to itthe wafting of seeds, and America was to be the vast nurseryfrom which those seeds were to come. It was from that long andalternately widening and narrowing belt of land, running downthe sea from north to south, that the Japhetic race was toinvade the "tents of Sem."

Thus was the dream of Columbus to be realized. Asia would bereached by Europe, of which America would form a part. The eastof Asia would become contiguous to a real European population,large masses of which would easily come in contact with theMongolian and Malay races of their immediate neighborhood, steamand modern improvements in travel reducing the interveningdistance to a matter of a few days. Thus the Japhetic movementcould be carried out on a large scale, and European civilizationcome to supersede the obsolete manners of those old and effeteraces of Eastern Asia. The unity of mankind would be vindicatedagainst its blasphemers; and, to crown the whole, Christianitywould find its way back to the cradle of man, then, to its ownbirthplace, Calvary and the sepulchre of Christ. Thus would theconjectural vision of the great Genoese become only anexplanation of the old prophecy of the second father of mankind.1(1 The reader will understand that all this is merely "a view," and not given as a pure interpretation of Scripture or pasthistory.)

Thus would the Church at last become rigorously Catholic, andnot as some theologians imagined, in their desire to make actual,incomplete facts coincide with a far wider theory, onlyCatholic by approximation.

If it were allowed us to read the designs of Providencereverently, we might say, without presumption, that it seemssuch is to be future history, although simple conjecture mayproduce too strong an impression on our minds. But, at theperiod of which we speak, shortly after the middle of the lastcentury, any one who would have spoken thus would have beenjustly deemed a visionary. The south of America, thoughpossessed of the true religion, seemed inert; the North wasalready showing signs of an intense future activity, but allopposed to the truth. God was about to change those appearances,and, by infusing the Irish element into the North, produce, in acomparatively short space of time, the wonderful phenomenonwhich we witness.

Yet, so short-sighted are we, that some are almost staggered intheir faith, because the children of the earliest Irishemigrants to this country, were apparently lost to the Church.

Nevertheless, several circ*mstances might be brought forward toshow that a real gain accrued to the Church from these lostchildren of the first Irish settlers. How many prejudices, sodeeply rooted in the country as to seem ineradicable, owe theirdestruction to them! How many harsh and uncharitable feelingsagainst Catholics were smoothed away or softened down by theirinstrumentality!

Those men who, in after-life, remembered that they "ought to beCatholics," were not ready to accept, on the word of a "minister,"all the absurd calumnies spread against the Church throughoutthose vast regions. They had heard, by a kind of tradition, keptalive in their families, of what their ancestors had formerlysuffered, and they at least were not inclined to join in theuniversal denunciation of a creed which they were conscious"ought to be" their own.

Who shall say whether it is not the old Catholic blood, runningin the veins of these children of Irish Catholic parents, whichhas been mainly instrumental in creating that spirit of trueliberality which inspires the honorable conduct of the majorityof the American people, and in which the Church has at all timesfound her safety?

It is certain that there is a vast difference between thatAmerican spirit and the atmosphere of distrust pervading othercountries, and that the rapid spread of the Church throughoutthe broad regions of the Union has been singularly favored bythe soft breeze of a liberal and kindly feeling so common tothose even who are not born within the fold. And that thechildren of Irish parents, themselves lost to the Church, haveexercised great influence from the start, in that regard, cannot,we think, be denied.

But, perhaps, too much space has been devoted to that firstemigration from Ireland; it is time to come to a more recentperiod of which there are more certain and positive accounts.

There is no need to speak of the happy change effected in theposition of the Catholic Church in America by the Revolution;Washington, in his reply to the address of the Catholics of thecountry, has given expression to the feelings of the nation interms so well known that they require no comment.

From that date commences the real history of the Catholic Churchin North America, outside of the provinces originally settled bythe French and Spaniards. The influx of Irish immigrants nowattracts our chief attention.

From the year 1800, when the "Union" was effected betweenEngland and Ireland, the number of immigrants increased suddenlyand rapidly, and the situation of the new-comers on theirarrival was very different from that of their predecessors. Theyfound liberty not only proclaimed, but established; few churchesindeed, but, such as there were, known and open, and a bishopand clergymen already practising their ministry.

Before entering upon the extent, nature, and effects of thissecond Irish immigration—which may be studied from documentsexisting—it will be well to say a few words on the elementswhich constituted the Catholic body when first organized. We areconcerned, it is true, with the new element introduced by thegreat movement of which we begin to speak; but we are far fromundervaluing other sources of life, which not only affected theChurch at its birth in the United States, but have continued toact upon her ever since with more or less of energy. The readershould not imagine that, by not speaking of them, we are unjustor blind to their efficiency; they simply lie without the scopeof our plan.

In the North the French, and in the South the Spanishmissionaries, had imparted to Catholicity a vitality which couldnot be extinguished; but its operations were almost entirelyconfined to limits outside those which circ*mscribe the field ofour investigations. The French element, however, grew intoprominence even at the outset within those limits, eitherthrough the acquisition of Louisiana, or in consequence of theFrench immigration during the terrible revolution of lastcentury. It is only necessary to open the pages of Mr. R. H.Clarke's recently-published "Lives of the American Bishops," tobe struck with the importance of that element. It may be saidthat, for the first twenty-five years of the republic, Frenchprelates and clergymen, together with several AmericanMarylanders, were intrusted with the care of the infant Church.Ireland seems to have had scarcely any office to fulfil in thatgreat work, save through the humble exertions of a few devotedbut almost unknown missionaries; so that, when bishops of Irishbirth were first chosen, they were either taken from Irelanditself, as was Dr. England, Bishop Kelly, of Richmond, orConwell, of Philadelphia, or from the monasteries of Rome, aswere Bishops Connolly and Concanen, of New York. Bishop Egan, ofPhiladelphia, can scarcely be called an exception, as he hadonly spent a very few years in this country when he was elevatedto the episcopal dignity. The German element showed itself onlyin Pennsylvania.

It was under circ*mstances such as these that that stream ofdesolate people began to flow, spreading gradually throughimmense regions, and bringing with it only its unconquerablefaith.

From the "mustard-seed" a noble tree was to spring up; but asyet it was only a weak sapling. In 1785, Bishop Carroll made anestimate of the Catholic population of the States: "In Maryland,seventeen thousand; in Pennsylvania, over seven thousand; and,as far as information could be obtained, in other States, aboutfifteen hundred." New York City could not yet boast of a hundredCatholics.

Like all things durable and mighty, the first swelling of thatgreat wave was slow and silent, and scarcely perceptible, untillittle by little the ripple spread over the vast ocean.

The first apparent causes have been well expressed by T. D.McGee, in his "Irish Settlers:" "The breaking out of the FrenchWar in 1793, and the degrading legislative Union of 1800, haddeprived many of bread, and all of liberty at home, and made themechanical as well as the agricultural class embark to cross theAtlantic.

"Hitherto the Irish had colonized, sowed and reaped, fought,spoken, and legislated in the New World, if not always inproportion to their numbers, yet always to the measure of theireducational resources. Now they are about to plant a new emblem --the Cross—and a new institution—the Church—throughout theAmerican Continent. For, the faith of their fathers they did notleave behind them; nay, rather, wheresoever six Irish roof-treesrise, there you will find the cross of Christ reared over all,and Celtic piety and Celtic enthusiasm, all sighs and tears,kneeling before it."

Let us look at a few particular signs of the coming of thisgreat wave in its first scarcely perceptible movement.

"John Timon was born at Conewago, Pennsylvania, February 12,1797, and baptized on the 17th of the same month; his parents,James Timon and Margaret Leddy, had quite recently arrived inthis country from Ireland, and were from Belturbet, County Cavan.A family of ten children, of whom John was the second son,blessed the Catholic household of these pious parents."—(Livesof American Bishops.)

"Francis Xavier Gartland was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1805;he came to America, while yet a child, and made his studies atMount St. Mary's, Emmettsburg."—(Ibid.)

"John B. Fitzpatrick was born in Boston, November 1, 1812. Hisparents emigrated from Ireland, and settled in Boston in 1805."—(Ibid.)

What did the parents of the future bishop find on their arrivalat Boston? In the year previous, the first Catholic congregationwas assembled in that city by the Abbe La Poitre, a French navy-chaplain, who had remained in America after the departure of theFrench fleet, which rendered such powerful assistance in thestruggle for American independence. In 1808, four years beforethe birth of him who was destined to wear the mitre, theCatholics had obtained the old "French Church" in School Street,which was probably a Calvinist meeting house.

Another wavelet of a precious kind was the following: "BishopLanigan was meditating" (in Ireland) "the establishment of areligious community in the city of Kilkenny, and designed MissAlice Lalor for one of its future members. But, in 1797, herparents emigrated from Ireland and settled in America, and shefelt it to be her duty . . . . to accompany them. But shepromised the bishop to return in two years. On arriving atPhiladelphia, she became acquainted with the Reverend LeonardNeale. . . . Feeling convinced that it was not the design ofProvidence that she should abandon America for Ireland, FatherNeale released her from her promise to return to Kilkenny, inorder that she might become his cooperator in the foundation ofa religious order in the United States (the Visitation Nuns)."—(Ibid.)

Already was the young church robbing the old of some of its bestmembers, who were to give some weight to the Irish element inthis country.

"George A. Carrell was born at Philadelphia. . . . He was theseventh child of his Irish parents, and the house they occupied,and in which he was born, was the old mansion of William Penn,at the corner of Market Street and Letitia Court."— (Ibid.)

Two short observations naturally present themselves here.Philadelphia is the city oftenest mentioned whenever foreignersare spoken of as landing in North America at that time. It wasthen the great harbor of the country, New York not havingattained the preeminence she now enjoys. Hence, the Churchcounted seven thousand children in Pennsylvania; but very fewnorth of that city. Thither came the German Catholics, also, ingreat numbers to spread themselves chiefly West and South. Suchwas the direction then taken by the Catholic wave.

Our second remark only concerns the house in which he who becameBishop Carrell was born. It seemed only fitting that an IrishCatholic family should thus early take possession of the verydwelling-place of the founder of the colony, as the CatholicChurch was destined, through the Irish element chiefly, tosupplant and outlive the little church of the "Friends."

All the facts, however, just quoted are exceptional, and regardonly the select few. What became of the mass, meanwhile? Asusual, history for the most part is silent with regard to it. Avery few words constitute the only record which can afford us aglimpse of the real situation of the vast majority of those poor,friendless, obscure immigrants, on whom, nevertheless, thegreat hopes of the future were built.

We have, happily, some means left us of forming an opinion; andit will be seen that their situation was much the same as thatof their earlier compatriots. For instance, in the "Lives ofAmerican Bishops" we read the following startling story:

"The Abbe Cheverus very frequently made long journeys to conveythe consolations of religion or perform acts of charity. Aboutthis time (1803) he received a letter from two young IrishCatholics confined in Northampton prison, who had been condemnedto death without just cause, as was almost universally believed,imploring him to come to them and prepare them for their sad andcruel fate. He hastened to their spiritual relief, and inspiredthem with the most heroic sentiments and dispositions, whichthey persevered in to the last fatal moment of their execution.According to custom, the prisoners were carried to the nearestchurch, to hear a sermon preached immediately before theirexecution; several Protestant ministers presented themselves topreach the sermon; but the Abbe Cheverus claimed the right toperform that duty, as the choice of the prisoners themselves,and, after much difficulty, he was allowed to ascend the pulpit.His sermon struck all present with astonishment, awe, andadmiration."

Here, in 1803, we have almost a repetition of the death of thepoor woman Glover; and, had it not been for the high characterof the admirable man who hastened to their assistance, those twoyoung Irish Catholics would have had for their only religiouspreparation before death a sermon from one or more Protestantministers; and, as the great and good Cheverus could not beeverywhere in New England, there is little doubt but that suchwas the fate of more than one of the newly-arrived immigrants.

In 1800 and the following years a comparatively large number ofIrishmen landed at New York, and the future terrible scourge oftheir race, ship-fever, soon broke out among them. Dr. Bailey,the father of Mrs.Seton, was Health Physician to the port of NewYork at the time, and he allowed his daughter to visit and dogood among them. She was deeply impressed by the religiousdemeanor of the Irish just landed. The Rev. Dr. White relates inher "Life:" "'The first thing,' she said, 'the poor people didwhen they got their tents was to assemble on the grass, and all,kneeling, adore our Master for his mercy; and every morning sunfinds them repeating their praises.' In a letter to her sister-in-law she describes their sufferings under the 'plague' in thefollowing golden words:

"'Rebecca, I cannot sleep; the dying and the dead possess mymind—babies expiring at the empty breast of their mother. Andthis is not fancy, but the scene that surrounds me. Father saysthat such was never known before; that there are actually twelvechildren that must die from mere want of sustenance, unable totake more than the breast, and from the wretchedness of theirparents deprived of it, as they have laid ill for many days inthe ship, without food, air, or changing. Merciful Father! Oh,how readily would I give them each a turn of my child's treasure,if in my choice! But, Rebecca, they have a provider in heaven,who will soothe the pangs of the suffering innocent.'"

When she wrote the above, Mrs. Seton was not yet professedly aCatholic; but how truly animated with the spirit of the Churchof Christ! Happy would the poor immigrants have been had theyonly met with Protestants of her stamp on landing, and of herfather's, who, although he prevented her becoming foster-motherto those poor children, as her first duty regarded her own child,died himself, a victim to his charity toward their parents,contracting, in the fulfilment of his office, the fever they hadbrought with them, which he was striving to allay!

The following fact, which will conclude this portion of ourinquiry, happened a little later, but, on that very account,will serve as a connecting link with the considerations whichare to follow, and will open our eyes to the real position ofthat already swelling mass of immigrants.

"During the year 1823, Bishop Connolly (of New York) made thevisitation of his entire diocese. . . . He extended his journeyalong the route of the Erie Canal, which was commenced in 1819,where large numbers of Irish laborers had been attracted, andamong whom the bishop labored with indefatigable zeal." At thattime the clergy of the whole diocese consisted of eight priestswith their bishop.

At last we find the "Irish people" at work. The spectacle isfull of sadness; and the only emotion which can fill the heartis one of deep pity. In that vast wilderness of the West, forsuch it then was, along public works extending hundreds of miles,large gangs of men—such is the expression we are compelled touse—are hard at work along that dreary Mohawk River; blastingrocks, digging in the hard clay, uprooting trees, clearing theground of briars, tangled bushes, and the vast quantity ofdebris of animal and vegetable matter accumulated duringcenturies. This was the work which "attracted" large numbers ofIrish laborers. They had left their country, crossed the oceanunder circ*mstances that should come under our notice, andlanded on these (at that time) inhospitable shores, to find work;and they found the occupation just mentioned. We can picturethe "shanties" in which they lived, the harpies who thrived onthem, the innumerable extortions to which they were subjected.Bearing in mind that, in the immense State of New York and inone-half of New Jersey, there were just eight priests with theirbishop, we may form some idea of the way in which they lived anddied.

How they must have blessed this bishop, who had left Rome, hissecond country, and the noble associations which surrounded himin the Eternal City, to come to the succor of his unfortunatecountrymen scattered away in a New World! And well did hedeserve that blessing!

But his passage along the Erie Canal could be nothing more thana veritable passage—a transient sojourn of a few days or weeksat most. What became of those gangs of men after, what hadhappened to them before, no one has said, no one has told us, noone now can ascertain; we are only left to conjecture, and thespectacle, as we said, is too sad to dwell upon.

But, hidden within this melancholy view, lies a great andglorious fact. It was the beginning of an "apostolic mission" onthe part of a whole people, a mission which will form one of themost moving and significant pages of the ecclesiastical historyof the nineteenth century. Every Christian knows that apostolicwork is rough work; the brunt of the battle must be borne by theearliest in the field, that it may be said of their successorsin the words of the Gospel: "Vos in labores eorum introistis."

Such being the hard lot of the immigrants in the interior of thecountry, was that of those who remained in the cities much moreenviable? On this point we are enabled to judge, at least asregards New York. In a letter written by Bishop Dubois, andpublished in vol. viii. of the "Annals of the Propagation of theFaith," we meet with the following exhaustive description:

"At the beginning of this century, the newly-arrived immigrantswere employed as day-laborers, servants, journeymen, clerks, andshopmen. Now, the condition of this class here is precisely thesame as its condition in England; it is entirely dependent uponthe will of the trader: not because by law are they forcedthereto, but because the rich alone, being able to advance thecapital necessary for factories, steam-engines, and workshops,the poor are obliged to work for them upon the masters' ownconditions. These conditions, in the case of servants especially,sometimes degenerate into tyranny; they are frequently forcedto work on Sundays, permission to hear even a low mass beingrefused them; they are obliged betimes to assist at the prayersof the sect to which their masters belong, and they have noother alternative than either to do violence to their conscience,or lose their place at the risk of not finding another. Add tothis the insults, the calumnies against Catholics, which theyare daily forced to hear—a kind of persecution at the hands oftheir masters, who do every thing to turn them away from theirreligion; consider the dangers to which are exposed numbers oforphans who lose their fathers almost immediately upon landing;add to this the want of spiritual succor, a necessaryconsequence of the scarcity of missionaries; and you will have afeeble idea of the obstacles of every kind which we have tosurmount. . . . Supposing an immigrant, the father of a family,to die, the widow and orphans have no other resources but publiccharity; and if a home is found for the children, it is nearlyalways among Protestants, who do every thing in their power toundermine their faith."

This picture of immigrant-life in New York was certainlyrepeated through all the other large cities. Under such acombination of adverse circ*mstances it is most probable thatmen and women of any other nation would have entirely lost theirfaith. Such, then, was the dreary prospect for the new-comers.Who at that time would have dared hope to witness the consolingspectacle which followed soon after? To begin with the dawn ofthat bright day, we must pass on to a new period of immigration,commencing in 1815 or shortly after, and continuing down to the"exodus" of 1846.

It may be well, before entering upon it, to look at the causeswhich drove so many to leave the shores of Ireland. From theyear 1815 the number of immigrants increased considerably andkept on a steady increase until it swelled to the startlingproportions of 1850 and the following years.

It is easy to demonstrate that the causes were twofold: 1. Thewretched state of the vast majority of the Irish at the best oftimes. 2. The periodical famines which have regularly visitedthe island since the beginning of last century. At any time itwas in the power of the English to remedy both causes byeffecting certain changes in the existing laws. The first ofthese is evidently the necessary result of the penal laws whichhad converted the Irish, designedly and with the wilful intentof the legislators, into a nation of paupers. The second canonly be the result of the laws affecting the tenure of land andthe trade and manufactures of the country.

To attribute the pauperism which now seems a part and parcel ofthe Irish nation while in their own country to the indolence andwant of foresight on the part of the natives themselves, as itis a fashion with English writers to do, is wilfully to closethe eyes to two very important things: their past history intheir own land, and their present history outside of it.

As to their past history in their own land, it is an establishedfact that pauperism was unknown in the island, until Protestantlegislators introduced it by their confiscations and laws withthe manifest intent of destroying, rooting out, or driving awaythe race. What has been previously stated on this point cannotbe gainsaid; and it suffices for the vindication of a falsely-accused people. There might be some hope for a speedier andhappier solution of the vexed "Irish difficulty" did thegrandsons of those who wrought the evil only honestlyacknowledge the faults of their ancestors—the least that mightbe expected of them; and it would not be too much to imaginethem honest enough to repair those faults in these days ofsevere reckoning and self-scrutiny.

As to the present history of the race outside their own land,now that it has been scattered, by these grievous calamities,all over the world, whatever characteristics its children maypresent, indolence and want of foresight can scarcely benumbered among them, in view of the success which attends theirmarch everywhere. And if these qualities would seem to be rootedin the native soil, they are only "importations" like the menwho fastened them there, and due only to the cramped position inwhich their legislators so carefully confined them. Where shouldthere be energy, when every motive that could urge it has beentaken away? How is it possible to improve their condition, whenevery improvement only imposes an additional burden upon them inthe shape of rack-rent or eviction?

In his work on "The Social Condition of the People," Mr. Kayquotes from the Edinburgh Review of January, 1850, the evidenceon this point given by English, German, and Polish witnessesbefore the Committee of Emigration, and the proofs gathered fromevery source as to the rapid improvement of the Irish emigrant,wherever he goes, are certainly convincing.

As for the foolish (for it is nothing else, unless it be wicked)assertion that those frightful famines referred to are to beattributed to the sufferers themselves, it is only necessary tosay in refutation that in the very years when thousands werebeing swept away daily by their ravages in Ireland—1846 and1847— the harbors of the island were filled with Englishvessels, loaded with cargoes of provisions of every kind to betransported to England in order to pay the rents due to absenteelandlords: and all these provisions were the product of thefamine-stricken land, won by the toil of the famine-strickennation. This has invariably been the case when famine has sweptover the island: the island's riches were in her harbors, storedin the holds of foreign vessels, to be carried away andconverted into money that these noble Anglo-Irish landlordsmight be enabled to "sustain" life

Others have ascribed these periodical visitations to a surpluspopulation; but, without entering into a discussion on thesubject, Sir Robert Kane, in his "Industrial Resources ofIreland," shows that, taking the island in her present state andunder the existing system of cultivation, she could support withease eighteen million inhabitants; that, if the best methods offarming were generally adopted, the soil, by double and eventriple crops, could feed without difficulty, not only twenty-five million, the figure stated by Mr. Gustave de Beaumont, aFrench publicist of eminence, but as many as from thirty tothirty-five million inhabitants.

But, as the same judicious writer observes, "the enormousquantity of cattle annually shipped off from Ireland to Englandwould, in that case, be consumed in the country which producesit."

It is clear, therefore, that the pretended surplus population ofIreland is, as Sir Robert Kane says, a piece of pure imagination,perfectly ideal, and that it is its unequal and not itsaggregate amount which is to be deplored.

But no one has presented the question more clearly and solved itmore precisely than Mr. Gustave de Beaumont in his admirablework on Ireland, from which we note one or two telling passages,as given in Father Perraud's "Ireland under English Rule."

"The celebrated French publicist, who was the first to presentto us (in France) a complete picture of the condition of Ireland,examining in 1829 how emigration might or might not do awaywith all the misery he had witnessed, proposed to himself thefollowing questions:

"I. To what extent ought emigration to be carried, in order tobring about a material change in the general state of Ireland?namely, by taking away the pretended surplus population.

"II. Would it be possible to carry it out to the proposed extent?

"III. Supposing it practicable, would it be a radical and finalsolution of existing difficulties?

"The advocates of emigration replied to the first question byestimating at a minimum of two million the number of individualswho would have to leave Ireland, at one time, in order toproduce there that kind of vacuum which would improve theconditions of labor and the existence of the rest of theagricultural population.

"Upon these data the solution of the second question was easy.It was by no means difficult to prove that the system wasimpracticable on so large a scale; impracticable on account ofthe insufficiency of the means of transport at disposal;impracticable on account of the enormous sums required to carryit out.

"In fact, supposing an emigrant-ship to carry a thousandpassengers—a very high figure—two thousand vessels would berequired to attain the end in view, namely, the sudden anduniversal emigration of the whole so-called surplus population.That is to say, the whole merchant navy of Great Britain wouldhave to be drawn off from the commerce of the world, andchartered for the execution of this very chimerical plan. Wherewas the sum required for the most necessary expenses and urgentwants of two million passengers to be got? And what country inthe world would have submitted to a monster invasion like thoseof barbarous times? Unless, indeed, these two millionindividuals were beforehand coldly devoted to death by hunger,was there a single country in which it could be hoped they wouldimmediately find work or the means of subsistence?"

All those impossibilities, genuine indeed and at the time, 1829,of unforeseen solution, became, under Providence, possible byextending the period of transportation from one year to twenty;so that, instead of two, in reality three million and a halfwere thus transported.

But, where M. de Beaumont displayed all his talent forappreciation and keen reasoning was, when he came to considerthe third and most embarrassing question of all. Was it certainthat, the system of renting and cultivating land alwaysremaining the same, emigration would suffice to heal thoseinveterate sores, and effect, in conformity with the wishes ofits partisans, a social transformation?

On this point, he showed, in a manner admitting of no reply,that the emigration of a third or even of half the populationwould not radically put an end to the misery of the country. Thedifficulty with Ireland does not consist in being unable toproduce wherewith to feed her population; it lies in the mannerin which landed property is managed, a system which no amount ofemigration can possibly modify; for, "if one of the firstprinciples of the landlord be that the farmer should gain bytilling no more than is strictly necessary to support him—if,in addition, this principle is, as a general rule, rigidlyfollowed out, and all economical means of living resorted to bythe farmer necessarily induce a rise in the rent—what, uponthis supposition (of the sad reality of which every one knowingIreland is perfectly conscious), can be the consequence of adecrease of population?"

Always obliged to live as sparingly as possible, in order toescape a rise in the rent, and forced to undergo dailyprivations in order to meet his engagements, how is the Irishfarmer to gain by the departure of his neighbor? "Thus, aftermillions of Irishmen have disappeared, the fate of thepopulation which remains is in no wise changed; it will foreverbe equally wretched."

Then, glancing at the past, making a sad enumeration ofIreland's losses during the last three centuries, and evokingfrom these too eloquent figures the accents of a touchingeloquence, the writer asks himself how far so much bloodshed,such armies of individuals, stricken down by death, or hurriedout of the country by transportation—so many families extinct,and the like—had contributed to restore and save Ireland?

"Open the annals of Ireland, and see the small amount ofinfluence which all those violent enterprises and all thoseextraordinary accidental causes of depopulation have had uponthe social state of the country. Calculate the number of soulsthat perished during the religious wars; count the thousands ofIrishmen that perished under the sword of Cromwell; to all thatthe victor massacred add the myriads that he transported; thinkof the hundreds of thousands who sank under famine, the numberof whom exceeded in one year, 1741, forty thousand; do notoverlook the formerly considerable number who yearly died by thehand of the executioner; in fine, to this add the twenty-five orthirty thousand individuals who emigrate from the country everyyear" (this was written before 1830); "and, having laid downthese facts, you look for the consequences: when, in the midstof these different crises, you see Ireland always the same,always equally wretched, always crammed with paupers, alwaysbearing about with her the same hideous and deep wounds, youwill then recognize that the miseries of Ireland do not arisefrom the number of her inhabitants; you will conclude that it isthe nature of her social condition to generate unmitigatedindigence and infinite distress; that, supposing millions ofpoor swept out of her by a stroke of magic, others would be seenrising up in abundance out of a well-spring of misery, which inIreland never dries up; and that the fault does not lie in thenumber of her population, but in the institutions in force inthe country."

The celebrated French writer had certainly pointed out what werethe real causes of the distress in Ireland. He had shown howfalse were the pretended causes then assigned for it byEnglishmen; he touched the key-note—the land tenure; and, as awell-wisher to Ireland, deprecating any new calamities, he wasfirmly opposed to those various fancy projects of emigration enmasse, suggested by numerous British writers, many of whom, suchas the editors of the London Times, were induced to promulgatethem by their deep hatred for the old race, which led them torepresent under a modern garb the old Norman and Puritanphilanthropic desires of rooting out and sweeping off the Irishfrom the land.

The projects of emigration, therefore, were most eagerlyadvanced by the enemies of the Irish, their real friends being,on the whole, opposed to the movement at the time. But, the truecauses of Irish misery being either unseen or unappreciated, or,if known, studiously fostered, with a view of bringing about theone aim which ran all through the English policy, of emptyingthe island and destroying the race, eventually it did actuallybecome a dire necessity for the people to fly; and therefore,from 1815 to 1845, the wave of emigration began to rise fast,and go on swelling in volume and widening in extent from year toyear. Midway between the two extreme points, about 1830, itamounted to between twenty-five and thirty thousand. M. deBeaumont could not see how two millions could be transported atonce. Nor were they. But he did not foresee that in the twentyyears succeeding that in which he wrote more than three millionsand a half would actually be shipped from the island; and allthe difficulties that he anticipated—the number of shipsrequisite, the immense amount of money needed, the countrieswhere such numbers might be received—were furnished byProvidence for the spread of the Irish in many lands. But theseconsiderations can only be briefly touched upon here; they willform the interesting subject of the next chapter. What we havenow to consider is the commencement of the great exodus,confined so far to Canada and the United States, but alreadyworking wonders over the vast stretch of country which spreadsaway between the St. Lawrence and the Gulf of Mexico.

According to the official records of emigration from the "UnitedKingdom," from 1815 to 1860 inclusive, we find that, in general,the greater number emigrated to Canada up to 1839; from thatepoch, but chiefly after 1845, the greater number went directlyto the United States. Let us first look for a reason for thischange of destination, and afterward for its result.

Homer, wiser than many modern philosophers, tells us that "thereare beings which have a certain name among men and another quitedifferent among the gods." What is true of names, is truelikewise of what they represent, motives and things in general.Men often assign to actions motives far different from thoseknown to God; and, in like manner, the motives of men, visiblyimpelled by the Spirit of God, are often far beyond thecomprehension of "philosophers." We are far from presuming todive into the divine thoughts with the certainty of bringing tothe surface what lies hidden in their mysterious depths; butevery Christian should endeavor humbly to penetrate them, andmodestly set forth what he gathers from them.

What object can be assigned for the Irish emigrating in suchlarge numbers to Canada for a quarter of a century, from 1815 to1840? It cannot be because Canada is, as it then was, a Britishcolony: the English Emigration Commissioners had the honesty toconfess, later on, that the rush to the United States was inconsequence of their desire to avoid dwelling under the Englishflag. It was not because, in Canada, a greater facility openedup for obtaining good land; for, in Lower Canada, where theytarried for a long time, the land was already occupied by French-Canadians, and, in that severe climate, the soil is not over-productive. It cannot have been the facility for transportation—during about six months of every year, the mouth of the St.Lawrence is closed to ships, and travel through a frozen land isnot the most desirable thing, particularly to homeless andmoneyless immigrants. Last of all, it was not the similarity ofclimate and language with those of their own island. What, then,can it have been?

In our own opinion, the human motive of the Irish can have beenno other than a religious one; in the Divine mind, the motivewas of a still higher and more merciful character. The Irish hadheard, from the few of their countrymen who had alreadyemigrated to the United States, of the great difficulty theyexperienced in practising their religion. On the other hand,they knew that, throughout Lower Canada, there was not a villagewithout its Catholic church and priest, and that Quebec andMontreal were important and entirely Catholic cities. This greatfact blinded them to the many disadvantages they would have toundergo in emigrating to such a country; or, rather, they sawthe disadvantages, but the thought that their religion and thatof their children would be safe in Canada was enough for them.It is the same people ever, in the nineteenth century as inthose which preceded it, and all noble minds must respect themfor thus first looking to the supernatural.

But, had the Almighty a design in directing them to the north ofthe continent, and establishing so great a number of thempermanently in that country? We are fully persuaded that theIrish race is now, and ever has been, predestined to fulfill ahigh mission on this earth. What is now transpiring under oureyes is too clear to be denied by any Christian; and admittingthe general fact that the race must be an instrument in thehands of God to spread his Church throughout, in English-speaking countries particularly, to correct, by their presenceand influence in every quarter of the globe, the evil effects ofthe spread of what we call Japhetism among Oriental races—letus endeavor to see how their coming to settle in Canada servedfor that great end.

The Gospel of our Lord was first preached in those drearyregions by religious of the Gallic race. The labors of Catholicmissionaries in Canada, of the members of the Society of Jesusparticularly, are now well known and appreciated. The Frenchcolony in Canada was from the first a Catholic colony: It wasnot a conquest; it was not a commercial enterprise; it was not atransatlantic garden for luxurious Frenchmen: it was what Mr.Bancroft has well called it, "a mission." The desire of winningsouls to Christ had begun the work, had run all through italmost to the end. The blood of martyrs had consecrated it; thatof Rasles, shed by heretics; of Lallemant, Brebeuf, and Jogues,by pagans. But, after the surrender of the colony to England,although the terms of the cession were as favorable to religionas could be desired, and the British power could not introducethere any of the penal laws still pressing so hard on Englishand Irish Catholics, nevertheless, a great danger arose inconsequence, which is particularly visible now after more than acentury has passed away. Though Catholicity could not bepersecuted, and, for once, England faithfully observed the termsof a capitulation which involved a religious side, as littlecould heresy be excluded or denied some of the privileges whichit enjoys in the mother country. The government was to beadministered mostly by Protestant officials; the new-comers fromEngland would be composed, for the greater part, of Protestantmerchants and artisans. The Anglican Church would soon gain theprestige of wealth and influence. The country in the east, it istrue, thickly settled by Catholic farmers, would long remainCatholic; but in the large towns, Quebec and Montreal chiefly,an influx of Protestants of every sect was to be expected; whilein the west, where the French had scarcely occupied the country,the numerical majority would soon lean to the side of the newarrivals from England and Scotland. The English tongue wouldgradually supersede the French, and it might have been foreseenfrom the beginning that, within a given time, notwithstandingthe rapid increase of French-Canadians by birth, Catholicitywould lose first its preeminence, and, perhaps, after a while,occupy a very inferior rank.

The religion professed by the many millions connected with thecentre of unity has never shrunk from an equal contest, and issure of victory when left free and untrammelled; but in Canadait should be observed that, had it not been for the coming ofthe Irish, the whole of the Catholic population would havespoken French, being surrounded and absorbed almost bysectarians of every hue, all speaking English. The strangespectacle would there have shown itself—a spectacle, perhaps,never witnessed hitherto— of a Catholic and Protestant language.The separation of the two camps would have rested chiefly uponthis peculiar basis; and there can be no doubt that, with thevigorous youth of the United States, developing so rapidly inthe South, and destined to carry with it the English tongue overall the Northern continent, together with the spread of theEnglish and Scotch North and West, the French language wasdestined to become circ*mscribed within narrower and narrowerlimits, and its final disappearance in America would be probablyonly a work of time.

If it is permitted us to study, love, and admire the designs ofProvidence among men, who shall say that it is presumption toassert that God's was the hand which directed the Irish exilesand set them in their place, in order to prevent the sadspectacle of a land settled by holy people, belonging almostexclusively to God and to Christ, endeared to the true Church byso many labors endured for the spread of truth, and memorable byso many heroic virtues practised in those frozen wilds anddreary forests, from falling sooner or later into the hands ofthe most unrelenting enemies of the papacy?

It cannot be presumptuous to attribute it to the designs ofProvidence, as otherwise it is impossible to discover any reasonwhatever which might influence the Irish in selecting thatdesolate spot for their place of exile. They came, therefore, ingreat numbers, to set themselves under the spiritual control ofpriests unable to understand either their native language or theborrowed English they brought with them; they came, confidentthat all the Catholic churches built prior to their coming wouldbe open to them, and that the pastors of those Frenchcongregations would receive them, not as strangers, but as long-lost children, at last let loose from a land of bondage, come toshare the freedom secured by the settlers.

The statistics of immigration having been accurately kept since1815, it is easy to ascertain the number of Irish people wholanded in Canada during the precise period under investigation.And, although a certain number, which increased with the years,did not remain in the country where they first landed, but pushedon immediately, or shortly after, south to the United States, still,a large proportion settled permanently in the country.

Half a million English-speaking persons arrived in Canadabetween the years 1815 and 1839. At that time there was nodistinction made between the three different classes comingrespectively from England, Scotland, and Ireland; but, when thisclassification afterward came to be made, the Irish formed asteady three-fourths of the whole. Applying this proportion tothe time under consideration, we have the large amount of threehundred and seventy-five thousand. The number was afterwardconsiderably increased, although a greater number still wentdirectly to the United States; so that it is ascertained thatwithin ten years, from 1839 to 1849, four hundred and twenty-eight thousand Irish people arrived in Canada; that is to say,at a rate of fifty thousand a year.

The country in which they settled was certainly large, as itcomprised not only Canada proper, but also the British provincesof New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the large islands in thevicinity. But, as the Irish, contrary to their former custom, nowprefer to dwell in large towns and assemble together rather thanfind themselves, as it were, lost in a sparsely-peopled district,the population of important cities, such as Quebec and Montreal,and of the growing western towns of Toronto, Kingston, and others,was very sensibly affected by their arrival. The English was nolonger to be an exclusively Protestant tongue; and, as the morerapid increase of the Irish by birth would soon equalize numbers,and give them eventually the preponderance, it was clear that thecountry would ultimately remain Catholic, even supposing that theFrench tongue should be finally forgotten.

The first extensive emigration to the large cities of Canada wasalso owing to the fact that, the eastern provinces not havingcome under the stipulation of the capitulation treaty, the penallaws were still unrepealed in that district. Toward thebeginning of this century we find Father Burke, wishing to opena school for Catholic children at Halifax, Nova Scotia,threatened with the enforcement of the law by the then governorof the province, if he persevered in his attempt, a threat whichwas only prevented from being carried into execution by theliberal spirit of the Protestant inhabitants. The flow ofemigration to the colonies south and east of the St. Lawrencewas, consequently, of a much later, in fact, for the most part,of quite recent date.

In Newfoundland the case was still worse. That region had beenceded to Great Britain by France, in 1713, at the Treaty ofUtrecht; and, although that treaty stipulated that freedom ofworship should be guaranteed, nevertheless, the country remainedclosed to Catholic clergymen, the stipulation being nullified bythe treacherous clause "as far as the laws of England permitted."Hence, the French Catholics with their clergy were soonobliged to leave the colony, and as late as 1765, according toMr. Maguire ("Irish in America"), the governor of the island wasissuing orders worthy of the reign of Queen Anne. In the wordsof Dr. Murdock, Bishop of St. John's, Newfoundland, "the Irishhad not the liberty of the birds of the air to build or repairtheir nests; they had behind them the forest or the rocky soil,which they were not allowed, without license difficultlyobtained, to reclaim and till. Their only resource was thestormy ocean, and they saw the wealth they won from the deepspent in other lands, leaving them only a scanty subsistence."

The Irish had therefore to fall back on the cities of LowerCanada, where, moreover, they found numerous churches andpriests. Hence, Quebec was their first place of refuge, and theysoon formed a large percentage of the population. Montreal wastheir choice from the first, where they arrived in crowds,attracted by the intense pleasure they felt at the happy chanceof living and dying in a really Catholic city, where, turn inwhat direction they would, their eyes were gladdened by thesight of magnificent churches, colleges, convents, hospitals,with the cross, the symbol of their faith, surmounting nearlyall the public edifices of the city.

Western Canada was as yet an uninviting field for the Irish. Alarge number of Scotchmen and "Orangemen" had already settledthere, when the British Government, having adopted the scheme ofemigration for Ireland, offered them favorable conditions fortransport and settlement. It was on the west chiefly that aninvasion of English Protestantism threatened, and the Catholicsof Ireland were, in the dispensation of Providence, to meet thatdanger. It is no surprise, then, to find the English Governmentit*elf made subservient to designs very different from its own,offering in 1825 to bear the whole expense of establishing largebodes of Irishmen on these wilds—wilds then, but full ofpromise for the future. Among other colonies transported bodily,Mr. Maguire tells of four hundred and fifteen families,comprising two thousand individuals, all from the south ofIreland, genuine "Irish in birth and blood," transported fromCork harbor to Western Canada, on board British ships, under theauspices of the government. Their story will well repay thereading, and above all their remonstrance to the governor of theprovince, after they had surmounted the first difficulties oftheir new position: "We labor under a heavy grievance, which, weconfidently hope, your Excellency will redress, and then we willbe completely happy, viz., the want of clergymen to administerto us the comforts of our holy religion, and good schoolmastersto instruct our children."

In spite, however, of the efforts made by British statesmen todirect the flow of Irish emigration to the northern part of theAmerican Continent, the number of those who voluntarily crossedthe Atlantic to settle directly in the United States wassteadily increasing. Not only did they find there perfectfreedom of religion, but the absence of clergymen was beinggradually less felt, and each new bishopric created became acentre of religious life and vigor.

Moreover, the new republic had turned out to be the mostenergetic and enterprising nation which the world had yet seen.A whole continent lay before it to subdue, and at once the younggiant prepared to grapple with the truly gigantic difficulty.With the arrival of every "packet-boat," Europe was astonishedto hear of the amazing vitality displayed by a nation ofyesterday, composed of a few millions of individuals, who hadalready spread their frontiers as far north as the whole line ofthe great lakes, as far west as the Pacific coast, and southwardto the Gulf of Mexico. Louisiana fell in, and, from a state oftorpidity in which it had slumbered, the vast territory whichthen went by that name waked suddenly into a prodigiously activelife. At the very beginning of the century, the Missouri hadbeen navigated to its source, and Lewis and Clarke, crossing thehigh ridge of the Rocky Mountains, had descended the Columbia toits mouth, and settled the boundary of the United States alongthe far-spreading Pacific. The mighty Mississippi, in the midstof that splendid domain, belonged from source to mouth to therepublic, and, with its tributaries, was already alive withnumerous steamboats, passing up and down, bearing their life andall its belongings with them, and the (at that time morenumerous still) flatboats, carried down the stream, to reach, indue time, New Orleans.

There was small thought of hindering "foreigners" from coming totake a share in the giant enterprise. All the inhabitants werein fact foreigners to the soil; and the new-comers, no matterfrom what country they came, had just as good a right to sit atthe common board as the first-landed. It was felt and wiselyacknowledged to be the real interest of the young nation towelcome as great a number as Europe could send.

Thus have we already seen large numbers of Irishmen laboringalong the Erie Canal. There was not a public work undertaken atthe time in which they did not bear a welcome hand. And whatrace of men could be found better fitted for such work? It wouldindeed be interesting to show from good statistical tables whatshare Irishmen have really had in building up the prosperity ofthe Union by their labor, skilled and unskilled.

At the period we have now come to, they were already crowding inat the harbors of the Atlantic, so astonishing to the newly-arrived European by the extraordinary activity whichcharacterizes them; they were numerous in the factories juststarting into life, from the desire of not depending on Englandfor all manufactured goods; they were multiplying in largehotels, in private families, in the fields outside the largecities. Above all, the buildings erected at the time, in suchgreat numbers, employed many of them as mechanics and laborers;and whenever some grand undertaking, which looked to the futurewelfare of the country, demanded a large draft of men, therewere they to be seen as they had never been seen before, even intheir own country, where all labor was reduced to the individualefforts of each, just sufficient to eke out a miserable life.

At this time, about 1820, the Irish immigrants settled, for themost part, on the Atlantic seaboard; few had yet crossed eventhe ridge of the Alleghanies. In the Eastern States they foundoccupation enough, and the steady growth of the country requiredtheir willing aid. From that time the North formed their chiefpoint of attraction, and the States of Pennsylvania, New Jersey,and New York, were their great resorts. Even New England was nolonger forbidden ground to them, and they began to spreadthemselves over its rocky and unpromising surface, to effectthere a greater moral change than probably anywhere else in thecountry. In 1827, during the first pastoral visitation of BishopFenwick, when he erected, on the spot made memorable by theapostolic labors of Father Rasles, a monument to the memory ofthat saintly man, we read that "he then went in search of someIrish Catholics living at Belfast, Maine, whom he foundsuffering both for the necessaries of life and for thesustenance of the soul. He relieved both their temporal andspiritual wants, and imparted them his blessing, and somewholesome advice."

He was enabled to do more for them in the following year atCharlestown, Massachusetts. On the 15th of October, 1828,according to the Boston Gazette, "he laid the corner-stone of aCatholic church near Craigie's Point, designed to accommodatethe Catholics of that place and of Charlestown, who were said tobe already numerous." There is no doubt that the severalchurches built about that time in Maine, New Hampshire,Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, were filled ratherby Irish immigrants than by American converts, although not afew consoling examples of this latter method of the Church'sincrease took place about this period.

But New York was taking the lead as the landing of predilectionfor the desolate children of Ireland. Thus, at the installationof Bishop Dubois, in St. Patrick's Cathedral, November 9, 1826,he addressed himself particularly to the Irish portion of hiscongregation, observing that "he entertained for them theliveliest feelings of affection. He reminded them of thepersecutions they had undergone in defence of their religion, ofthe sacrifices many of them had made on leaving their nativecountry, and conjured them always to manifest that attachment tothe religion of their forefathers which had hitherto soprominently distinguished them among their brother Catholics."

The whole State was beginning to swarm with new arrivals fromthe Green Isle. This detachment, however, only formed thescarcely perceptible head of the great army which was to follow.We shall soon return to see its masses steadily treading theirway on toward the West, and never halting till they reached thePacific coast; we will see for what purpose.

Meanwhile, it is fitting to look at another wing of this armytaking its position directly south of Asia, the great continentwhich holds the first dwelling of man on earth, and toward whichall the tendencies of modern civilization seem to turn.

An immense island, to which geographers have now given the nameof the fifth continent, from the dawn of creation lay sleepingbetween the seas known as the Indian and Pacific Oceans. A fewthousand savages, said to be the lowest type of the human family,roamed aimlessly over its extensive wilds. Out of the ordinaryroute of circumnavigating explorers, few European ships hadreached its coast, when the Dutch attempted to formestablishments on its southern and western sides, giving it thename of New Holland. At the end of last century the EnglishCaptain Cook formed the first successful European settlement—Botany Bay—in what he called New South Wales, at the south-eastern extremity of the island. The French surveyed aconsiderable portion of the western coast at the beginning ofthis century. But finally, as has so far generally been the casewith other colonies, the English remained in possession of thewhole, and, though their first thought was to use it merely as apenal settlement, they soon saw the importance of removing theirconvicts to Van Diemen's Island, and now no less than four orfive distinct British colonies embrace the entire coast-line ofthe continent, the interior still remaining an unknown desert.

Immigration, other than the transport of criminals, began onlyin 1825; and the white population of New South Wales, which in1810 was only eight thousand three hundred, in 1821 only thirtythousand, increased rapidly after the discovery of the gold-fields in 1851, so that in 1861 more than seven hundred thousandfree colonists had been landed from British ships on thecontinent and large islands of Van Diemen and New Zealand,notwithstanding their enormous distance from Great Britain.

The importance of this vast colony, or, rather, of thisagglomeration of colonies, should not be estimated from theirextent and productions alone, but chiefly from their proximityto Asia toward the north, and to America toward the east.Already lines of steamers connect the new continent with Chinaon the one side and San Francisco on the other; and when wereflect that the English tongue is the only one spokenthroughout that vast territory; that English politicalinstitutions, with all their attendant machinery of parliaments,elections, municipal governments, and liberties, toleration, afree press and free discussion, are day by day becoming moredeeply rooted in the habits of the people, it is easy toperceive how soon the peculiarities of Japhetism, starting fromthat centre, will invade the whole line of Southern and EasternAsia and the countless island-groups of Polynesia. The Catholicreader will at once perceive how the true religion must havebeen left to struggle, hopelessly almost, in its mission ofenlightenment and mercy, surrounded as it was by so many adversecirc*mstances, had not the Irish element been at hand to fallback on.

Our information on this important branch of the subject isunfortunately not extensive; nor is this to be wondered at,since it is only from 1851 that Irish immigration really beganto show itself in Australia, and take an active part in theEuropean rush toward that quarter of the world, or, rather, touse the phrase of Holy Writ, "to dwell in the tents of Sem."

When Great Britain sent out her first cargoes of convicts toAustralia, it never entered into the ideas of that enlightenedpower that such an attendant as a minister of religion might bewanted, and, as Mr. Marshall says in his book on "ChristianMissions:" "The first ship which bore away its freight ofdespair, of bruised hearts, and woful memories, and fearfulexpectations, would have left the shores of England without evena solitary minister of religion, but for the timely remonstranceof a private individual. The civil authorities had deemed theirwork complete, when they had given the signal to raise theanchor and unloose the sails; the rest was no concern of theirs."He adds something more extraordinary and more to our purposestill:

"Among the emigrants to the new continent, soon some of thosechildren of Ireland, whom Providence seems to have dispersedthrough all the homes of the Saxon race, that they might one dayrekindle among them the light of faith, which their own longmisfortunes have never been able to quench, were carried as thefirst fruitful seeds of the ever-blooming tree of the Church."

To these exiles it was necessary to convey the succors ofreligion. The first Catholic priest who arrived in Australia onhis mission of charity, and whom the policy of self-interest, atleast, might have prompted the authorities to greet with eagerwelcome, was treated with derision, and "was directed," as oneof his most energetic successors relates, "to produce hispermission," or "hold himself in readiness for departure by thenext ship." He was alone, and consequently a safe victim; andthough, as the latest historian of the colony observes, "hisministrations would have been not less valuable in a social thanin a religious point of view," he was seized, put in prison, andfinally sent back to England, because his presence was irksometo men who seem to have felt instinctively that his profferedministry was the keenest rebuke to their own cruelty andprofaneness.

This first Catholic priest was the Rev. Mr. Flynn, on whom theHoly See had conferred the title of archpriest, with power toadminister confirmation. Arrived at Sydney in 1818, he did muchgood there in a short time. Mr. Marshall has told us how thecolonial authorities treated him.

But a circ*mstance, not mentioned in this clever author's workon "Missions," shows who and what were those Irish exiles whomthe priest had come to serve and direct in his spiritualcapacity. When suddenly carried off to prison, he left theBlessed Sacrament in their little church at Sydney. There thefaithful frequently assembled during the two years whichfollowed his departure, as large a number as could muster, tooffer up their prayers to God, and look for consolation in theiraffliction. The visible priest had been violently snatched awayfrom them; the Archpriest of souls, Christ, remained.

The Rev. W. Ullathorne, now Bishop of Birmingham, England, wasafterward made Vicar-General Apostolic of that desolate missionby the Holy See. He informs us, in a letter published among the"Annals of the Propagation of the Faith," how these poor Irishpeople were treated by their "masters" in Australia.

"It was forbidden them to speak Irish, under pain of fiftystrokes of the whip; and the magistrates, who for the most partbelonged to the 'Protestant clergy,' sentenced also to the whip andto close confinement those who refused to go hear their sermons,and to assist at a service which their consciences disavowed."

In 1820 two fresh missionaries replaced Mr. Flynn. They foundthe little church where their predecessor had left our Lord twoyears before still in the same state; and soon the insignificantflock, which ever multiplies under persecution, began toincrease wonderfully, so that twelve years later, out of thewhole population of the colony—one hundred thousand—there werefrom twenty to thirty thousand Catholics.

Meanwhile, their emancipation in England had secured theirrights in the British colonies. There was no longer the threatof the whip hanging over those who refused to hear Protestantsermons; there was no longer fear of their missionary being sentback by the first ship to England. Hence the Holy See immediatelyestablished the hierarchy of the Church, on a regular and permanentbasis, there, Dr. Polding being the first bishop.

This may be called an era in the history of the Catholic Church.A hierarchy, independent of the state in heretic and eveninfidel countries, is a modern thought inspired by the HolySpirit to the rulers of the flock of Christ to meet modernrequirements. By this new system the long list of so-calledProtestant countries was at once swept away. For no country canbe called Protestant which has its regularly-established bishopsof Holy Church, with their authority permanently secured. Theirdioceses cover the land, and the land consequently belongs tothe Church, however great may be the number of heretics orinfidels, and however powerful the organizations antagonistic toCatholicity. The "people of God" is there, to multiply with theyears, and finally absorb all heterogeneous bodies. The Church,as we saw, is a growth; other bodies are crystallized and do notgrow; more, they become materially and necessarily disintegratedby the action of time and the friction of surrounding bodies, ofspreading roots and living organisms.

This plain, unmistakable, eventual truth was the real causewhich brought about the violent explosion of fear and hatredfollowing directly the reestablishing of the Catholic hierarchyin England. The opposing forces felt that their hour was come,and they could not but shiver at their approaching annihilation,small as was the body of the English Catholics at the time. Butit is not for us to enter here on these considerations, whichwould call for long developments, and which belong morefittingly to the general history of the Church than to Irishemigration to Australia.

The few facts glanced at above afford ample grounds forpicturing the state of the first Irish exiles who set foot onthat broad island of the Antipodes. It was only a repetition ofthe scenes witnessed at the same time wherever the Irish stroveto propagate the true faith. Later on it will be our pleasure tocome back to this field and wonder at the growth of a bloominggarden which has replaced the old sterility.

Of the other British colonies wherein a certain number ofIrishmen began to settle at the time of the presentinvestigation, no details can yet be furnished. It is easy tosuppose, however, without fear of mistake, that the spiritualdestitution and state of more or less open persecution which wehave found existing in America and Australia, prevailed also atthe Cape Colony, at Natal, in Guiana, Labuan, Ceylon, etc. Avery different spectacle is about to be unfolded before our eyes,and we hasten on to behold its wondrous development andsplendor—a splendor, however, ushered in by scenes of extremewoe.

CHAPTER XV.

THE "EXODUS" AND ITS EFFECTS.

The stream of Irish emigrants, starting from the one source,separated now and continued flowing to the four quarters of theglobe, and, at length, its influence was beginning to be felt inEngland itself, the last of the lands whither the Irish exilescould think of turning. The poorest, unable to pay their passage-money to North America, began to show themselves among the thickpopulations of the great manufacturing centres of Great Britain.More than fifty thousand departed annually to settle in otherclimes and plant Catholicity in regions that, from a religiouspoint of view, were wildernesses.

In 1846 came an awful calamity, to impart to the movement animpetus of which no one could have dreamed, and which went veryfar to realize what M. de Beaumont had a few years beforedeclared to be an impossibility—the almost suddentransportation of millions of starving Irish. This was the greatfamine, still so fresh in memory, and now appearing to those whowitnessed its effects like that terrible passage of thedestroying angel in the night.

There is no better mode of accounting for this visitation thanthat given by T. D. McGee, in his "Irish Settlers in America:"

"The famine (of 1846) is to be thus accounted for: The act ofUnion in 1800 deprived Ireland of a native legislature. Heraristocracy emigrated to London. Her tariff expired in 1826, and,of course, was not renewed. Her merchants and manufacturerswithdrew their capital from trade and invested it in land. Theland! the land! was the object of universal, unlimitablecompetition. In the first twenty years of the century, thefarmers, if rack-rented, had still the war prices. After thepeace, they had the monopoly of the English provision andproduce markets. But in 1846 Sir Robert Peel successfully struckat the old laws imposing duties on foreign corn, and let inBaltic wheat and American provisions of every kind, to competewith and undersell the Irish rack-rented farmers.

"High rents had produced hardness of heart in the 'middleman,'extravagance in the land-owner, and extreme poverty in thepeasant. The poor-law commission of 1839 reported that twomillion three hundred thousand of the agricultural laborers ofIreland were 'paupers;' that those immediately above the lowestrank were ' the worst-clad, worst-fed, and worst-lodged 'peasantry in Europe. True indeed! They were lodged in styes,clothed in rags, and fed on the poorest quality of potato.

"Partial failures of this crop had taken place for a successionof seasons. So regularly did those failures occur, that WilliamCobbett and other skilful agriculturists had foretold theirfinal destruction years before. Still, the crops of the summerof 1846 looked fair and sound to the eye. The dark-green, crispyleaves, and yellow-and-purple blossoms of the potato-fields,were a cheerful feature in every landscape. By July, however,the terrible fact became but too certain. From every town-landwithin the four seas tidings came to the capital that thepeople's food was blasted—utterly, hopelessly blasted.Incredulity gave way to panic, panic to demands on the ImperialGovernment to stop the export of grain, to establish publicgranaries, and to give the peasantry such productive employmentas would enable them to purchase food enough to keep soul andbody together. By a report of the ordnance-captain, Larcom, itappeared there were grain-crops more than sufficient to supportthe whole population —a cereal harvest estimated at fourhundred millions of dollars, as prices were. But to allremonstrances, petitions, and proposals, the imperial economistshad but one answer: 'They could not interfere with the ordinarycurrents of trade.' O'Connell's proposal, Lord Georga Bentinck's,O'Brien's, the proposals of the society called 'The IrishCouncil,' all received the same answer. Fortunes were made andlost in gambling over this sudden trade in human subsistence,and ships laden to the gunwales sailed out of Irish ports, whilethe charities of the world were coming in.

"In August, authentic cases of death by famine, with the verdict,'starvation,' were reported. The first authentic case thrilledthe country, like an ill wind. From twos and threes they rose totens, and, in September, such inquests were held, and the samesad verdict repeated, twenty times in a day. Then Ireland, thehospitable among the nations, smitten with famine, deserted byher imperial masters, lifted up her voice, and uttered that cryof awful anguish which shook the ends of the earth.

"The Czar, the Sultan, and the Pope, sent their rubles and theirpauls. The Pacha of Egypt, the Shah of Persia, the Emperor ofChina, the Rajahs of India, conspired to do for Ireland what herso-styled rulers refused to do—to keep her young and old peopleliving in the land. America did more in this work of mercy thanall the rest of the world."

The sudden effect of this fearful trial was to increase thetotal emigration from the British Isles from ninety-threethousand in 1845 to one hundred and thirty thousand in 1846; tothree hundred thousand in 1849; to nearly four hundred thousandin 1852. In ten years from 1846, two million eight hundredthousand had fled in horror from the country once so dear tothem. From May, 1847, to the close of 1866, the number ofpassengers discharged at New York alone amounted to threemillion six hundred and fifty-nine thousand!

Those immense fleets of transports, which M. de Beaumont thoughtnecessary, but not to be found, were found. On such a suddenemergency, every kind of tub afloat was thought suitable for thepurpose; and, all being sailing-vessels, the voyage wasproportionately long, the provision made for such numbersinsufficient, and the emigrants, already weakened by privations,were fit subjects for the plague which, under the form of ship-fever, rapidly spread among those receptacles of human misery,so that, when the great caravan arrived in the St. Lawrence,whither that first year all seemed to tend, the following wasthe picture presented:

"On the 8th of May, 1847, the Urania, from Cork, with severalhundred immigrants on board, a large proportion of them sick anddying of the ship-fever, was put into quarantine at Grosse Isle,thirty miles below Quebec. This was the first of the plague-smitten ships of Ireland which that year sailed up the St.Lawrence. But, before the first week of June, as many as eighty-four ships, of various tonnage, were driven in by an easterlywind; and of that enormous number of vessels there was not onefree from the taint of malignant typhus, the offspring of famineand of the foul ship-hold."

The effects of that awful misfortune may be found vividlydescribed in Mr. Maguire's book, from which the above extract istaken, on the long line of march of that desolate army ofimmigrants, leaving its thousands of victims at Grosse Isle,near Quebec, at Pointe St. Charles, a suburb of Montreal, inKingston, in Toronto, Upper Canada, and, finally, at PartridgeIsland, cpposite St. John's, New Brunswick.

America was thus destined to witness some of those scenes sooften enacted on the soil of Ireland, to compassionate thepeople of the holy isle, to open her friendly bosom for thereception of the unfortunate beings, who in return gave her allthey possessed—their faith.

But what M. de Beaumont so emphatically insisted upon, althoughat first seemingly contradicted by the event, was neverthelesstrue. England, the mighty mistress of the seas, did not possessships enough for the purpose of transportation; and her entirenavy added to all her merchant-vessels would scarcely havesufficed. Ships had to be built, steamers chiefly, in order toeffect the transportation speedily, and diminish the dangers ofthe passage.

Then Providence worked upon the ingenuity of worldly-wise men,and set them planning and studying the question in all itsbearings, to devise new schemes of transportation on a scale notdreamed of hitherto. Watt, the Stephensons, Brunel, A. Maury,and others, rose up to perfect the various steam-machinesalready known and in use; to investigate the currents of theocean, the different qualities of its waters, its depth andsoundings, in order to make the paths of the deep easier andsurer to navigators. The ingenuity of ship-builders effected arevolution in naval architecture, and rendered possible theconstruction of vessels of from ten thousand to twenty-fivethousand tons burden. Merchant companies and capitalists aroseto embrace the whole world in their mighty speculations,studying the capabilities of all countries for trade, the mostdesolate as well as the most inviting, the meanest as keenly asthe mightiest, linking the whole world in one vast commercialcircle, that the European race might be borne on to themercantile conquest of the universe; and all this came about,doubtless, to effect its deeper and more permanent moralconquest by the despised, doom-trodden, starving, dying Irishman,who laid claim to one arm, one possession only—his faith andthe blessing of the Church.

Was not the Irish exodus intimately connected with all thoseevents? Was it not one of the mightiest causes of all thosegigantic enterprises?

But where were the funds to be found for such immenseundertakings? The treasury of nations is continually drained ofvast sums at home, and dare not draw away a part of its metallicbasis sufficient for such a purpose. Moreover, it is limited,and needs the precious metals as a solid foundation whereon torest, or the fabric built upon it will be the fabric of a dream,as was that of Law in France at the beginning of the eighteenthcentury. The gold and silver mines of Mexico and Peru seemexhausted; the new ones of the Ural Mountains in Northern Asia,of the Atlantic coast of North America, were not adequate tomeet the demands of such mighty operations.

Suddenly, in the year 1846, a Swiss captain, transformed into aCalifornia settler, while endeavoring to turn a water-fall inhis new home to some account, discovers gold-dust in the sand.As if by magic, the coast of California, hitherto neglected,difficult of access at the time, and consequently ignored bymankind, notwithstanding its wealth in mineral and vegetableproductions, becomes at once the cynosure of all eyes, the hopeof all hearts, the most renowned of all countries. Thither theyflock in crowds prom all parts of Europe and America, and asteady flow of seventy million dollars annually is secured as abasis for the new designs of capitalists and merchants.

Other gold-fields are soon discovered all along the Americancoast, on the Pacific, from Lower California to Alaska, invitingmen to go thither and settle, just opposite to the AsiaticContinent, separated from it only by the broad but easily-navigated Pacific Ocean.

Soon also, far away south in the antipodes, opposite to anotherportion of Asia, rich gold-fields are opened up in the newly-discovered Continent of Australia, attracting immigration towardanother spot, whence the Asiatic nations may also be reachedwith greater facility and dispatch.

Whoever believes that Providence has something to do with theaffairs of men; whoever is wise enough to see that this universeis not the result of chance, and that its destinies are ruled bya superior power, must admit that when events as unexpected asthey are unprepared by man come to pass—events which are soconnected together as to reveal the workings of a single mindand a great object at once, foreshadowed if not positivelyforetold, God is the designer, and a stronger hand is at workthan the combined power of men and devils could successfullyoppose. This is a truth which was not unknown to Homer,centuries ago, when he described Jove holding our globesuspended in space at the end of a chain, and defying all theinferior gods to move the world in a direction contrary to thatgiven by his mighty arm.

The image, striking and poetical as it is, for a Christian istoo material. We speak more correctly when we say that Mind —the Divine Mind—is the great invincible and invisible Force ofwhich all material forces are but the created agents, and bywhich all inferior minds must stand or fall, conquer or fail. Aman must be blind with that incurable blindness—of will—whocannot see it acting in and on the universe, and evencontrolling the lower designs of puny intellects. The reverenteye which sees the vastness of the plan, the multitude of itsagents, aiding and seconding it consciously and unconsciously,recognizes it, and the supreme object of its workings, Love,infinite Love.

And we distinguish with grateful surprise all thosecirc*mstances visibly appearing in the great fact which has justbeen so imperfectly sketched, and which will come home to usstill more forcibly when the workings of its lesser details cometo be examined. Here, for instance, at the moment of writingthese lines (March, 1872) we learn from the morning newspapersof the recent arrival of the Japanese embassy at San Francisco;that its members had been dispatched to this country to studyEuropean, or, as we call them, Japhetic institutions, for thepurpose of copying and adapting them to their own wants. Theembassy, detained at Salt Lake City by the snow-blockade on thePacific Railroad, refused to go back, temporarily, to California,and made up their mind to wait in Utah, until it is possiblefor them to proceed.

Pacific Railroad, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Japaneseembassy, adoption of European manners by the Mikado and daimios—who can fail to gather from these words and details theconception of means to an end, and that end the one we now beginto study?

The first circ*mstance coming under our review and indicative ofa loving design on the part of Providence, a circ*mstance notmarked sufficiently at the time, is the preservation by theEnglish themselves of the poor remnants of the Irish race, whichthe first working of the plan had so frightfully decimated andleft in danger of being utterly wiped out. Had they disappeared,would Japhetism have become a blessing to the Asiatic nations?The Catholic, looking abroad and casting his mind's eye over thevast European field, to all seeming so rich in every production,yet in reality so sterile morally, peering with awe and horrorinto the Japhetic caldron—for such it is—seething and bubblingto the brim, full of the most deadly poisons and noxioussubstances, ready at any moment to overflow in infected wavesand sweep over the unfortunate countries which look to it soanxiously for blessings, a torrent of black destruction,spreading around naught but desolation and barrenness—theCatholic eye, seeing all this, can find but one answer to ourquery. The Asiatic races cannot hope to be benefited by theintroduction of European manners among them, unless the samegreat movement carries in its train the holy Catholic Church:and as that introduction must be brought about by English-speaking leaders, the only English-speaking Catholics ofnumerical significance must be the instruments of the adorabledesigns of Providence.

That this assertion may not appear too sweeping, it is onlyenough to instance the example of India, which England has heldlong enough to convert, at least in part, had she so desired andbeen moved by the Spirit of God, yet to-day India stands in aworse relation toward Protestantism than when Protestantism inthe name of Christianity, but in the person of a British trader,settled down in its midst. What good has Hindostan derived?

But, at this very moment, the whole Irish race is at the mercyof the English Government and people. Only let the same kind ofvessels continue to be dispatched filled with Irish emigrants,and the whole race must disappear within a short period, orbecome so reduced in numbers that its operations as a race, on alarge scale, will be unproductive of sufficient results.

And it is well to mark that at the time of this outpouring ofthe race, as long before, and almost constantly since, therewere Englishmen rejoicing at the glorious result which death byplague and famine was about to produce. It were easy to quotemany a barbarous passage from the London Times, expressive ofthe most satanic joy, not only at the departure of the Irishfrom the "United Kingdom," but at the prospect of their ultimate,or rather proximate disappearance out of the world altogether.

Yet it was the same English Government and people which, feeling,let us hope, some compassion at the sight of this new woe ofthe "Niobe of nations," determined to try and save her children,as, if they must cast them out, at least it should he alive andfull of health on a foreign shore.

Laws, therefore, were passed, regulating the quantity andquality of provisions, particularly of drinkable water, thenumber of the crew and working-men, the ventilation of thevessel, the number of passengers to be received, etc.

Still, these first attempts at humanity seem to have been ratherfaint-hearted, as the following passage from Mr. Maguire's"Irish in America," showing how they were carried out, and howinadequate was the remedy applied in 1848, will explain:

"The ships, of which such glowing accounts were read on Sundayby the Irish peasant near the chapel-gate, were but too oftenold and unseaworthy, insufficient in accommodation, not havingeven an adequate supply of water for a long voyage, and, torender matters worse, they, as a rule, were shamefullyunderhanded. True, the provisions and the crew must have passedmuster in Liverpool; . . . but there were tenders and lightersto follow the vessel out to sea; and over the sides of thatvessel several of the mustered men would pass, and casks, andboxes, and sacks would be expeditiously hoisted, to theamazement of the simple people who looked on at the strange andunaccountable operation. And, thus, the great ship, with itsliving freight, would turn her prow toward the West, dependingon her male passengers, as on so many impressed seamen, tohandle her ropes or to work her pumps in case of accident. Whatwith bad or scanty provisions, scarcity of water, severehardship, and long confinement in a foul den, ship-fever reapedyet a glorious harvest between-decks, as frequent splashes ofshot-weighted corpses into the deep but too terribly testified.Whatever the cause, the deaths on board the British shipsenormously exceeded the mortality on the ships of any othercountry. According to the records of the Commissioners ofEmigration for the State of New York, the quota of sick perthousand stood thus in 1848 British vessels, 30; American, 9 3/5;German, 8 3/5. It was yet no unusual occurrence for the survivor ofa family of ten or twelve to land alone, bewildered and broken-hearted, on the wharf at New York; the rest, the family, parents,and children, had been swallowed in the sea, their bodiesmarking the course of the ship to the New World."

It would seem, then, that those first English regulations, bywhich British ships were to pass muster at Liverpool beforesailing, were not very efficient; the figures of mortalityquoted by Mr. Maguire are too eloquent; and it would be apleasure to us to be able to say with certainty that the morestringent and better executed laws afterward enforced did notproceed from the Commission of Emigration, which originated inNew York with some generous-hearted Irish-Americans.

Our readers will have noticed that, even in 1848, with all theapparent desire on the part of England to save the remnants ofthe Irish nation, the mortality on board British ships was morethan three times that on board American vessels, and nearly fourtimes greater than that on board German ships. Why thisdifference? And why should it be so enormous?

It is possible that to the Legislature of New York State chiefly,and soon after to the Congress of the United States atWashington, which enacted stringent laws for the protection ofimmigrants at sea, belong the chief honor of saving hundreds ofthousands of Irish lives, and that England, whether urged by theeffects of good example, or for very shame, soon followed intheir wake.

But, whatever the cause may have been, it is a heart-feltpleasure to record the fact that from 1849, when an act ofParliament, entitled the "Passengers Act," imposed on ship-owners and captains of vessels strict conditions for the welfareof emigrants, government control on this subject became everyyear more immediate and severe.

Not only were the vessels, provisions, water, medicine chests,etc., more carefully examined, but the passengers themselveswere compelled to undergo a careful inspection as to theirhealth and wardrobe.

And, a thing which had never been done before, the spaceallotted to each emigrant on deck and between-decks wasdetermined and subjected to serious control, so that noovercrowding of passengers should take place. The penalties,also, on delinquents became even severe; heavy fines wereimposed, and in some cases transportation to a penal settlementwas decreed against the more offensive outrages on humanity.

If all abuses failed to be corrected by such laws, it is becausethe most stringent enactments can, to a greater or less extent,always be evaded by those desirous of evading them; but there isevery reason to believe that the legislators were honest intheir intent of remedying the glaring evils which previouslyobtained, and, to a great extent, their efforts met with success,as is evidenced by the fact that the mortality on board ofBritish vessels has shown yearly a remarkable diminution sincethat time. According to the "Twenty-fourth General Report," themortality was: In 1854, 0.74 per cent., already a veryremarkable diminution on previous averages; in 1860, it wasreduced to 0.15 per cent. This was the percentage for vesselsgoing to North America only.

The first operation of the missionary people was to plant theliving tree of Catholicism in the United States, and sopowerfully forward its growth, that other spiritual plants of anoxious kind, and weeds that go by the name of creeds, shouldgradually be choked up; finally, let us hope, to disappear.While speaking on this subject, and laying before the reader thenecessary details, we desire not to be held forgetful of theefforts made in a like direction by Catholic immigrants of othernationalities. A word has already been said of the earlyinfluence of the French in the North and of the Spaniards in theSouth, in establishing the Church in North America. The Germanchildren of the true Church, though at first not so conspicuous,have for a long time taken, and are now particularly taking, anactive part in the dissemination of the faith, and there can beno doubt that, with the daily increase of German immigration,their large numbers must in course of time make a lastingimpression on the territory where they settle. But the French,the Spaniards, and the Germans, must forget their languagebefore they become widely useful in the great work before them;and thus the Irish form the only English-speaking people on whomthe brunt of the battle must fall. Moreover, we treat only ofthe Irish race.

The wonderful history of the spread of Catholicity in NorthAmerica by the Irish, in the northern part of the United Statesparticularly, would call for an array of details which it wouldbe impossible to furnish here in extenso. An imperfect sketchmust suffice.

First comes the consideration that, when the wave of immigrationtouched the continent, it might have been feared that, by itsabsorption into a dry and parched soil, the aggregate loss wouldhave reduced to a mere nothing the ultimate gain. There were nochurches for the new worshippers, no priests to administer tothem the sacraments of Christ, no Catholic school-teachers totrain their children. That is to say, these means ofpreservation and of propagation were so few and so far between,that many of the newly-arrived immigrants were forced toestablish themselves in places where they could find none ofthose, to them, priceless advantages.

The spiritual dearth was not indeed so great as that previouslydescribed. The zeal of bishops and priests, and teachers fromregular orders, had been so active in its labors, that, aided bythe liberty which the institutions of the country afforded,results, astonishing indeed, had already rewarded their efforts.But, after all, what were these compared with the demands sosuddenly laid upon them by such a rapid increase of numbers? Itmight be said with truth of multitudes of immigrants, that theposition in which they then found themselves was very littledifferent from that of their predecessors at the beginning ofthe century.

As late as 1834, Archbishop Purcell, of Cincinnati, wrote:"There are places in which there are Catholics of twenty yearsof age, who have not yet had an opportunity of performing onesingle public act of their religion. How many fall sick and diewithout the sacraments! How many children are brought up inignorance and vice! How many persons marry out of the Church,and thus weaken the bonds that held them to it!"— (Annals ofthe Propagation of Faith, Vol. viii.)

To the same annals, three years later, Dr. England, ofCharleston, sent the long letter in which he detailed theinnumerable losses sustained by the Church in America inconsequence of the want of spiritual assistance. The letter was,in fact, a cry of anguish wrung from him by the sight hewitnessed.

Such was the universal feeling among those who could rightlyappreciate the fatal consequences of the rush of Catholics tothe New World without any provision prepared for their reception.And yet all these laments and apprehensions preceded the vastinpouring of immigrants subsequent to the year 1846. What musthave been the consequent losses then? Yet, looking now, in 1872,at the present state of the Church in the Union, who can saythat this inpouring and rush, unprepared as the country was forits reception, was not one of the greatest means devised byProvidence, not only for establishing the Catholic Church inthis country for all time, but likewise as a preparation forfurther developments, not only on this continent, but on thepart of many a nation now sitting in "the shadow of death!"Deplorable, indeed, were the losses, but permanent and wonderfulthe gain.

The first effect of the great calamity which occurred along theSt. Lawrence and its tributaries, in 1847, was to reduce theimmigration to Canada to insignificant numbers, and,proportionately increase that to the United States in aquadruple ratio. Massachusetts and Connecticut, in New England,and the great States of New York and Pennsylvania, were now thechief places of resort for the new-comers; and from New York,principally, they began to pour, in a long, steady stream, awayby the Erie Canal, westward to the great lakes.

All along these lines, congregations were, providentially,already formed; and, in the passage of the stream, they wereimmediately, as by magic, increased in some instances, to atenfold proportion. The labors of the clergy werecorrespondingly multiplied, and efforts were immediately made toobtain new recruits for its ranks. Then appeared a very strangefact, which, at the time, was remarked upon by everybody, buthas never been satisfactorily explained. Wherever the number ofworshippers in a church induced the chief pastors to haveanother constructed in the neighborhood, upon the completion ofthe new edifice, the old one seemed to suffer no diminution inattendance, and the congregation attending the new one gave noevidence of having hitherto been uncared for. This veryremarkable fact was of such frequent occurrence that it couldnot be a delusion, or an exceptional case having its origin insome extraordinary cause; it was evidently a providentialdispensation, akin, in a spiritual sense, to the miraculousmultiplication of loaves, twice mentioned in the Gospel.

There have certainly been numerous examples of this, in the cityof New York particularly, for more than twenty years; andprobably the same thing is occurring at the time of the presentwriting.

Then, another fact occurred, deplored by many, chiefly by Mr.Maguire, in the interesting work already quoted from, yet,evidently of a providential character also, and consequentlyeminently fruitful, and, it may be said, adorable in its depth.The Catholic immigrants, although in their own countryagriculturists for the most part, forgot the tilling of the soilas soon as they reached their new home, and settled down ingreat numbers in all the large cities, on the line they pursuedtoward the West. Many special evils resulted from this, detailedat length by those whose wonder it excited, and who strove, forexcellent motives, to thwart this providential movement. But theimmense good which immediately followed from it, and which,within a short time, was to be greatly increased, was nevermentioned in reply to the reasons advanced by these well-meaningcomplainants. The first result of it was the sudden andnecessary creation of many new episcopal sees in all largecities, where churches were being rapidly built, or had alreadybeen erected in astonishing numbers.

Suppose the Catholics had, following the old bent, turnedthemselves chiefly to the tillage of the soil, and buriedthemselves away in scattered country villages and farms, howlong would the creation of those new sees have been delayed? Whois ignorant of the effect of a new see on the propagation ofCatholicity? Cities which otherwise would have numbered amongtheir population only a few hundred Catholics, scarcelysufficient for the filling of one small edifice, saw at once one-third, one-half, or even the larger portion of their populationclamoring for a Catholic bishop, and all the institutions abishopric brings in its train. It is unnecessary to furnishexamples of this; they are around us.

Yet one difficulty seems to cast some doubt on this view of thesubject, and strengthen the opposition of those who ardentlyadvocated the country as the true home for Irish Catholics; and,as the point involves a universal interest, it is better todiscuss it at once in its chief bearings.

At the time when those wonderful events were being enacted, anyone opening a copy of those general State Directories, withwhich New England is particularly blessed, wherein not only thegreat commercial and industrial enterprises of each State areenrolled, but also correct lists of the educationalestablishments and various churches of all cities, towns, andvillages, are given —a cursory glance, even, would show him thestriking fact that, as far as the great centres of populationwere concerned, Catholic churches, educational establishments,and primary schools were found in respectable numbers; but manya page had to be turned when the reader came to places of lesserimportance, to rural populations chiefly, before he met with anyindication of the Catholic Church entering yet upon that largecountry domain. This experience was encountered by the writer atthe time, and caused him a moment of doubt.

But beyond the reflection that, in matters of this kind (of thepropagation of a doctrine or a creed), the first thing to belooked to is the centre, and that this, once mastered, will incourse of time draw under its influence the outer circles; thatall things cannot be effected at once, and the best thing to bedone is to begin with the most important; that, moreover, thosestatistics are often incorrect with respect to Catholic matters,whether from malicious design, or inadvertence, or want ofknowledge, on subjects to which the compilers attached verylittle importance, so that, if their statements be compared withCatholic official intelligence with regard to the same places,it will be found that many towns and villages which, accordingto the State Directories would seem to have been altogetherforgotten by the Church, were actually in her possession, atleast by periodical or occasional visits; apart from all theseconsiderations, there is one more important remark to be made,which includes in its bearing not only the present point ofconsideration, but, it may be said, the whole life of the Churchfrom the beginning; so that it is really a law of her birth,existence, and propagation.

To illustrate our meaning, let us see how the Christian religionfirst forced its way in heathen lands, throughout the wholeRoman Empire, whether in its Oriental division where Greek wasspoken, or among its Western, Latin-speaking populations.

All the apostles fixed their sees in the largest or mostimportant cities of the ancient world; St. Peter, under thespecial guidance of God, taking possession of the capital andmistress of the whole. All the bishops ordained by the firstapostles did the same by their direction; and it is needless toadd that the like law has been followed down to our own timeswhenever the Church has had to spread herself in a new country.

In accordance with this plan, the cities of the Roman world werethe first to be evangelized, and their populations wereconverted with greater or less difficulty, according to thedispositions of the inhabitants, before almost an effort hadbeen made for the conversion of the rural populations, except asthey happened to come in the way of the "laborers in thevineyard." Hence the result, so well known: heathenism remainedrooted in the country for a much longer time than in the cities,so that the heathen were generally called pagans—pagani—as ifit were enough, when desiring to convey the intimation that aman was a worshipper of idols, to designate him as a dweller inthe country. 1 (1 Another meaning is given to the word paganusby some writers; but the old and common interpretation is thesurest, and is confirmed by the best authorities.) And if theword "pagans" became synonymous with heathens in all Europeancountries, it is a proof that the fact underlying the name wasuniversal wherever Christianity spread. It is known, moreover,that the dissemination of the Gospel in those rural districtswas a work of centuries, and that, for nearly a thousand yearsafter Christ, pagans were to be found in villages of countriesalready Christian.

The fundamental reason which governs and regulates these strangefacts is that already given, namely, that Christianity— that is,Catholicity—is a growth, and follows the laws of every thingthat grows. True, its first increase is from without, by theconversion of infidels or erring men; but even in that firststage of its existence, its growth is the faster where thenumbers are greater; hence its establishment invariably in largecities. But when it has passed beyond this first stage, itincreases from within, like all growths, and the work isaccomplished by the increase of families agglomerated in thesame large towns.

How true is it that the Church, once firmly planted in the midstof one of those agglomerations of men called cities, is sure inthe end to invade the whole as "the yeast that leavens the whole!"How easy is it to see that in the course of time those citiesof the Union, among which a large proportion of Catholics isfound, will belong almost exclusively to the true Church, if forno other reason by the births in families, even supposing thatthe flow of immigration should finally cease! If any oneentertains some doubt on this point, he has only to consult therecords containing the number of children baptized in her bosom,and compare it with the corresponding number in families stilloutside her.

Hence the really astonishing fact, whose truth is recognized to-day in all the Northern States along the Atlantic coast, thatsuddenly almost in the cities of New England, for instance,where the number of Catholics was simply insignificant, theytook an apparently unaccountable prominence, and in the courseof a few years, increasing steadily by birth as well as byimmigration, the fact became the most curious though evident ofthe times, completely changing the moral and social aspect ofthe country, and foretelling still greater changes to come. For,in the face of this wonderful increase to the ranks ofCatholicity, appears another significant fact, but verydifferent as to direction and energy— the gradual disappearanceof names once prominent in those parts, and the daily narrowingarea of Protestantism in the numerous sects of which it iscomposed.

At the same time a great danger was averted (or at leastwonderfully lessened and modified), from the whole country, bythe settlement of those immigrants in the large centres ofpopulation. The manufacturing enterprises, which at that timeassumed such vast developments in North America, received amongtheir workers, men and women, a large proportion of Catholics,and the fear of future political and social peril to the peaceand security of society at large could never, on this continent,reach the extreme point witnessed in Europe to-day. The greatdanger of the European future nestles principally in those vasthives of industry with which that continent abounds. Our eyeshave witnessed, our ears have been affrighted at thosestupendous plans and projects in which, not only the greatquestions of capital and labor are involved, but the wholefabric of society is threatened with downfall. Religion,government, property, the family, the state—all those greatprinciples and facts on which the security of mankind depends,enter now into the programme of artisans and laborers enlistedin gigantic and many-ramified secret societies, while the wholeworld trembles at the awful aspect of this unwelcome phantom,that no government, however powerful, can lay.

Suppose that on this continent the numerous bands of workingmen,so actively engaged everywhere in developing the resources ofthe country, should aim at extending their solicitude beyondtheir immediate and material welfare to the reformation andreorganization of mankind on a new basis; and suppose that, withthis aim in view, they should combine with those of Europe, andenter into an unholy compact with them, what hope or refugewould remain in the whole world for harmony, peace, justice, andhappiness? And when the great upheaval, so generally expected inEurope, and which sooner or later must take place, shall come topass, where could those men fly, who cannot but look upon thosesatanic schemes with horror? Where on this earth would be founda spot consecrated to the acknowledgment of the only socialprinciples which can secure the real good of mankind, byrendering safe the stability of society?

It is our firm belief that the vast number of true children ofthe Church, occupied honestly and actively in the many factoriesof the North, will, when the contest commences, even before itcommences, when the question of connecting the "unions" of thiscountry in a band of brotherhood with those of Europe shall begravely mooted, make their voices loudly and unmistakably heardon the right side.

Enough has now been said on the locality chosen by preference asthe dwelling- place of the Irish immigrants at the period underconsideration. Let us now see those armies of new-comers at work.They have been called a missionary people; let us see how theyunderstand their "mission."

In this new country every thing had to be done for theestablishment of religion, education, help for the poor, theaged, the infirm, on a lasting and sufficiently broad basis. And,strange to remark, it was found that the previous persecutionsthey had undergone fitted them admirably for their work, notonly by giving them a strong faith, the true foundation ofChristian energy, but in a manner more curious, if not moreeffective. It fitted them to give money freely and abundantly,poor as they were! One may smile incredulously at the conceit;but it has become a most powerful and incontestable fact.

Suppose the Irish never to have been persecuted in their owncountry: suppose that they had found there a benevolentgovernment to supply them with churches, schools, hospitals—homes for the poor—every thing that they, as Catholics, coulddesire. Suppose them to have been in a similar position with theFrenchmen, Spaniards, and Italians, of those days, how bitterlywould they have felt the inconvenience of building all thesethings up for themselves in their new homes with the labor oftheir own hands, by their own individual efforts, unaided by thegovernment! Their ardor would have been damped, their energycramped, their inclination to give would have fallen far belowthe necessities of the time: for money was sorely needed—nonigg*rd offerings, but immense sums.

But happily—happily in the result, not in the fact—not onlyhad the British Government never done any thing of the kind forthem in their old home; not only, on the contrary, had it beenparticularly careful to rob them of all the buildings andestates left by their ancestors for those great objects; but,until very recently, the passing of the Emancipation Act of 1829,it had studiously and most persistently hindered them fromdoing voluntarily for themselves what it refused to do for them.There were numerous penal statutes enacted, in the course of twocenturies, to prevent them from building churches, openingschools, erecting asylums and hospitals of their own, nay, frompossessing consecrated graveyards for their dead. Thus didfanatic hatred pursue them even to the grave, and, as far as itcould, beyond the gates of death. Every one had to surrender themortal remains of his relatives to the Protestant minister forburial; as though what the government called its religion wouldsnatch from them whatever it could lay hands on—the body atleast since the soul had escaped and passed beyond its reach.

But in their new country they found every thing altered. Notonly was prohibition of this kind utterly unknown, but thereexisted there the greatest amount of liberty ever enjoyed by manfor acting in concert with a religious, educational, orcharitable object in view. No law devised by the old Greekrepublics, by the Roman fisc, by modern European intermeddlingwas ever attempted in the country which with justice boasted ofbeing the "asylum of the oppressed." Thus as the liberty so longdenied to the Irish was at last opened up, as no barrier existedto cramp and confine the natural generosity of their hearts, nosooner did they find that they might contribute as they chose tothose great and holy objects, than they rushed at the chancesoffered them with what looked like recklessness.

We hope that the reader may understand, from this, our meaningin saying that persecution had admirably fitted them for themighty work that lay before them. It was the first time forcenturies that they were allowed to give for such sacredpurposes.

Another thing which disposed than toward it was, the lingeringfondness for the old customs of clanship, still harbored intheir inmost soul, never entirely dead and ready to revivewhenever an opportunity presented itself. There can be no doubtof this; the great adjuration of the clansman to his chieftain—"Spend me, but defend me"—tended wonderfully to consecrate intheir eyes the act of giving and giving constantly, as thoughtheir purse could never be exhausted. The chieftain has beenreplaced by the bishop, the priest, the educator; the nobilityhas gone, but these have come; and unconsciously perhaps, butnone the less really, does this feeling lie at the bottom oftheir hearts, which are ever ready to burst out with the oldexpression, though in other form: "Spend me, eat me out, buthelp my soul, and save my children."

This feeling has always run in the blood of the race. St. Paullong ago detected it in the Galatians, a branch of the Celtictribes, when he wrote to them: "You received me as an angel ofGod, even as Christ Jesus. . . . I bear you witness that, if itcould be done, you would have plucked out your own eyes, andgiven them to me."—Epistle to the Galatians, iv. 15.

Few, perhaps, have reflected seriously on the large sumsrequired for the establishment of the Catholic Church in so vasta country, with all her adjunct institutions; therefore thestupendous result has scarcely struck those who have witnessedand lived in the midst of it. The same is the case, though on amuch smaller scale, with respect to the money sent back toIreland by newly-arrived immigrants. People were aware that theIrish, women as well as men, were in the habit of forwardingdrafts of one, two, or three pounds to their relatives andfriends, but in such small amounts that the whole could notreach a very high figure. But when it came to be discovered thatmany banking associations were drawing large dividends from theoperation, that new banks were continually being opened whichlooked to the profit to be derived from such transmission astheir chief means of support, some curious people set to workcollecting information on the subject and instituting inquiries,when it was found that the aggregate sum amounted to millions,and would have become a serious item in the specie exports ofthe country, if what was transmitted did not in the main comeback with those to whom it had been forwarded.

So was it, but in much larger proportions with respect to theamounts annually spent in the purchase of real estate, thebuilding of churches, schools, asylums, hospitals, for thesupport of clergymen, school-teachers, clerks, officials,servants, which were called for all at once, over the surface ofan extensive territory, for the service of hundreds of thousandsof Catholics arriving yearly with the intention of settlingpermanently in the country. Could the full statistics befurnished, they would excite the surprise of all; the fewdetails which we would be enabled to gather from directories,newspapers, the reports of witnesses, and other sources, couldgive but a faint idea of the whole, and are consequently betteromitted.

One single observation will produce a more lasting impression onthe reader's mind than long statistics, and the enumeration ofbuildings and other undertakings. It is a fact, without theleast tinge of exaggeration, that in the States of Pennsylvania,New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Ohio, Indiana,Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, and several other WesternStates, nearly every clergyman, who had the care of a singleparish before 1840, if alive to-day, could show in his formerdistrict from ten to twenty parishes, each with its own pastorand church, now flourishing, and attached to each a much largernumber of useful educational and charitable establishments thanhe could have boasted of in his original charge. Let one reflecton this, and then imagine to himself the sums requisite topurchase such an amount of real estate, for the erection of somany edifices, and for placing on an efficient footing so manydifferent establishments.

It is true that, to-day, a number of these institutions arestill in debt; but, if the list of what is actually paid for bemade out, and separated from what still remains indebted, theresult would stand as a most wonderful fact.

The question will naturally present itself, "How was it possiblefor newly- arrived immigrants, who often landed without a pennyin their pockets, to become all at once so easy in theircirc*mstances as to be enabled to contribute, so generously andenormously, to so gigantic an enterprise?" The details in replyto this might be given very simply and satisfactorily; but, asit is a real work of God, who always acts simply andsatisfactorily, though in a manner worthy of the deepestattention and gratitude, it is proper to examine the question inall its bearings, and then even those who have seen, and canaccount for it very easily, will wonder, admire, and thank, theinfinite Providence of God.

First, it is certain that nowhere else in this world could ithave been accomplished at all; and nowhere else in this worldhas any thing like it been accomplished in a like manner. Thismay appear strange, but it is so; let us see.

All know how, in infidel countries, every thing necessary forthe material help of Catholic missions must be supplied by themissionaries themselves; that, in fact, they have not only theirown support to consider, but, often also, the feeding, clothing,and education of the natives at their own expense. It is thus inall the barbarous countries of Asia, Africa, and the newcontinent and islands in the South Sea. It is thus in the old,effete, but once civilized countries of Asia, such as Syria,Hindostan, China, and others. In all those countries, money mustcome from without, not only to begin, but to continue, the workof evangelization, even when it has been going on for centuries.Details on this subject are unnecessary, the truth of what hasjust been said is so well known.

In Christian countries, as in Europe, the various governmentshave so far contributed to the aid of the mission ofChristianity, or have been gracious enough to allow such of thewealthy classes as were willing to take this task off theirshoulders and set it up on their own, the lower classes beingscarcely able to help toward it. What the case will be when thehalcyon days come of the separation of Church and state, and thelatter succeeds in the object at which it seems so earnestlystriving now, of making the people godless like itself, when therich will no longer be willing to undertake this work, God onlyknows. But in those countries, as is well known, the government,formerly, and latterly up to quite recent times, or richfamilies by large contributions laid down at once, have builtchurches, founded universities, colleges, and schools, erectedhospitals and asylums; founded— such was the expression—allthe religious, charitable, or literary institutions in existence.The "people" have scarcely effected any thing in this direction,for the very good reason that they were unable to do so.

In the United States alone, and among Catholics alone, it is"the people," the poor, who have taken and been able to takethis matter into their own hands.

That they—the Irish particularly—have done this, redounds totheir honor, and it will receive its reward from God; nay, hasalready in a great measure received it, by filling the land withthe temples of their faith, with schools where their childrenare still taught to believe in God and grow up a moral race, andwith the various Catholic asylums and institutions establishedfor the glory of religion, or the comfort of those who arecomfortless. That they have been able to do this is owing to theunique, exceptional, marvellous prosperity of the country whichoffered them an asylum. And let us add with reverence that thecountry owes this singular prosperity, which has been the sourceof so many blessings, to the designs of a loving Providence, wholooks to the welfare of the whole of mankind, and has thereforeendowed this young and gigantic nation with the necessaryqualities of energy, activity, "go-aheaditiveness," as it iscalled, added to the fixed principle that every individualthroughout these vast domains shall enjoy liberty, facility ofacquiring a competency, and the right to make what use of it hepleases, as well as generosity enough to applaud the one whodevotes his surplus earnings to useful public undertakings.

In no other country of the world has this been the case, and inno other country is it the case at the present moment. And, asthe fact is mighty in its results, unprepared by man, unlookedfor a hundred years ago, requiring for its fulfilment a thousandagencies far beyond the control of any man or inferior mind,following the line of reasoning previously indicated, we ascribe,are constrained to ascribe, it all to the great infinite Mind,to God himself, and to him alone!

And now we turn to the workings of the Irish, and to aconsideration of a few of the details. The first crying need waschurches and orphan asylums: churches for the all-importantworship of God; orphan asylums to receive the numbers ofchildren left homeless by the death of immigrants soon aftertheir arrival, and who were immediately snatched up by theproselytizing sects.

The style of architecture displayed in those first temples ofthe great God was homely indeed and humble. Nevertheless, itmight favorably compare with similar buildings erected bywealthy Protestant congregations. This fact alone is sufficientto convict Protestantism of want of faith, namely, that itsadherents have never been struck by the thought that the majestyof God, if really felt, calls for a profusion of gifts on thepart of those who have superabundant means. Not that man can byhis feeble exertions in that regard give adequate honor to thedivine Omnipotence, but that love and gratitude are naturallyprofuse in their demonstrations, and whoever loves ardently isever ready to give all he has for the object of his love, evento the sacrifice of himself. The reflection that God is toogreat, and that it is useless, even presumptuous, to offer tohim what must seem so infinitely mean in the light of hisgreatness, is but the flimsy pretext of an avaricious soul, andcan be nothing but a lie, even in the eyes of those who utter it.From the beginning all truly religious nations have endeavoredto make their external worship correspond with their internalfeeling, and give expression, as far as man can do, to theiridea of the worth and majesty of God; and that thought is a truemeasure of a religion; for, when the external is but a cold andsordid worship, we may be sure that the internal corresponds;and, when little or nothing is done in that way, it is clearthat the heart feels not, and the mind is empty of trueconvictions and of faith.

And what has been the invariable conduct of Protestant nationsin this regard? They became possessed of splendid churches builtby their Catholic ancestors, and, after stripping them of alltheir beauty, they retained them as "preaching-halls" or"meeting- houses." The number of those who remained attached toa frigid and unattractive service gradually diminished; theedifices were found to be too large, and in many instances whathad been the sanctuary, where art had exhausted itself inembellishment, partitioned off from the rest of the church, waskept for their dwindling congregations, while the vast aislesand roomy naves went slowly to ruin, or became desertedsolitudes. As for the idea of building new religious edifices,the old ones were already too numerous for them, or if, as wasnot unfrequent, a new sect started into spasmodic life, and itsvotaries found it necessary to open a new "place of worship,"the temple they erected to God generally took the form of ahired hall. Let the floor be carpeted and the benches coveredwith soft, slumber-inviting cushions, the room wear a generalair and aspect of comfort, the "acoustics" duly considered, sothat the voice of the preacher might reach to the door and half-way to the galleries, and nothing more was required. The man whoasked for something more solemn, and answering better to thecravings of a religious heart, would be laughed at as avisionary, if his person did not distil, to the keen-scentedorgans of these religious folk, a strong flavor of "popery " andof "the man of sin."

So that in the United States at the time spoken of, although thenumber of churches was extraordinary, because of the number ofsects, they were mere shells of buildings, capable ofaccommodating from three to eight hundred people (very few ofthe latter capacity); and, although many of the members of thecongregations who built them were rich men, adding to theirwealth daily, one seldom encountered any of the structures, thencommon, showing much more than four walls, enclosing four linesof clumsy pews.

Consequently, the Catholic Church had no reason to blush bycomparison at the poverty of her children; nay, the extremesimplicity of the edifices raised by them was in keeping withevery thing around, and what they did in the hurry of the moment,with the scanty means at their disposal, at least might viewith what wealthy Protestants had done deliberately with all theleisure and wealth at their command.

Already, even at that epoch, in the centre of Catholicity inthis country, the love of the true worshipper of God began todisplay something of that feeling which is naturally alive inthe heart of the sincerely religious man; and the Cathedral ofBaltimore, long since left so far behind by other monuments oftrue devotion, created throughout the country a genuineexcitement and admiration, when its doors were first opened forthe worship of God. It was clear, from the universal acclaim ofthe people, non-Catholics included, that at least one class ofmen in the country had a true idea of what was worthy of God inhis worship, and what was worthy of themselves in their worshipof him.

But, though, with some rare exceptions, the architecturedisplayed in those edifices constructed by the children of thetrue Church was poor indeed, the number of those which werecommenced and so speedily completed and devoted to their holyuse was so extraordinary, that it is doubtful if the annals ofCatholicity have ever recorded the same thing occurring on thesame scale, in the same extent of country. If the ecclesiasticalhistory of the United States ever comes to be written, it is tobe hoped that, in the archives of the various episcopal sees,authentic documents have been preserved, which may furnishfuture writers with comprehensive statistics on the subject,that the posterity of the noble-hearted men and women whoundertook and carried out, with such a wonderful success, soarduous a task, may be stimulated to religious exertion of thesame kind by the memory of what their forefathers haveaccomplished. The reflection already suggested by another ideamay serve here likewise, and be usefully repeated. If, in thecourse of twenty-five years, over the surface of at least ten ofthe largest Northern States, every clergyman who, at thebeginning of that period, officiated in a very small church, is,to-day, supposing him living, gladdened by the sight of ten totwenty collaborators, with a corresponding number of newly-builtchurches, it is easy to judge of the vastness of the effort madeby the greatness of the undertaking and the unexampled successwith which God has been pleased to crown it. The other States ofthe Union are omitted here, not because the Catholics residingin them were then idle, but because, their growth being lessremarkable, the external result could not be so striking.Nevertheless, the actual increase among them would comparefavorably with that of other growing Catholic countries.

Could details, at this present time, only be gathered from allthe States, in the area referred to, the vast diffusion ofCatholicity by the influence of immigration would come home tous with far greater force, as would the conception of thecorresponding work demanded of the immigrants for the creationof all the objects of worship, charity, and education. Let thereader look to what is related in the "Life of Bishop Loras,"who was at that time charged with the founding of religion inIowa and Minnesota. It will at the same time bring under ournotice the march of the Irish toward the West, after having seenthem solidly established in the Atlantic States.

"He was consecrated at Mobile by Bishop Portier, assisted byBishop Blanc, of New Orleans, on December 10, 1837. His diocesewas a vast region unknown to him. The unfinished Church of St.Raphael, at Dubuque, was the only Catholic church in theTerritory, and the Rev. Sam. Mazzuchelli, its pastor, was theonly Catholic priest. The Catholic population of Dubuque wasabout three hundred. . . . But there must be, thought the newbishop, some members of the flock in distant, isolated, andunfrequented localities, who were in danger of wandering fromthe faith; besides, the future waves of population wouldcertainly set in toward this fine expanse of meadow, prairie,and forest. . . . With prudent foresight he purchased land . .. . three acres at Dubuque; later, St. Joseph's Prairie, one milesquare, near the same city. . . . A valuable property wasacquired in Davenport, on the Mississippi, with the view ofapplying the revenue from it to the support of the missions.

"To his regret he saw large numbers of the European immigrantstarrying in the Atlantic cities, where want, sickness, and crime,beset their path, and he became deeply interested in giving tothis worth population the more healthful and vigorous directionof the West. . . . Articles were prepared and published, settingforth the attractions of the country. . . . An immensecorrespondence, with persons in this country and in Europe,resulted from the well-known interest Bishop Loras took in thesesubjects. . . . He undertook the settlement of colonies. . . .Germans in New Vienna, in 1846 . . . Irish on the Big-Maquokety.. . . He organized them in congregations and commenced in personthe work of building for them churches. . . . establishingschools and academies, laboring for the temporal and eternalwelfare of the people."

Thus did the tide of Catholic population begin to flow into Iowaand Minnesota, to be brought under the influence of the Churchas soon as it arrived.

Meanwhile associations were being formed in the East, in NewYork chiefly, for the purpose of inducing Irishmen to go west asfar as Illinois, and the Territories west of the Mississippi.Several zealous clergymen placed themselves at the head of themovement. Their main object was to rescue the Catholicimmigrants from the dangers surrounding them in large cities,and to make farmers of them. We have seen why these plans,though prompted by the best intentions, failed to succeed; theirimmediate effect was to give a fresh impetus to the greatmovement westward, and, by relieving the Atlantic coast of asudden excess of population, to extend the Church along the linemarked out by Providence toward the coast of the Pacific.

At the same time, on the very shores of that vast ocean,California was receiving directly from Europe large detachmentsof the voluntary exiles who were then leaving Ireland in acompact body in the full tide of the "Exodus." The CatholicChurch was thus early taking up a commanding position at theextreme point whither the main "army" was tending, and soon toarrive with the completion of the great Pacific Railroad.

The following extract, taken from the "Life of Bishop Loras,"will be sufficient to give an idea of the rapid increase of theCatholic population in the West, in consequence of the workingsof so many agencies employed by God's providence for his ownholy ends:

"In 1855, the Catholic population of Iowa increased one hundredand fifty per centum in a single year. It seems almostincredible to relate, that the churches and stations, providedfor their accommodation, increased in the same time nearly onehundred per centum. The Catholic population reported in 1855 wastwenty thousand, and the churches and stations fifty-two; theCatholic population in 1856 was rated at forty-nine thousand,and the churches and stations at ninety-seven.

"Bishop Loras commenced his episcopate (in 1837) with one church,one priest, and the only Catholic population reported, that ofDubuque, was three hundred. In 1851, Minnesota was taken fromhis diocese, yet in 1858, the year of his death, the diocese ofDubuque alone possessed one hundred and seven priests, onehundred and two churches and stations, and a Catholic populationof fifty-five thousand."

There can be little doubt that, if similar statistics were drawnup for all the Western States of the Union during acorresponding period, they would give very similar results; andit is only by reflecting and pondering over such astonishingfacts as these, that the mind can come to grasp the idea of themagnitude of the work assigned by Providence to the Irish race.This, we have no hesitation in saying, will form one of the mostremarkable features of the future ecclesiastical history of theage, and will appear the more clearly when all the consequencesof this stupendous movement shall stand out fully developed, soas to strike the eyes of all.

It may be well to reflect a moment upon the activity displayedby that zealous hive of busy immigrants, who, soon after landing,when the thoughts of other men would have been exclusively and,as men would think, naturally, occupied by the thousandnecessities arising from a new establishment on a foreign soil—while not neglecting those necessities—found time to enterheart and soul into projects set on foot everywhere for buyingup landed property, making contracts with builders, supervisingthe work already going on, attending above all to the collectionof money, forming lists of subscribers to that end, visitinground about for the same purpose, and attending to thefulfilment of promises sometimes made too hastily, or with toosanguine an expectation of being able to accomplish what in thefuture was never realized to the extent expected.

But, much sooner than might have been hoped, the desire, socongenial to the Catholic heart, of beholding more suitabledwellings erected to the honor of God and to the reception ofhis Divine presence, was fulfilled, or aroused, rather, in aquarter least expected, and consequently more in accordance withthe (to man) mysterious ways of Providence. The sudden increaseof the Church in England, in consequence of remarkableconversions and principally of the little-remarked flow ofemigrants thither from the sister isle, induced some pious andwealthy English Catholics, now that they found themselves freeto follow their inclinations unmolested, to devote their meansto the construction of churches worthy of the name. The splendidstructures, now the lifeless monuments of the old faith, whichtheir fathers had raised, rested in the hands of the spoiler,and they could not worship, save privately and inwardly, at theshrine of Thomas of Canterbury, or before the tomb of Edward theConfessor. Yet were their eyes ever afflicted with the presenceof those noble edifices, that resembled the solemn tombs of aburied faith, yet still cast their lofty spires heavenward,while the structure beneath them covered acres of ground withthe most profuse and elaborate architecture. They looked aroundthem for a builder, who might raise them such again. But therewas none to be found capable of conceiving, much less buildingsuch vast fabrics as the old churches, which owed theirexistence not to the ingenuity of a designer, but to theinspired enthusiasm of a living faith. Nevertheless, a man, fullof energy and reverence and love for the beauty of the house ofGod, came forward at the very moment he was wanted. Welby Puginsoon became known to the world, and was still in the full vigorof his enterprising life, when all over the American Continentthe immigrants were engaged in satisfying the first cravings oftheir hearts, and covering the country with unpretendingedifices crowned, at least, by the symbol of salvation. Amongthem arrived pupils of Pugin, who speedily found Irish hearts torespond to theirs, and Irish purses ready to carry their designsinto execution.

There is no need of going into details. Puritan New England evenhas seen its chief cities one by one adorned with true templesof God, and its small towns embellished by stone edificesdevoted to Catholic worship, their form pleasing to the eye, andtheir interior spacious enough, at least temporarily, for theconstantly-increasing congregations. But perhaps the mostremarkable result of all has been the sudden zeal which sprangup among the sectarians themselves, who had hitherto expressedsuch contempt for any thing of the kind, of outstripping theCatholics in Christian architecture. They have even gone so faras to discover that the cross, the emblem of man's salvation, isnot such a very inappropriate ornament, after all, to the summitof a Christian temple, and that the statues of angels and ofsaints are possessed of a certain beauty. So that what in theireyes hitherto had borne the semblance of idolatry—such,according to themselves, was their way of looking at it—suddenly became an aesthetic feeling, if not an act of truedevotion.

And, singularly enough, it was just at the time when theerection of so many episcopal sees necessitated the building ofcathedrals, that the thought, natural to the Catholic heart, ofmaking the house of God a place of beauty and magnificence,could begin to be realized by the arrival of true artists andthe increasing wealth of the Catholic body.

It is in the true Church only that the meaning of a cathedralcan be fully grasped. Those sects which acknowledge no bishopsand deride the title certainly can form no conception of it, andeven those who imagine that they have a bishop at their head,have so little idea of what are true episcopal functions, of thegreatness of the position which a see occupies, of theimportance of the place where it is established, that in theireyes the pretended dignitary can scarcely rank much higher,either in position or degree, than a wealthy parish minister,and the church wherein "his lordship" officiates is very muchthe same as an ordinary parish church. If in England a show ofdignitaries is attached to each of those establishments, it ismerely a form well calculated to impress the solemn Anglo-Saxoncharacter; but even that very form would scarcely have existedwere it not one of those few semblances of the Catholic realitywhich the wily founders of the Protestant religion found itconvenient to retain for the purpose hinted at. The CatholicChurch alone can understand what a cathedral ought to be.

This is not the occasion to enter upon an explanation of all themeanings and uses of a cathedral, least of all to penetrate thesublime mystical significance embodied in its conception. Hereit is enough to insist upon the least important, yet mostsensible and more easily-recognized object of the building,which is, not simply the seat of honor of the first pastor ofthe diocese, who is a successor of the apostles, but likewisethe place of adoration and sacrifice common to all the faithfulof the diocese. Strictly speaking, no special congregation isattached to it; but it is the spiritual home of all the faithful;its doors are open to all the congregations of that part. Therethe common father resides and officiates; there his voice isgenerally to be heard; there he is to be found surrounded by allthose whose duty it is to assist him in his sublime functions.When he appears in any parish church, the clergy of that specialtemple are his only attendants, unless others flock thither todo him honor. But the cathedral is his fixed seat and permanentabode; there the appointed dignitaries of the diocese find theirallotted places, and there alone are his officers permanentlyattached to him by their functions.

Hence it is the cardinal church upon which the whole spiritualedifice called the diocese is hinged. Therefore is it thenatural resort of the whole flock, as well as of the pastorhimself. This will explain the vastness of those edifices whichstrike us with wonder in old established Catholic countries. Inaccordance with their primitive intention and purpose, thereshould be in them standing and kneeling room for all who have aright to enter there; and it is purely on account of theimpossibility of exactly fulfilling this intent that the edificeis allowed to be built smaller. We are thus enabled tounderstand why the great temple which is the centre-spot ofCatholic worship can contain only fifty thousand worshippers ata time, and why many other sacred edifices consecrated toepiscopal functions can find room for no more than twenty orthirty thousand.

But even those structures, which strike with wonder the punyminds of this "advanced" age, have consumed centuries in theirconstruction, and the number and the faith of those who raisedthem were, we may say, exceptional in the life of the Church.There were no dissenters in those days; and, as all werepossessed of a firm faith, all labored with a common will andcontributed with a common pleasure to their construction.

Times having changed for the worse, the same ardor andgenerosity could not be looked for; but something at least wasrequired which should give some idea of the old, splendor andvastness. So, throughout all the new dioceses projects were seton foot for raising real cathedrals, which should quiteovershadow the buildings hitherto known by that name.

Thus, a cathedral was promised to New York City, three hundredand thirty feet in length, and one hundred and seventy-two inbreadth across the transept; while that of Philadelphia was sooncompleted, and all might gaze on the massive and majesticedifice, by the side of which every other public building in acity containing eight hundred thousand souls appeared dwarfishand unsubstantial. Boston was soon to behold within its walls aCatholic cathedral, three hundred and sixty-four feet long, andone hundred and forty broad in the transept, though the samediocese was already filled with large stone churches, builtsolely by the resources of the immigrants.

The Archbishop of New York, when preaching the sermon at thelaying of the foundation-stone of this edifice in 1867, was ableto say in the presence of many who might have borne personaltestimony to the truth of his words: "There are those mostprobably within the sound of my voice who can remember whenthere was but one Catholic church in Boston, and when thatsufficed, or had to suffice, not alone for this city, but forall New England; and how is it now? Churches and institutionsmultiplied, and daily continuing to multiply on every side, inthis city, throughout this State, in all or nearly all thecities and States of New England; so that at this day no portionof our country is enriched with them in greater proportionatenumber, none where they have grown up to a more flourishingcondition, none where finished with more artistic skill, orpresenting monuments of more architectural taste and beauty."

Had any one predicted this to the good and gifted BishopCheverus, when leaving America for France, he might perhaps havenot refused altogether to believe or hope for it, but he wouldcertainly have pronounced it a real and undoubted miracle of God,to happen within a century.

But the Archbishop of New York, in that same sermon, pointed outthe true cause, when he attributed it to "God's blessing," andto "the never-ceasing tide of immigration that has been andstill continues to be setting toward the American shores."

The history of the Church certainly contains many a page wherethe traces of the finger of God are clearly marked; nay, we maysay that such traces are apparent throughout, as we know thatGod alone could have originated, spread out, supported,multiplied, and perpetuated the Church through all the centuriesof her existence; but it is doubtful if in all her annals asingle page shows where the action of Providence is more clearlyvisible, as it was least expected, than in the few facts justcursorily and briefly enumerated.

Yet have we mentioned only a part of the work to which the poorimmigrants were called to contribute immediately after theirarrival, and at the vastness of which they never murmured norlost heart, as though a greater burden had been laid upon themthan human shoulders could endure.

The worship of God and the care of souls were the first thingsto be attended to, and, with these, other necessary objects werenot to be neglected. There was the care of the poor, whom theChurch of Christ was the first public body to think of relieving;the tending of the sick in hospitals, where their own clergymight not only have access, but where it should be made surethat the management be one of true Christian charity andtenderness; the orphan children, always so numerous undercirc*mstances like those of the present, were to be saved fromfalling into the hands of sectarians, and being educated by them,as were formerly the Catholic wards, in hatred of their ownfaith, and of the customs, habits, and modes of thought of theirancestors. This last great and incalculable source of loss tothe Church was to be put a stop to at once, if not completely—for that was then impossible—at least as perfectly as zeal,generosity, and true love of souls, could effect. All theseworks required money, an incalculable amount; as it was not in asingle city, not in a small particular State, but throughout thewhole Union, through as many cities as it contains, that theundertaking was to be straightway set on foot and simultaneouslyacted upon.

Nor was the question one of the erection of buildings merely,but also of the support of an immense number of inmates, and oftheir constant support without a single day's intermission. Whocan calculate the sums required for such immediate and mostpressing needs?

In a nation where Christianity has been long established, taxesimposed upon all for the constructing, repairing, maintaining,and carrying on so many and such large establishments are easilycollected. For all are bound by law to contribute to suchpurposes, and the question generally reduces itself merely to acontinuance of the support of institutions long standing, andwhich can be no longer in need of the large disbursem*ntsnecessary at the first period of their existence. But here itwas a question of providing, without any other law than that oflove, without the help of any other tax-gatherer than thevoluntary collector, for all those necessities at once,including the vast outlays requisite for the first establishmentof those institutions, and imposing, by that very act, thenecessity and duty of supporting forever all the inmatesgathered together at the cost of so much care and expense,within those walls consecrated to religion and charity. Thegovernment had no share whatever in it; too happy were they atthe government interposing no obstacle to its carrying out! Thatwas all they asked for on its part—non-interference.

On this subject, Mr. Maguire remarks justly, without, however,bringing the matter of expenditure into sufficient prominence:

"For the glorious Church of America many nations have done theirpart. The sacred seed first planted by the hand of thechivalrous Spaniard has been watered by the blood of thegenerous Gaul; to the infant mission the Englishman brought hissteadfastness and resolution, the Scotchman, in the northeast,his quiet firmness, . . . the Irishman his faith, the ardor ofhis faith. And, as time rolled on, and wave after wave ofimmigration brought with it more and more of the precious life-blood of Europe, from no country was there a richer contributionof piety and zeal, of devotion and self-sacrifice, than fromthat advanced outpost of the Old World, whose western shoresfirst break the fury of the Atlantic; to whose people Providenceappears to have assigned a destiny grand and heroic—of carryingthe civilization of the Cross to remote lands and distantnations. What Ireland has done for the American Church, everybishop, every priest, can tell. Throughout the vast extent ofthe Union there is scarcely a church, an academy, a hospital, ora refuge, in which the piety, the learning, the zeal, the self-sacrifice, of the Irish—of the priest or the professor, of theSisters of every order or denomination—are not to be traced;there is scarcely an ecclesiastical seminary for English-speaking students in which the great majority of those nowpreparing for the service of the sanctuary do not belong, if notby birth, at least by blood, to that historic land to which thegrateful Church of past ages accorded the proud title, InsulaSanctorum."

To this may be added the remark that it is still further beyonddoubt that all the establishments mentioned, almost without oneexception, owe their existence, at least partially, and veryoften entirely, to the generous and never-failing contributionsof the Irish.

The Rev. C. G. White, in his "Sketch of the Origin and Progressof the Catholic Church in the United States of America," whichis appended to the translation of Darras's "History of theCatholic Church," says still more positively:

"In recording this consoling advancement of Catholicitythroughout the United States, especially in the North and West,justice requires us to state that it is owing in a great measureto the faith, zeal, and generosity of the Irish people who haveimmigrated to these shores, and their descendants. We are farfrom wishing to detract from the merit of other nationalities;but the vast influence which the Irish population has exerted inextending the domain of the Church is well deserving of notice,because it conveys a very instructive lesson. The wonderfulhistory of the Irish nation has always forced upon us theconviction that, like the chosen generation of Abraham (previousto their rejection of the Messiah, of course), they weredestined, in the designs of Providence, to a special mission forthe preservation and propagation of the true faith. This faith,so pure, so lovely, so generous, displays itself in every regionof the globe. To its vitality and energy must we attribute, to avery great extent, the rapid increase in the number of churchesand other institutions which have sprung up and are stillspringing up in the United States, and to the same source arethe clergy mainly indebted for their support in the exercise oftheir pastoral ministry. It cannot be denied, and we bear acheerful testimony to the fact, that hundreds of clergymen, whoare laboring for the salvation of souls, would starve, and theirefforts for the cause of religion would be in vain, but for thegenerous aid they receive from the children of Erin, who know,for the most part, how to appreciate the benefits of religion,and who therefore joyfully contribute of their worldly means topurchase the spiritual blessings which the Church dispenses."

To this we may add that what Mr. White so expressly states ofthe generous support given by the Irish people to the clergy isequally true when extended to the thousand inmates of orphanasylums, reformatories, schools, convents, and of all thecharitable institutions generally which are specially fosteredby the Church for the common good of humanity. To quote only onefact recorded in a note to Mr. Maguire's book, a Sister of Mercytells us what the Irish working-class has done for the order inCincinnati: "The convent, schools, and House of Mercy, in whichthe good works of our Institute are progressing, were purchasedin 1861 at a considerable outlay. This, together with therepairs, alterations, furnishing, etc., was defrayed by theworking-class of Irish people, who have been and are to us mostdevoted, and by their generosity have enabled us up to thepresent time to carry out successfully our works of mercy andcharity."

It may be stated, without fear of contradiction, that the samething might be asserted by the superior of almost every Catholicestablishment in the country, were an opportunity afforded themof coming forward in like manner.

All this is well known to those who are in the least acquaintedwith the history and workings of those institutions; but verylittle noise is made about it, according to the rule of theGospel which recommends us to do good in such a manner that "theleft hand may not know what the right hand doeth." Nothing ismore Christian than such silent approval, and the eternal reward,which must follow, is so overwhelmingly great that the applauseof the world may well be disregarded. But as constant goodoffices are apt to beget indifference in those who benefit mostby them, there are not wanting some good people who seem tolabor under the impression that really the Irish deservescarcely any thanks; that every thing which they do comes sonaturally from them, it is only what one could expect as amatter of course, and that, it being nothing more, after all,than their simple duty, it becomes a very ordinary thing.

It may be superfluous to say that if all this was expected fromthem, and if it be, as it really is, after all only a veryordinary thing on their part, this fact is precisely whatmakes them a most extraordinary people, as expectations of thisnature which may be most natural are of that peculiar kind of"great expectations" magnificent in prospect, but very delusivein fact; and certainly they would not be looked for as a matterof course in any other nation. Let any one reflect on the fewdetails here furnished, let him add others from his owninformation, and the whole thing will appear, as it truly is,most wonderful, and only to be explained by the great andmerciful designs of God, as Dr. White has just indicated—designs intrusted on this occasion to faithful servants whosegenerous hearts and pure souls opened up to the missionintrusted to them, to its glorious fulfilment so far, and to agreater unfolding still in time to come.

In order to understand, as ought to be understood, more fullythe weight of the burden they so cheerfully undertook to bear, afew reflections on the subject of religious and charitableinstitutions will not be considered out of place.

The Romans—those master-organizers, who reduced to a perfectsystem every branch of government, legislation, war, andreligion—never abandoned, never intrusted to the initiative ofthe people, the care of providing the means for any thing whichthe state ought to supply. The public religious establishmentswere all endowed, the colleges of the priests enjoyed largerevenues, and the expenses of worship were supplied from thesame source. To the fisc in general belonged the duty ofsupporting the armories, the courts of law, and the largeestablishments provided for the comfort and instruction of thepeople, the baths, libraries, and regular amusem*nts. Theprivate munificence of emperors, great patricians, andconquerors, undertook to supply occasional shows of anextraordinary character in the theatres, amphitheatre, and thecircus.

There was no room left for charity in the whole plan. Indeed,the meaning of that word was unknown to them; for it cannot beproperly applied to the regular distribution of money or cerealsto the plebs; as this was one of those generosities which arenecessary, and was only practised in order to keep the lowerorders of citizens in idle content and out of mischief, as youwould a wild animal which you dare not chain: you must feedhim. The really poor, the saves, the maimed, the helpless, wereleft to their hard fate, they being apparently unworthy of pitybecause they excited no fear.

Yet the system was fruitful in its results. As soon asChristianity was seated on the throne, nothing was easier thanto transfer the immense sums contributed by regular funds, orwhich were the product of taxes, from one object to another; andthus the Christian clergy and churches were supported as hadbeen the colleges and temples of the pagan priests, by therevenues derived from large estates attached to the variouscorporations. Thus did Constantine and his successors become themunificent benefactors of the Church in Rome and through-out thewhole empire.

Meanwhile, the 11 collections of money" among the faithful,which were first organized, as we read in the epistles of theapostles, and afterward systematized still better in Rome underthe first popes, soon grew into disuse, at least to the extentto which they once prevailed; the new charitable institutions,such as the care of the poor, of widows and orphans, being under-taken by the Church at large, while the expenses of the wholewere defrayed by the revenues accruing from the donations ofprinces, or the bequests of wealthy Christians.

The consequence was that, throughout the whole Christian world,all religious, literary, and charitable institutions enjoyedlarge revenues, and there was no need of applying to thegenerosity of the common people for contributions.

After the successful invasion of the barbarians, the same systemheld good; and history records how richly endowed were thechurches built, the monasteries founded, the universities andcolleges opened, by the once ferocious Franks, Germans, orNorthmen even, tamed and subdued by the precepts and practicesof Christianity.

We know how the immense wealth, which had been devoted to suchholy purposes by the wise generosity of rulers or rich nobles,became in course of time an eyesore and object of envy to theworldly, and that the chief incentive to the `~ Reformers" fordoing their work of 11 reformation" thoroughly was the prospectof the golden harvest to be reaped by the destruction of theCatholic Church.

But the very large amounts required to satisfy the aspirationsintroduced into the heart of humanity, by the religion of Christ,may give us an adequate idea of what Christian civilizationreally costs. It is foolish to imagine a sane man reallybelieving that those generous founders of pious institutions,who devote by gift or bequest, such large estates and revenuesto the various

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We cannot afford to transfer any more of his experiences amongthe Irish. From all his accounts, they are the same in London aseverywhere else, most firmly attached to Catholicity, and, as ageneral rule, most exemplary in the performance of theirreligious obligations.

It is fitting, however, to give the conclusion of a longdescription of what he saw among them while visiting them in thecompany of a clergyman: "The religious fervor of the people whomI saw was intense. At one house that I entered, the woman set memarvelling at the strength of her zeal, by showing me how shecontinued to have in her sitting-room a sanctuary to pray everynight and morning, and even during the day when she felt wearyand lonesome."

II. Passing from religion to morality, let us look at thiswriter again: "Only one-tenth, at the outside, of the couplesliving together and carrying on the costermongering trade (amongthe English) are married. . . . Of the rights of legitimate orillegitimate children, the English costermongers understandnothing, and account it a mere waste of money to go through theceremony of wedlock, when a pair can live together, and be quiteas well regarded by their fellows without it. The married womenassociate with the unmarried mothers of families without scruple.There is no honor attached to the married state and no shame toconcubinage.

"As regards the fidelity of these women, I was assured that inany thing like good times they were rigidly faithful to theirparamours; but that, in the worst pinch of poverty, a departurefrom this fidelity—if it provided a few meals or a fire—wasnot considered at all heinous."

Further details may be read in the book quoted from, which wouldscarcely come well in these pages, though quite appropriate tothe most interesting work in which they appear. From the whole,it is only too clear that the class of people referred to isprofoundly immoral and corrupt, their very poverty onlyhindering them from indulging in an excess of libertinism.

On the other hand, when Mr. Mayhew speaks of the street Irish inLondon, he is most emphatic in his praise of the purity of thewomen in particular, and the care of the parents in general topreserve the virtue of their daughters, in the midst of thefrightful corruption ever under their eyes. The only remark hepasses of a disparaging character is the following:

"I may here observe"—referring to the statement that Irishparents will not expose their daughters to the risk of what theyconsider corrupt influences—"that, when a young Irish womandoes break through the pale of chastity, she often becomes, asI was assured, one of the most violent and depraved of, perhaps,the most depraved class."

It is evident, from the mere form in which this phrase is put,that such a thing is of very rare occurrence, and that theviolence and depravity spoken of offer all the stronger contrastto the general purity of the whole class, and are merely theresult of the open and unreserved character of the race.

But the whole world knows that chastity is the rule, and perhapsthe most special virtue of the Irish, a fact which their worstenemies have been compelled to confess. In this same work of Mr.Mayhew's a still more surprising fact than the last—for that isacknowledged by all—is brought into astonishing prominence; afact opposed to the general opinion of their friends even, andyet supported by incontrovertible evidence. It relates toanother contrast between the English and Irish costermongers onthe score of temperance.

III. The result arrived at by his inquiries among liquor-dealersin that part of London inhabited by about equal numbers of bothnationalities, Mr. Mayhew gives us as twenty to one in favor ofthe Irish with respect to the consumption of liquor. In most"independent," that is to say, "not impoverished" Irish families,water is the only beverage at dinner, with punch afterward; andestimating the number of teetotallers, among the English atthree hundred, there are six hundred among the Irish, whoconstitute, it may be remembered, only one-third of the wholecostermonger class, and those Irish teetotallers, having takenthe pledge under the sanction of their priests, look upon it asa religious observance and keep it rigidly. The number of Irishteetotallers has been considerably increased since Mr. Mayhewmade his returns, in consequence of the energetic crusadeentered upon against drink by the zealous London clergy, underthe powerful lead of Archbishop Manning.

It is true that an innkeeper told Mr. Mayhew that "he wouldrather have twenty poor Englishmen drunk in his tap-room than acouple of poor Irishmen, who will quarrel with anybody, andsometimes clear the room." But this remark, if it shows anything, shows only how and why the Irish have obtained thatreputation of being a nation of drunkards, which is slanderousand false.

IV. Yet another, and perhaps as surprising a result as any, isthe contrast between both classes of people with respect toeconomy and foresight: The English street-sellers are foundeverywhere spending all their income in the satisfaction oftenof brutish appetites; the Irish, on the contrary, save theirmoney, either for the purpose of transmitting it to their poorrelatives in Ireland, or bringing up their children properly, or--if they are young—to provide for their marriage-expenses andhome. Such cares as these never seem to afflict the Englishcostermonger. So strongly did Mr. Mayhew find thesecharacteristics marked among the Irish, that he is at timesinclined to accuse them of carrying them too far, even to thedisplay of a sordid and parsimonious spirit. According to him,they apply to the various "unions," or to the parish, even whenthey have money, or sometimes go with wretched food, dwelling,or clothing, in order to have a small fund laid by, in case ofany emergency arising.

But the general result of his observations is clear: that theIrish are most provident and far-seeing; a surprising statement,doubtless, to the generality of Mr. Mayhew's readers, but onewhich, after all, only accords with the testimony of manyunexceptionable witnesses of their life in other countries. And,if in England, in London especially, they at times appear sordidin their economy, is not this the very natural result of themisery they had previously endured in their own impoverishedland, and therefore a proof that, at least, they have profitedby the terrible ordeals through which they were compelled topass?

We have spoken only of the Irish in London; the same facts aremost probably true of them in all the large cities of GreatBritain. Unfortunately, Mr. Mayhew's most interesting work hasfound no imitators in other parts of the kingdom. F. Perraud'sremarks, however, in his "Ireland under English Rule," extendalmost over the whole country.

After giving his own experience, and that of many others whom hehad consulted, or whose works he had read; after having setforth the dangers which beset the Irish in that (to them) "mostforeign country"—England—and also the success which hadattended the labors of many proselytizing agents among them, andeven in some cases the progress of immorality in their midstresulting from the innumerable seductions to which they wereexposed, a success and a progress which Mr. Mayhew's personalobservation would lead us to think the good father hasexaggerated, he concludes as follows:

"We must not overlook the fact that the Irish emigration toEngland and Scotland produces in many individual cases resultswhich cannot be too deeply deplored.

"But there, also, as well as in America and Australia, throughthe economy of an admirable providence, God makes use of thoseIrish immigrants for the propagation and extension of theCatholic faith in the midst of English and Scotch Protestantism.What progress has not the Catholic religion made within the lastthirty years in England? And might not the Catholics say totheir separated brethren what Tertullian said to the Caesars ofthe third century: 'Our religion is but of yesterday; and behold,we fill your towns, your councils, your camps, your tribes,your decuriae, the palace, the senate, the forum . . . . Youhave persecuted us during centuries, and behold, we spring upafresh from the blood of martyrs!'

"At the beginning of the reign of George III., England andScotland scarcely contained sixty thousand Catholics who hadremained true to the faith of their fathers. Their number in1821 was, according to the official census, five hundredthousand. In 1842, they were estimated at from two million totwo million five hundred thousand. At present (1864) they numbernearly four million, and of this total amount the single city ofLondon figures for more than two hundred and fifty thousand."

In a note he adds the following figures, furnished him by Dr.
Grant, the late Bishop of Southwark:

Total No. of Catholics. No. of Irish.
Manchester . . . . . . . . . . . 80,000 . . . . . . 60,000
Liverpool . . . . . . . . . . 130,000 . . . . . . 85,000
Birmingham . . . . . . . . . . . 30,000 . . . . . . 20,000
Preston. . . . . . . . . . . . . 24,000 . . . . . . 4,300
Wigan . . . . . . . . . . . 18,000 . . . . . . 6,000
Bolton . . . . . . . . . . . 12,000 . . . . . . 4,000
St. Helen's (Lancashire) . . . . 10,000 . . . . . . 6,000
Edinburgh . . . . . . . . . . . 50,000 . . . . . . 35,000
Glasgow . . . . . . . . . . 127,000 . . . . . . 90,000

"Finally, we must not forget that about one-half the army andnavy is composed of Irish Catholics.

"In 1792 England and Wales counted no more than thirty-fivechapels; in 1840 the number amounted to five hundred, amongwhich were vast and splendid churches, such as St. George's,Southwark, and the Birmingham Cathedral. At present (1864) thenumber is nearly one thousand.

"In connection with the movement of individual conversions,which yearly brings within our ranks from those of Protestantismthe most upright, the sincerest, the best-disposed souls, theIrish immigration in England is then destined to play animportant part in the so desirable return of that great islandto the faith which she received in the sixth century from St.Gregory the Great and St. Austin of Canterbury," and, let us add,from Aidan and his Irish monks of Lindisfarne and Iona, asMontalembert has shown.

If we examine closely the figures just furnished by F. Perraud,and consider that the number of Catholics in Great Britain wasonly five hundred thousand in 1821, which, following hiscalculation, mounted to four million in 1864, if we look closelyinto the gradations of the increase marked in the variouscensuses taken between those dates, we shall find that the Irishimmigration has indeed played a most important part in thereturn of England toward Catholicity. We are surprised to findthat he seems to estimate the number of Irish in England at onlyone million; there can be no doubt that they and their offspringcompose the majority of Catholics there, and that many of theEnglishmen who come back to the true faith are induced by theirexample and influence, particularly among the lower orders, andthat the real work of the conversion of the English nation restsin the hands of the Irish immigrants. Mr. Mayhew has informed usof the disposition of the English costermongers on religious matters.

We have now examined the three great waves which bore the Irishto foreign countries; the lesser streamlets, which wandered awayinto other English colonies, may be dismissed, as to trace andfollow up their course would involve more time and trouble thanthey really call for. We now see the Irish race disseminated inlarge groups over many and vast territories; and, although thehome population has been considerably diminished by that greatexodus, and is now reduced to about five millions, nevertheless,to count them as they are dispersed throughout the world, theirnumber is far higher than it has ever been before; and we nowproceed to offer some considerations tending to show the effectsof that vast emigration on the resurrection of the race, and onthe future progress of the country from which the race comes.

First, then, emigration has given Ireland and Irishmen animportance in the eyes of the world which they and it wouldnever have acquired unless that emigration had taken place; sothat England, on whom in a great measure their future fatedepends, is now compelled to respect and render them justice;and justice is all that is wanting to bring about their completeresurrection.

In order to form a true idea on this point, it is necessary toconsider them in their twofold aspect, as emigrants to theUnited States, residing under and citizens of a governmentdistinct from that of England; and, secondly, in countries whichare under the control of Great Britain, one of these beingEngland itself.

In the Union they become for the greater part citizens of thecountry which they have made their home, and the first conditionnecessary for the obtaining of this right of citizenship is therenunciation of all allegiance to their former English rulers.The readiness and joy even with which they perform this taskneed no mention. But, as Christians, the new obligations underwhich they bind themselves involve something more than the mereoath of allegiance; the spirit no less than the letter of theoath prescribes that they acknowledge no other country as theirsthan that which offered them a refuge, and consequently, by thevery fact of becoming American citizens, they cease to beIrishmen.

But their oath does not bind them to forget their former country,as little as it forbids them to benefit it as far as lawfullylies in their power. Far otherwise. Their new allegiance wouldindeed be a poor thing if, in its very conception, it could onlybind hearts so cold as to renounce at once all affection for theland of their birth, and banish in a day memories that the daybefore were sacred. This is not required of them; and, were it,they could never so understand their allegiance. They remain,and justly, firmly attached to Ireland, and look anxiously forany lawful occasion on which they may manifest their affectionby their acts.

Meanwhile, in their new country, position, influence, wealth,consideration, often fall to their lot; their numbers swell, andthey become an important factor in the republic. Something ofthe power wielded by the great nation of which they are nowcitizens attaches to them, and shows them to the astonished gazeof England under a totally new and unexpected aspect. In war,the effect is most telling, and, even so far back as 1812, thepart played by "saucy Jack" Barry, for instance, already gaverise to very grave considerations and forebodings on the part ofBritish statesmen. But, even in time of peace, the high positionheld by many Irishmen in the United States, and the aggregatevoice of a powerful party, where every tongue has a vote, cannotfail to tell advantageously on questions referring to theirformer country.

Can it be imagined that this exercises no influence on thetreatment of Ireland by the ruling power? To afford a trueconception of the alteration brought about by Irish emigration,suppose for an instant the ruling power using again its oldrecklessness in abusing Ireland—not that we imagine the Englishstatesmen of to-day capable of such a thing and anxious torestore what, happily, has passed away forever—but merely toshow the utter impossibility of such a contingency again arising,suppose one of the old penal laws to be again enacted andsanctioned by a British sovereign, what would the effect be onthe multitude of Irishmen now living in America? What,independently of the Irish, would be the effect on all theorgans, worthy of the name, of public opinion in America? Howwould the great majority of the members, not of Congress only,but of the Legislature of each State, speak? Public opanion isnow the ruler of the world, and when public opinion declaresagainst a flagrant and crying injustice, its voice must be heard,its mandate obeyed, and lawlessness cease. This extreme and, aswe believe, impossible example, is merely adduced as a proof ofthe advantage which Ireland has reaped from the dispersion ofher scattered children—an advantage falling back on her ownhead, in return, perhaps, for the mission they are working.

But, over and above the supposition of such an extreme case,there is surely a silent power in the mere standing of millionsof free men who would resent, as done to themselves, arecurrence of an attack on their old country. And there are,beyond question, three millions of former Irishmen, citizens to-day of the United States, on whom the glance of many an Englishstatesman, with any just pretension to the name, must fall.Therefore do we say that now England must respect Ireland.

That respect is daily heightened by the greater comfort andeasier circ*mstances, though still far too wretched on the whole,of the Irish at home, which have been mainly brought about bythe help received from their exiled countrymen. As was seen, theold policy of their oppressors had for chief object thepauperization of the country, and, as was also seen, that policywas eminently successful. We know how deeply the effects of thatformer policy are still felt, and how far from completion stillis justice in that regard; how they still complain, and withonly too much reason, of many laws which are as so many gyvesstill binding them down in their old degradation; but, of this,the following chapter will speak.

Yet, it is undeniable that their situation is considerablyimproved, and that the excessive sufferings which formerlyseemed their privilege, are scarcely possible in our days. Thischange in their circ*mstances for the better may be ascribed toa variety of causes, one of which, we acknowledge, has been therepairing of many previous injustices. But we must acknowledgealso that the main lever in a nation's resurrection, once theground is cleared round about—her treasury—has, as far asIreland is concerned, been chiefly replenished from abroad.Absentee landlords still drain the country; but the money whichhas gone into it has been certainly owing greatly to the immensesums transmitted yearly from America by the exiles, all of whichhas certainly not returned to the place from which it went out.It is impossible to estimate the amount which was kept inIreland and that which floated back, but the balance must beconsiderably on the side of what remained, as the distress athome was so great, and in millions of instances immediate reliefcame from the distant friends who had acquired a competency intheir new country, and, knowing the dire distress of theirrelatives at home, sent generally what they could spare, by thespeediest means at their command.

There is no doubt that thousands of families have thus beenbenefited by that first sad emigration of their friends, andthat the visible improvement in the condition of the Irish athome is in a great measure due to it. We hear, moreover, thatthe working of the new "Encumbered Estates Court " has alreadyplaced in the hands of native Irishmen many parcels of the landsof their fathers, and probably many of the ample estatesbelonging to what was the Irish Church Establishment, which areto be sold, will find their way back in the same manner.

The Irish are thus being slowly reinstated in possession oftheir own soil, and, that once accomplished, the respect ofEngland is secured—respectability in England being in itsessence equivalent to real estate.

Thus is the uprising of the nation being gradually, silently,but surely brought about by the emigration to the United States;and this effect is considerably heightened when the emigrationto countries under English control is taken into consideration—Canada, Australia, England itself.

In those places the same results followed which we have justwitnessed in the United States, but another and far greaterresult remains for them. Not only did they slowly aid inawakening the respect for their countrymen at home in theEnglish breast by their own rising importance and improvedcondition, but in Canada and Australia they possess a privilegewhich, in the British Isles, is theirs only in theory, butabroad becomes a very powerful fact.

Ever since the Union of 1800, the Irish are supposed to form apart and parcel of the empire at home, and to have fairrepresentation of their native country in the members theyreturn to the Imperial Parliament. But it is well known that theIrish influence in that Parliament is almost null, and thattheir presence there frequently is productive of no other resultthan to countenance laws injurious to their own country. Does,can Ireland hope to derive any political or social benefit fromher representatives in London beyond whatever may accrue to herfrom their vain remonstrances and ineffective speeches? But inthe colonial Parliaments the case is very different.

It is not our desire to be understood as saying that Irishmen,by meddling with politics, can effect a certain improvement intheir condition and that of their country, beyond giving tokensof the life which is in them. We believe, on the contrary, thattoo great an eagerness in such pursuits has injured them on manyoccasions; and they ought to beware of flattering themselvesthat they are rising because their votes are clamored for, andthey themselves exhorted to enter into the contest as fiercepartisans. This, too often, leads them into making themselvesthe mere tools of shrewd men.

But, in the colonies, they muster in considerable force, and,with prudence and sagacity, may have their desires and measuresfairly considered and conceded; for, unfortunately, the style ofmeasures fair and favorable to them as Irishmen and Catholics,is completely at variance with that of those opposed to them,whom, go where they will, they encounter, and always in the sameform. In Ireland, they are at liberty, apparently, to do thesame by reason of their superiority in point of numbers; theresult of the late Galway elections proves what a farce is thisshow of liberty, and even the members whom they would and dosometimes elect possess a very feeble influence, or none, inwhat is called the Imperial Parliament. But, in the colonies, ifthey, as electors, outnumber their political opponents, they canand must return the majority to the House of Representatives andof officers to the various departments of the colonialadministration. Such is the law of election in reallyrepresentative governments which are truly free; the majority ofelectors returns the majority to the government; and rightly so.Of course, there is room here, particularly where the majorityhappens to be Irish, for a vast quantity of frothy bluster aboutdrilled and intimidated voters, and all that sort of thing. Withthat we have no concern at present, and merely remark en passantthat it is a pity a little more of it was not wasted on therecent Galway elections, already alluded to, on both sides; andfor the rest, that the world has not yet been apprised of Irishmajorities in the Australian Parliament abusing their power byeither accidental or systematic misrule; and it may, therefore,be safely conceded that, on the whole, the government has restedin safe hands. However, what concerns us at present is the stateof Canada and Australia, where, among the highest publicdignitaries, are found men who are Irish, not simply by birth,but in feeling and in truth. And the conclusion which we wish todraw from that fact is, that Ireland is greatly benefited by thehigh positions which her sons assume in those distant colonies;and probably no one will be rash enough to deny or controvert inany way this point.

The truth is, that by emigration Ireland has suddenly expandedinto vast regions formerly ignorant of her name; regions whichswell the power and wealth of England, and which are destined toplay a very important part in her future history. In thesedistricts Irishmen have found a new country; something of theubiquity of the English belongs to them, and the influence,power, and weight, thus thrown into their hands, need no furthercomment. To show this in extenso would be only to travel overground already trodden in previous pages, enumerating thevarious countries they have touched upon in their Exodus. Thushave our seemingly long digressions had a very direct object inview, and served powerfully to solve our original question. Wemay now see that the resurrection of Ireland was intimatelyinvolved in the emigration of her children; that much of whathas already taken place to aid in that resurrection may beascribed to this emigration, and that much brighter days are yetin store for the nation, resulting mainly from this constant andpowerful cause. Let no one, then, lament the perseverance ofthose hardy wanderers who, though their country has already beendepleted by millions, still leave her to the figure of seventythousand annually. It seems that in Ireland much surprise isexpressed at the movement never ceasing. Providence will end itin its own good time; if God still allows it, it is surely forthe accomplishment of his own mighty and benevolent designs.

To conclude, then, this long chapter, there is only one questionto be put, which demands a few words, but words, in our opinionat least, of vast importance, and which we would give all thatis ours to give, to see promptly and energetically attended to:Has Ireland profited by this so-often mentioned emigration tothe extent she should have profited? And what ought Irishmen todo in order to increase the advantages derived from it?

We must confess that, up to the present, the benefit is far fromwhat it ought to have been, and the cause of this lies in wantof organization and association. They have seemed to let Godwork for them without any cooperation on their part; for God's,as we saw, was the plan, and he forced them, as it were, tocarry out his design. They went at the work blindly, merelyfollowing the impulse of circ*mstances, with no preparatoryorganization, and less still of association. And even now, whenthey are spread out over such vast territories in such mightymultitudes, as yet they have given no sign of the least desireof attempting even something like a combined effort toaccelerate the work of Providence. The only signs of life so fargiven have been violent and spasmodic, directly opposed to thegenius of the race, which, as we have endeavored to prove, hasnothing revolutionary in its character, and is not given to darkplots and godless conspiracies.

Unfortunately, also, they do not seem naturally adapted to aspirit of steady and long-continued or systematic association.In this, chiefly, does their race differ from the Scandinavianstock, which is grafted on system, combination, and steadiness,in pursuit of the object in hand.

But why not begin, at least, to make an effort in thatdirection? The Latin races, in which runs so much Celtic blood,are powerful to organize, as the Romans of old, and the Frenchand Spaniards of to-day, have so often proved. The Irish havebeen infused with plenty of foreign blood, after their manynational catastrophes, although we believe that their primitivecharacteristics have always overcome all foreign elementsintroduced among them; and, what the race could scarcely attemptages ado, is possible now. Moreover, there is nothing in theleanings of race which may not be overcome, and sure without anyradical change a nation can adapt itself to the necessities ofthe time, and to altered circ*mstances. Let the Irish see whatthey might effect toward the resurrection of their nativecountry, if they only seriously began at last to organize andassociate for that purpose. They would thus turn the immenseforces of their nation, now scattered over the world, to thereal advantage of their birthplace. In union is strength; butunion can only be promoted by association, particularly when theelements to be united are so far apart.

For such an object do we believe that God gave man in these latedays the destroyers of space—the steam-engine and the electrictelegraph. Those powerful agents of unification were unknown tomankind until God decreed that his children dispersed throughthe earth should be more compactly united. To the Catholic theywere given, in the first place, to serve God's first purpose bymaking the Church firmer in her unity and more effective in thepropagation of truth; but, after all, the mission of the Irishto-day is only a branch of the mission of the Church, and, ifonly on that account, are the missionaries deserving of allhonor and respect.

If in the designs of Providence the time has at last arrived forthe dwelling of the children of Japhet in the tents of Sem, andfor putting an end to the terrible evils dating from thedispersion at Babel and the confusion of tongues, the object ofthese great scientific discoveries is still more apparent. Atall events, organization and association are clearly needed forthe resurrection of Ireland, and the sooner a step is taken inthat direction the better.

But, what association would we propose? What should be itsimmediate and most practicable objects? These questions we donot feel competent to answer. Let Irishmen be once convincedthat organization is the great lever to work for the raising upof their down-trodden nation, and they will know best how to usethis powerful instrument. The leaders of the nation in that holyenterprise should, in our own opinion, be its spiritual leaders.They know their country, and they love it; they undoubtedlypossess the confidence of their countrymen: they, then, shouldbe the natural originators of those great schemes. And whatother leaders does Ireland possess, what body like them,acceptable to the nation, and neither to be bought by money noroffice?

This first remark naturally presupposes another: that the objectof those associations, being approved of by the religious guidesof the people, cannot be other than holy, and consequentlyrequire no secrecy of any kind. They must be patent to the world,as not being antagonistic to any established law or authority.Every man desirous of becoming a member of the associationshould know beforehand what is proposed to be done, and how farhis consent is to be given.

One other important point strikes us: the centre of organizationshould be in Ireland. Ireland is to be benefited by it, andthere the effort should naturally begin, where its results willfall. As for the particular direction which those efforts shouldtake, the detail of the whole enterprise, the plan of thecampaign—all this lies beyond us, and a sketch of it would mostprobably be a mere chimera.

One concluding word may be said, however, on a subject which hasoften been present to the writer's mind: The fearful oppressionof the nation began by robbing the people of their lands andmaking them paupers: one of the first aims of association, then,should evidently be the raising of the people up by therestoration, in great part at least, of the soil to the nativerace.

It is not our purpose to propose a new confiscation now, by wayof remedying the old ones; but England has allowed them to buyback the land of their fathers in the "Encumbered Estates Courts,"and by the law recently passed which disestablished the IrishProtestant Church? Is there no room for a plan whereby Irishmen,who have grown rich in foreign countries, may become purchasersof the land thus offered for sale? And, in reply to the naturaland powerful objection to such a plan on the score of distancefrom their native land, and the natural repugnance to return andlive there, and break up new ties, which are now old, and havemade them what they are, could not the fathers spare one son atleast, whom they might devote to the noble purpose of becomingIrish again, and settling on an Irish estate, and marryingthere? This would seem an easy and simple manner of recreating aCatholic gentry in the island.

This is merely a hint thrown out to exemplify what we mean byassociations for the purpose of raising Ireland up again; themany possible objects of national organization will occur to anymind giving a moment's reflection to it. This subject willoccupy our attention at greater length in the next chapter.

CHAPTER XVI.

MORAL FORCE ALL-SUFFICIENT FOR THE RESURRECTION OF IRELAND

This chapter will be devoted to the island itself. For manycenturies it was happy in its seclusion and separation from therest of Europe: in these days it necessarily forms a part of thewhole mass of Japhetic races; its isolation is no longerpossible; and, in the opinion of many, it is destined once againto become a spot illustrious and happy. The consideration of howthat lustre and happiness are to come upon it is the only taskstill left us.

Whoever takes into consideration the advantages it alreadyenjoys, and compares its present situation with that of ahundred years back, cannot fail to be struck with the remarkablechange for the better which has taken place between the twoperiods. Ireland still suffers, and suffers sorely, and theworld still speaks with justice of her wrongs; but, in whateverlight they may appear to those who love their country, no onecan pretend that it still groans under the weight of tyrannywhich has formed the burden of her history. And, whileacknowledging this beneficial change in her condition, they mustwonder at the same time how small was the share which thenatives themselves had in bringing it about, although theiractivity never relaxed, and they had great and good men workingfor their cause. What, in truth, did it?

The first point which claims our attention is how effectuallythe moral force of what is called liberal thought dealt a death-blow to the penal laws half a century before any of them wereerased from the statute book.

Liberal thought may be said to have originated in England,whence it passed over to France, to be disseminated and takeroot throughout Europe by means of the mighty influence thenexercised by the great nation. The chief object which animatedthe minds of those who first labored for its admission intomodern European principles is not for us to consider here. Thereis no doubt that this chief object was of a loosening anddeleterious nature: namely, to ruin Christian faith, to changeall the old social and political axioms held by Christendom, andto create a new society imbued with what now goes by the name ofmodern ideas. It is not necessary to point out the frightfulimprudence as well as criminality of many of those who were thepioneers of the movement. We must only take the new principlesas a great fact, destined yet to effect a radical change in theideas of men of all races, a change already begun in Europe.

Liberal thought, we say, originated in England; and it would beeasy to show that there it was the result partly ofProtestantism, partly of indifferentism, the ultimateconsequence of the great principle of private judgment.

This became manifest in Great Britain, from the beginning of theeighteenth century, and, as was previously shown, what is calledthe British Constitution was the result and outgrowth of deeppolitical thought matured in minds indifferent to religion, ofmen who were as little Protestants as any thing else. But theywere deeply possessed by a sense of conservatism and moderationin the application of the most radical principles, which lateron the fiery Gallic mind carried to their final and mostdisastrous consequences.

But, in whatever garb it may have appeared, liberalism wasclearly the essence of the British Constitution, as establishedafter all the civil and dynastic wars of the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries. The leaders of the English nationhappened at the time to be fully wedded to aristocratic ideas,and accordingly they refused to recognize all the consequencesof their principles, and to see them carried out to the full.

It was admitted that the king reigned, but did not govern; thatthe nation governed by its representatives; that thoserepresentatives were created by election; that a nation couldnot be taxed without its free consent; that thought, religiousthought chiefly, was free; that toleration, therefore, couldadmit of no exception in point of religious doctrine; and allthe other modern principles which have at length been admitted,though not always observed, as governmental axioms by allEuropean nations.

As long as those axioms were in the close keeping of Englishpatricians, some of their consequences were far from being fullyevolved; but certain Frenchmen, Voltaire among others, happeningto cross the Straits of Dover, returned with them, and, thewretched government of Louis XV being not only too weak towithstand, but even conniving at, the boldness of the newphilosophers, the French language, which was then spoken allover Europe, carried with it from mouth to mouth the new andfascinating doctrine of the emancipation of thought.

None of those writers, indeed, undertook to plead the cause ofunfortunate Ireland. Voltaire threw the whole of France intoagitation, nay, all Europe, to the wilds of Russia, by taking upthe case of the Protestant Calas, who was condemned to death andexecuted unjustly, as it seems, for the supposed murder of a sonwho was inclined to embrace Catholicity; but never a word did hespeak of the suffering which at that time had settled down overthe whole Irish nation solely for the crime of its religiousconvictions.

Nevertheless, toleration became the catchword with all. It rangout loudly from a thousand French pamphlets and ponderous tomes;it was caught up and echoed back from England; it penetrated theunkindly atmosphere of Russia even, and was silently ponderedover under the rule of an unbelieving despot.

It was impossible for Ireland not to derive some benefit fromall this. It took a long time, indeed, for emancipation ofthought to cross that narrow channel which divided the "sister"islands; for, at the precise period when the doctrine was loudestin France, the most atrocious penal laws were being executed inIreland, and there seemed no hope for the suffering nation.

But, toward the end of that eventful eighteenth century, thebreath of that magic word, toleration, at last was felt on theshores of Erin. When it was in the mouths of all Europe, whenEnglish clergymen had thoroughly imbibed the new doctrine, wheneven Scotch ministers began to thaw under its genial influence,and become "liberal theologians," how could an Irish magistratethink of hanging a friar, or transporting a priest, or imposinga heavy fine on a Catholic who committed the heinous offence ofhearing mass, or absenting himself from the services of theEstablished Church? At last, the "Mass-rock" was no longer theonly spot whereon the divine victim of expiation could beoffered up; and it soon came to be known that, to by-lanes andobscure houses in the cities numbers of persons flocked onSundays, presided over by their own Sogarth Aroon. On oneoccasion, already noticed, the floor of a rickety house, wherethey were worshipping, gave way, to the killing and maiming ofmany; thenceforth, Catholics were allowed to assemble in publicto the knowledge of all, and, though "discoverers" were stilllegally entitled to denounce and prosecute them, there was smallchance of a verdict against them.

Thus was it owing to a great moral force—whether good or bad isnot the question now—that the penal laws first became obsolete;and Irishmen had absolutely nothing whatever to do in the matter.Not a single pamphlet, demanding toleration, and proclaimingthe rights of religious freedom, ever, to our knowledge, issuedfrom the Irish press at the time. No book, written by an Irishauthor, advocating the same, was ever printed clandestinely, aswere so many French books, at first appearing in Holland, orcovertly in France, with a false title-page.

When the Volunteer movement took place, toleration was in fullsway in Ireland. As was seen, the question debated in theDungannon Convention referred solely to the extension of theelective franchise to Catholics; and, though this was unjustlydenied them by the majority of the Volunteers, under theguidance of the leaders of the movement, there was no questionof any longer refusing to the native Irish Catholics the rightof practising their religion freely. This the moral sense of thecentury had secured to them.

The attainment of the political franchise was also the result ofpurely moral force, though it required a much longer time in itsacquisition, as it was a question, not merely of a rightindividual in its nature, as all natural religious rights are,but one affecting external society, and productive of materialresults of great import.

In this the Irish were not merely passive; they launchedthemselves heart and soul on the sea of political agitation.From 1810 to 1829, the Catholic Association, which embraced menof all classes of society, was incessant in its clamor foremancipation. The chief object of this association being thepolitical franchise, it was felt by all that, sooner or later,that privilege must be granted. Meanwhile, the secular enemiesof Ireland were not idle. Emancipation—that is the politicalfranchise— they called a "Utopian dream," which they assertedEngland could not grant. Was it not directly opposed to thecoronation-oath, nay, to the English Constitution? The kinghimself was, and publicly declared himself to be, of thisopinion. According to your thorough-bred Englishman, the statewould rather spend its last shilling, and sacrifice its last man,than suffer it. How many spoke thus, even up to the very day onwhich Wellington, changing his mind perforce, at last proposedthe measure!

All this opposition was perhaps only to be expected; but thestrange thing was that many excellent patriotic Irishmen,Catholics, laymen as well as clerics and prelates, were opposedto the agitation set on foot by O'Connell and his friends; theyalso thought it a "Utopian dream," likely only to bring newcalamities upon their country. They seemed not to see that therefusal of emancipation meant in fact the continuance of thesmall Protestant minority as the ruling power—the state—inIreland, which, owing to moral force, was no longer so, save intheory. In fact, already the majority, that is, almost the wholeof Ireland, was an immense power. Its members were at liberty tocombine openly, to show themselves, to speak, to write, toagitate; they were, in a word, a people, and the Protestantminority no longer really constituted the state.

It is true that the majority of Irishmen had for centuriescontinued to act unanimously in their resistance to oppression;as was seen, they had been a people from the moment that theEnglish kings and Parliaments strove to coerce their religiousfaith, and more particularly from the destruction of clanship.They were truly a nation, though without a government of theirown, and for the greater part of the time bending under the mostintolerable tyranny. Religion had given them one thought and oneheart. And now that, owing to the mighty, the irresistible moralforce of liberalism, they could no longer be openly persecutedfor wishing to remain Catholics, the question arose: Were theystill to be absolutely nothing in the state? This was the realdemand of the Catholic Association, and every one ought to haveseen its importance and the certainty of success.

Nevertheless, a great number of sincere Irishmen did not see thequestion in this light, and were covertly or openly opposed tothe agitation. Ireland appeared to be divided just at amomentous crisis.

The leaders of the association were not themselves altogetheragreed as to the best mode of putting their question. Some werefor armed opposition, thinking they could beat England in theopen field. But the great originator and leader of the movementsternly opposed so mad a proposition. He was for moral force,seeing how clearly and irresistibly, even if unwittingly, it wasworking for their cause. In spite of all adverse circ*mstances,although the English party and the English nation stood up enmasse against him, although many Irishmen refused to join in theagitation, while some of his best friends wished to risk all ina desperate venture, he stood calm, firm, and so confident ofsuccess, that he caused himself to be returned as member for theCounty Clare to the English Parliament, before even emancipationhad given him the right of candidature. It was immediately afterthis "unconstitutional" election that the boon of emancipationwas suddenly granted, contrary to all expectation andprobability, and O'Connell proudly took his seat among therepresentatives of Ireland in the Imperial Parliament.

If this measure was not carried by a purely moral force, it ishard to see how that phrase can be applied to any thing in thisworld. This is not the place to write a history of thatmemorable struggle. It is still fresh in the memory of manyliving men. We merely draw a conclusion from what has happenedin our own time, and one which may be said to be a clearinference from the circ*mstances of the case, and to which noone can offer any serious objection. This conclusion is, theomnipotence of moral force in gaining for Ireland so much ofliberty, of political, and social privileges, as was finallygranted her.

This victory won for the Irish Catholics the acknowledgment onthe part of England that they were a factor in the state. Thenext question which naturally presented itself was, "What was tobe their exact position in the state?"

There are many answers to this, even in modern ideas. In purelydemocratic countries suffrage is universal, all have a politicalvote, and the majority is supposed to rule. In countries wherethe government is oligarchical or aristocratic, rank, wealth,and position, are "privileged;" the great mass is deprived of avote. Yet, even in those countries, in accordance with themodern idea, blood is not every thing; a certain number ofplebeians are admitted to a share in public affairs, and theirnumber is greater or smaller as the struggle, which is alwaysgoing on between the few and the many, wavers to this side or tothat. Thus, in the English Parliament there is often an"electoral" or "reform" question discussed and agitated. But theleaders of the Catholic Association boldly advocated a questionprior to those—what at the time was called the repeal of theUnion, and is now known as "home-rule."

Must Ireland continue to be governed by laws enacted in England?The number of her special representatives is comparatively sosmall, her Catholic aspirations meet with such deaf ears in themajority of the members, that, as long as Ireland is without herown Parliament, she cannot be called a free country.

Moreover, according to modern ideas, self-government seems to beadmitted as an axiom; all countries have a right to it, underthe limitation of constitutional enactments, either in"confederacies" or in "imperial states." Why should Irelandalone be deprived of such a boon?

It is known how O'Connell suddenly grasped the question andmastered it. His first repeal association was suppressed on theinstant by a proclamation of the Irish Secretary. O'Connellbowed to the proclamation, and for the first organizationsubstituted another called "the Irish Volunteers for the Repealof the Union." This met with the same fate as the first. Thegreat agitator then took refuge in "repeal breakfasts," anddeclared his intention, if the government "thought fit toproclaim down breakfasts, to resort to a political lunch, and,if political luncheon be equally dangerous to the peace of theviceroy, he would have political dinners; if the dinners beproclaimed, we must, said he, like certain sanctified dames,resort to tea and tracts."

The "breakfasts" were suppressed, and O'Connell was arrested.The prosecution, however, was soon abandoned, and for the moment,despairing of success in advocating repeal, he came down to the"Reform party," from which he obtained at first some greatadvantages for Ireland—the administration of Lord Mulgrave, thebest the island had known for centuries, and the appointment ofmany Catholics to high offices in the state.

It is not necessary to relate the circ*mstances which finallydrove O'Connell back upon his original plan, and the formation,in April, 1840, of the "Loyal National Repeal Association."

Within a short time three million associates were contributingannually to the national fund, and a scene was witnessed whichthe most devoted lover of Erin could never have anticipated. Itwould be useless to search the annals of mankind for a morestartling exhibition of purely moral force. The causes of itsfailure will appear causes altogether of a temporary andunexpected character, when we come to examine them.

But the stupendous spectacle itself was enough to impress thebeholder with the irresistible effect which it could not fail toproduce. A whole nation obedient to the voice of one man! —andthat a man who had never been invested with a state dignity,proud only of having once represented a poor Irish county in theEnglish Parliament; who was eminently a man of the people,identified in every way with the people, speaking a languagethey could all understand, speaking to hundreds of thousands whohad come at his call to listen to him: at one time nearly amillion of them surrounded him on the hill of Tara.

Had a demagogue stood in his place, how could he have resistedthe temptation of using such power to effect a thoroughrevolution? O'Connell had only to utter the word, and thoseimmense masses of men would have swept the whole island as witha besom of destruction. The impetuosity of the Irish characterwhen placed in such circ*mstances is well known, and O'Connellknew it better than any man living at the time. He showedhimself truly heroic in the constant moderation of his words,even in scenes the most exciting, when a look from him mighthave lashed the nation into madness.

To bring out more clearly the stamp and greatness of the man,compare his conduct with that of the leaders in the great FrenchRevolution of 1793. Not one of them ever possessed a tithe, notmerely of the great Irishman's honesty of purpose, but even ofhis real authority over the people; yet, what frightful convulsionsdid they not bring upon the state in the days of their briefpopularity? Throughout the whole repeal movement, when millionsof people obeyed implicitly one leader, ready to do his will atany moment, there was never a single breach of the peace, neveran attempt at outrage, never a threat of retaliation.

The only difficulty is where to bestow the greater admiration,on O'Connell or the people; for, if O'Connell towered almostabove humanity in his never-varying moderation, with such apowerful engine in his hands, the people offered a spectaclewhich would be looked for in vain elsewhere in the history ofman, that of a whole nation swayed by the most excited feelings,one in thought, in aims, in the bitter memory of the past,conscious of their irresistible power in the present, yet neveryielding to passion, but dispersing quietly after listening tothe impassioned harangues of their leader, to return to theirhomes and resume their ordinary occupations. Any impartial man,who has read history at all, must acknowledge that thisspectacle is unexampled, and in itself vindicates the Irishcharacter from the foolish aspersions so lavishly cast upon it,and so thoughtlessly repeated still.

One great fact was brought out by those demonstrations whichafterward appeared so barren of result, namely, the existence ofa nation full of life and energy, of a surprising vigor, and atthe same time governed by stern principles as well as swayed byemotion. It would be idle to pretend that they were a non-entity,save as forming a part of the British Empire, existing onsufferance as it were, merely to add to the greatness and theglory of the English nation. They possessed a life of their own.That life had, as was seen, been instilled into them by theirreligious convictions alone; it had lain dormant for more than acentury; and now it burst forth in the view of the world, toproclaim that the Irish nation still existed. And this wonderfulresurrection was due to moral force alone.

Though the Irish people then appeared so different from thathumbled, crushed mass of oppressed beings, who, a hundred yearsbefore, lay so completely at the mercy of their masters, it was,nevertheless, the same people, and the difference was purely oneof circ*mstances. Had they been allowed in the previous centuryto manifest their feelings, as a happy change in the state ofaffairs now permitted them, they would assuredly have acted inexactly the same manner. And this reflection tends to confirmthe opinion, several times here expressed, that the Irish peopleexisted all along, and that the most adverse circ*mstances hadnever succeeded in destroying it.

Meanwhile, O'Connell was the sovereign of that nation, and onewhose power over his subjects was greater than that of any ofthe kings or emperors who occupied the various thrones of Europeat the time. Later events proved how precarious was theauthority of all those who appeared to hold the fate of millionsin their hands; the authority of O'Connell alone was deeplyrooted in the heart of his nation. From the humble position of aKerry lawyer, he had gradually risen to the proud preeminencewhich he occupied in the eyes of Europe, and he owed it solelyto that moral force of which he was so sincere an advocate, andwhich he knew so well how to wield.

But how came all the high hopes then so ardently entertained bythe friends of Ireland to be so suddenly dashed to the ground,and O'Connell to die of a broken heart?

It seems, indeed, to be the opinion of Irishmen even, thatO'Connell's theory was faulty; that moral force alone could notrestore Ireland to her lawful position among nations; that, infact, he failed by his very moderation, and that the bitternesswhich clouded his last days was the natural consequence of hisfalse and delusive expectations. Such seems now to be the almostuniversal opinion.

Yet, in all his wonderful career, only one fault can be broughtagainst him. Yielding, on one occasion, in 1843, to the exuberanceof his feelings, "he committed himself to a specific promise thatwithin six months repeal would be an accomplished fact."

This promise, rashly given, and showing no result, is said tohave cooled down the enthusiasm of the people, who, from thattime, lost confidence in their leader; and to this alone is theutter failure of the great agitation ascribed.

But there is so little of real truth in this assertion that,when, on his well-known imprisonment, after the law lords, inthe British House of Peers, declared that the conviction ofO'Connell and his colleagues was wrong, he was restored toliberty, the writer just quoted confesses that "overwhelmingdemonstrations of unchanged affection and personal attachmentpoured in upon him from his countrymen. Their faith in hisdevotion to Ireland was increased a hundred-fold."

It is true that the same writer, Mr. A.M. O'Sullivan, adds that"their faith in the efficiency of his policy, or the surety ofhis promise, was gone;" but to reconcile this phrase with whatprecedes it, it must not be taken absolutely. The want of faithhere spoken of was restricted to the members of a new party,which had been organized chiefly during the imprisonment of thegreat leader, the "Young Ireland party," the new advocates ofphysical force against England, composed of the ardent and, mostsurely, well-intentioned young men, who failed so egregiously afew years later.

This party was the chief cause of O'Connell's failure, coupledwith the awful famine which followed soon after, and left theIrish small desire for political agitation with grim Deathstaring them in the face, and the main question before them oneof avoiding starvation and utter ruin.

Both causes, however, were purely of a temporary nature, and theefficacy of moral force remained strong as ever, and, in fact,the only thing possible.

The Young Ireland party could not exist long, as its avowedpolicy was so rash, so ill-founded, and poorly carried out, thatthe mere breath of British power was enough to dissipate ithopelessly in a moment. Moreover, it placed itself in openantagonism to the mass of the Catholic clergy, and appeared tohave so ill studied the history of the country that its membersdid not know the real power which religion exercised over theircountrymen. They could not but fail, and their futile attemptonly served to render worse the condition of the country theywere ready to die for.

It would be enough to add here, of other subsequent attempts ofthe same nature, that no real hope for the complete resurrectionof Ireland could be looked to from such abortive and stillbornconspiracies; especially when the alliance entered into by someof them with the revolutionary party of European socialists andatheists is taken into account, men from whom nothing but disorder,anarchy, and crime, can be expected. Thus, those who wish well tothe Irish cause have only moral force to fall back upon.

It is needless to do more than mention the passing nature of thefrightful calamity of famine and consequent expatriation, whichhave been sufficiently dwelt upon. The Irish race has passedthrough ordeals more trying than either of these; it hassurvived them, and increased in numbers after all previouscalamities, as it doubtless will after this last, when Godthinks proper to abate in the people the eagerness they stillfeel for leaving their native country.

All the progress made by Ireland, so far, is due, therefore,solely to the kind action of Divine Providence, which isgenerally called the "logic of events," aided by men endowedwith prudence and energy. It would be superfluous for ourpurpose to detail at length several other progressive steps madesubsequently, which the mad attempt of the party of physicalforce would have effectually prevented if open tyranny were aseasy a thing in these days as it once was. The establishment ofthe "Encumbered Estates Courts," and the disestablishment of theIrish Protestant Church, are the chief measures alluded to: thefirst so fruitful of good to Ireland since its adoption, and thesecond destined to be no less so. It is useless to remark thatphysical force had nothing to do with their introduction, andthat the British statesmen who advocated and carried themthrough were swayed only by that unseen power which is said byHoly Scripture to "hold the heart of kings in its hands." Let theIrish do their part, and Heaven will continue to smile on them.

Since it is to this unseen power that all the improvement nowvisible in the condition of the Irish nation is due, it is onlynatural to expect from it every thing that is still wanting. Forwe are far from thinking that nothing more is to be done, andthat all to be desired has been obtained. That the nation isstill dissatisfied, is plain enough; and it must be right in notfeeling contented with the various measures for its improvementtendered it so far. The voice of its natural leaders—of theprelates and clergy-proclaims that there are many things tochange, and many new measures to be introduced.

The first and foremost of these is a thorough remedy for thedisgraceful state of pauperism to which the great majority ofthe Irish nation is yet reduced. That pauperism was wilfullyestablished, and this national crime of England stands unatonedfor still. It would be unjust to say that the policy whichproduced it is pursued to-day by the English Government; wesincerely believe, on the contrary, that the state of thingswhich has existed for the last two centuries is seriouslydeplored by many of those who, under God, hold in their keepingthe destiny of millions of men. But it is surprising that somany projects, so many attempts at legislation, the writing ofso many wise books, discussions so many and so exhaustive of theevil, should all result in leaving the evil almost as it stood.

If we listen to those who know Ireland perfectly, who haveeither spent their lives in the country, or traversed itssurface leisurely and intelligently, it would seem as though theold descriptions of her in the time of her greatest misfortuneswould still be appropriate and true.

"No devastated province of the Roman Empire," said FatherLavelle, but yesterday, in his "Irish Landlord," "ever presentedhalf the wretchedness of Ireland. At this day, the mutilatedFellah of Egypt, the savage Hottentot and New-Hollander, thelive chattel of Cuba, enjoy a paradise in comparison with theIrish peasant, that is to say, with the bulk of the Irish nation."

But, as this short passage deals only in generalities, and asthere may be some suspicion of the warm nature of the writerhaving given a higher color to his words than was warranted bythe facts, let us listen to the less impassioned utterances oftravellers who have recently visited the island: let us see theIrish at home in their towns and in the country.

I. In towns and cities: The most Rev. Archbishop of Dublin,writing in 1857 to Lord St. Leonards, on the state of his flockin Dublin, says: "Were your lordship to visit some of the ruinedlanes and streets of Dublin, your heart would thrill with horrorat the picture of human woe which would present itself."

And in a pastoral letter, November 27,1861, he spoke of "tens ofthousands of human beings, destitute of all the comforts of life,who are to be met with at every step in all great towns andcities. If you enter the wretched abodes where they live, youwill find that they have no fuel, that they are unprovided withbeds and other furniture, and that generally they have not asingle blanket to protect them from the cold."

Abbe Perraud, after a thorough examination of the subject, wrote,in 1864, in "Ireland under English Rule:"

"The poor quarters of Cork, Limerick, and Drogheda, present thesame spectacle as Dublin, and justify the sad proverbialcelebrity of `Irish rags.' Dirt, negligence, and want of care,doubtless, go a long way in giving to destitution in Ireland itsrepulsive and hideous form; but who is unaware that continuedand hopeless destitution engenders, as of necessity,listlessness and carelessness, and that, to enter into astruggle with poverty, there must be at least some chance ofcarrying off the victory?"

A German Protestant, Dr. Julius Rodenberg, writing in 1861,expressed his astonishment at the sight of Ireland's poverty, ashe saw it in the streets of Dublin, although he had doubtlessread a great deal about it previously. "You are in a country,"he says, "whence people emigrate by thousands, while fields, ofsuch an extent and power of production as would support them all,lie fallow."

And with respect to the progress already made, M. de Beaumonthad remarked many years before that in Ireland a certainrelative progress was quite compatible with the continuedexistence of pauperism among the lower classes. "One singlecause," he remarks, "suffices to explain why the agriculturalpopulation becomes poorer, while the prosperity of the rich ison the increase: it is that all improvement in the land isprofitable solely to the proprietor, who exacts more rent fromthe farmer in proportion as he works the land into a better state."

Since M. de Beaumont wrote, the pauperism in the cities hasassumed a more wretched and repulsive form, in consequence ofthe crowding there of poor peasants who had been evicted fromtheir small farms and fled to the nearest city or town with thehope of finding there at least charity.

"For the last ten years," wrote Abbe Perraud, in 1864, "therehas been taking place in the large cities an accumulation ofpoor as fatal to their health as to their morality. They aremostly country people whom eviction has driven from the country,who have been unable to emigrate, and who were unwilling to shutthemselves up immediately in the workhouses. The resources theyprocure for themselves, by doing odd work, are so completelyinsufficient, that it is impossible to be surprised at theirdestitution."

Dr. Rodenberg, describing the state of the poor country peoplecrowded in the "Liberties of Dublin," says of the rooms in whichthey live: "In those holes the most wretched and pitiablelaborers imaginable live; they often lie by hundreds together onthe bare ground."

Such citations might be sadly multiplied, but those given aresufficient as descriptive of the state of the poor Irish in thecities. Let us now see how the peasants live in the country inmany parts of Ireland:

II. "The destitution of the agricultural classes," writes AbbePerraud, from personal observation, "in order to be rightlyappreciated, must be seen in the boggy and mountainous regionsof Munster, of Connaught, and of the western portion of Ulster.

"The ordinary dwelling of the small tenant, of the day-laborer,in that part of Ireland, answers with the utmost precision thedescription of it twenty years ago given by M. de Beaumont: 'Letthe reader picture to himself four walls of dried mud, which therain easily reduces to its primitive condition; a little thatchor a few cuts of turf form the roof; a rude hole in the roofforms the chimney, and more frequently there is no other issuefor the smoke than the door of the dwelling itself. One solitaryroom holds father, mother, grandfather, and children. Nofurniture is to be seen; a single litter, usually composed ofgrass or straw, serves for the whole family. Five or six half-naked children may be seen crouching over a poor fire. In themidst of them lies a filthy pig, the only inhabitant at its ease,because its element is filth itself.'

"Into how many dwellings of this kind have we not ourselvespenetrated—especially in the counties of Kerry, Mayo, andDonegal—more than once obliged to stoop down to the ground, inorder to penetrate into these cabins, the entrance to which isso low that they look more like the burrows of beasts thandwellings made for man!

"Upon the road from Kilkenny to Grenaugh, in the vicinity ofthose beautiful lakes, at the entrance of those parks, to which,for extent and richness, neither England nor Scotland canprobably offer any thing equal, we have seen other dwellings. Afew branches of trees, interlaced and leaning upon the slope inthe road, a few cuts of turf, and a few stones picked up in thefields, compose these wretched huts—less spacious, and perhapsless substantial, than that of the American savage."

At the time of Abbe Perraud's visit, a correspondent of theDublin Saunders News-Letters, who was commissioned to inquireinto the condition of the peasants, gave the following reply,which, as the abbe justly remarks, is but the faithful echo ofall the descriptions made within the last half-century:

"The inhabitants of Erris appear to be the most wretched of allhuman beings. Their cabins, their patched and tattered clothes,their broken-down gait—every thing bears witness to theirpoverty. Their beds consist of a few bits of wood crossed oneupon the other, supported by two heaps of stones, and coveredwith straw; their whole bedclothes a miserable, worn-out quilt,without any blankets . . . . But there is nothing in Irelandlike the habitations which the people of the village of Fallmorehave made for themselves, who have been evicted by Mr. Palmer.They are composed of masses of granite, picked up on the shore,and roughly laid one by the other. These cabins are so low thata man cannot stand upright in them; so narrow that they canhardly hold three or four persons."

After all, F. Lavelle was guilty of no exaggeration in statingthat the hut of the Hottentot was better than that of the Irishpeasant. But, in the district of Gweedore, northeast of CountyDonegal, the state of the peasantry is more deplorably wretchedstill than in any other part of Ireland. At the time of acelebrated parliamentary inquiry in to the matter in 1858, aLondonderry newspaper stated that "there are in Donegal aboutfour thousand adults, of both sexes, who are obliged to gobarefoot during the winter, in the ice and snow—pregnant womenand aged people in habitual danger of death from the cold . . . .It is rare to find a man with a calico shirt; but the distressof the women is still greater, if that be possible. There aremany hundreds of families in which five or six grown-up womenhave among them no more than a single dress to go out in . . . .There are about five hundred families who have but one bed each—in which father, mother, and children, without distinction ofa*ge or sex, are crowded pell-mell together."

If from the dwellings and clothing of the peasantry we pass totheir food, there is no need of adding any thing to what wassaid on this point when describing the periodical famines. Onedetail, however, not yet mentioned, deserves to be recorded:

"In the district of Gweedore," says Abbe Perraud, "our eyes weredestined to witness the use of sea-weed. Stepping once into acabin, in which there was no one but a little girl charged withthe care of minding her younger brothers, and getting ready theevening meal, we found upon the fire a pot full of doulamaunready cooked; we asked to taste it, and some was handed to us ona little platter.

"This weed, when well dressed, produces a kind of viscous juice;it has a brackish taste, and savors strongly of salt water. Wewere told in the country that the only use of it is to increase,when mixed with potatoes, the mass of aliment given to thestomach. The longer and more difficult the work of the stomach,the less frequent are its calls. It is a kind of compromise withhunger; the people are able neither to suppress it nor to satisfyit; they endeavor to cheat it. We have also been assured that thisweed cannot be eaten alone; it must be mixed with vegetables,since of itself it has no nutritive properties whatever."

How long is such a state of things likely to continue? It hasalready existed long enough to be a disgrace to the much-vauntedbenevolence of the nineteenth century. A sure and radical remedymust be found for it; and, as it has been already so longdelayed, it should be found the more promptly.

It seems that the tenure of land lies at the bottom of thequestion, and that respect for what are called "establishedrights" offers the main difficulty. Those rights, indeed, werefounded on the cruellest wrong and the most flagrant injustice;but as possession is "nine points of the English law," and solong a time has passed since the land changed hands,prescription must be admitted and let them be called rights; norcan any man in his senses ask for a violent subversion ofsociety for the sake of righting an old wrong.

But it has ever been a maxim of jurisprudence that summum jus,summa injuria; and this axiom finds its full explanation in thepresent case, when it is considered that the jus is on the sideof a comparatively small number of men, for the most partabsentee landlords, while the injuria leans to the great mass ofthe primitive owners of the soil. The time-honored policy of theEnglish Government, that all the open abuses of landlordismshould be watched over and protected with the most jealous care,while, on the other hand, the wretched farmer and cottier issupposed to have no rights to defend and guard, should beabandoned at once and forever, with a firmness that can leave noroom for doubt or equivocation, if the restoration of confidenceon the part of the Irish is esteemed any thing worth.

But, if for no other motive, at least for the sake of securingpeace and order in Ireland, a remedy must be found. There is noreason why the Irish should longer remain a nation of paupers;and, although some may still pretend that the fault and itsremedy lie with themselves, unprejudiced men will readilyacknowledge that the fault lay first, at least, at England'sdoor —a fact which the London Times has conceded often andproclaimed loudly enough.

Let British statesmen, then, devise proper means for such an endwithout social commotion, with as little disturbance of privaterights as possible; for the object is an imperious necessity. Itseems that the latest law enacted with this view is not themeasure that was required; is totally inadequate in itsprovisions, scope, and extent. In such a case it is always opento legislators to introduce a new and more satisfactory measure;and moral force will surely bring this about, provided it istrue to itself. We confess to having no scheme of our own to setforth; but Irishmen are free, nay entitled, to speak, to writeon, and discuss the subject; and a serious, steady, but lawfulagitation of the question will surely find its true and finalsolution. The last Galway election, notwithstanding the temporarytriumph of Judge Keogh, was a beginning in the right direction.

There is no need here of revolution, of what the French call unejaquerie, of arming the populace for the purpose of violentlyejecting the great land-owners. No Irishman has ever stood forso calamitous a remedy. The aid of the Internationalists willcertainly never be called in by the true children of Erin forany purpose whatever. It seems that the great and holy Pontiff,Pius IX., made this remark to the Prince of Wales, at their lastinterview at the Vatican, and, according to the report, theprince fully admitted its truth as far, at least, as he, by anyoutward sign, could show.

The question is one of pure justice, to be settled within thelimits of order and law; and surely, when all admit that theevil is so crying, that a remedy must be found, one will befound, which, while it does no real injury to any person, willbring comfort and relief to the most deserving and sufferingrace of men—the Irish peasantry. We will soon see how.

But the Irishman is not only physically destitute; he is alsodestitute mentally; and, if the first case calls for a promptremedy, the second is no less urgent. Pauperism and ignorancewere the two terrible engines so long worked by England for thedegradation and final destruction of the Irish race. Our readershave seen how persistently was education, of any kind, refusedto the natives. The Universities of Dublin and Drogheda in thefourteenth century, the cathedral schools, founded by the Anglo-Normans, in the same age, carefully excluded the Irish fromtheir benefits. And, when the Reformation set in, with its longseries of oppressions, no Catholic could share in the newfoundations of the Tudors and the Stuarts without first abjuringhis religion. Penal statute after penal statute made of all theshifts, to which the Irish were driven in order to educate theirchildren, so many crimes, punishable by death or transportation.That, under such a state of things, they could remain Catholicswithout becoming idiots is one of the most remarkable instanceson record of buoyancy of spirit and soundness of mind on thepart of a whole nation.

From the end of the last century the policy of England changedcompletely in appearance. The foundation and endowment by thestate of the great college of Maynooth, destined for the educationof the Irish clergy, in 1795, was certainly a step on the rightroad, and if only primary schools for the people had, at the sametime, been spread all over the island on the same principle of trueliberality, the old injustice on the matter of education would havebeen atoned for and remedied, to a great extent.

But the Kildare Peace Society and the Church Education Society,founded in 1839, showed that the antagonism to the CatholicChurch in Ireland was far from being dead; nay, was as rife asever.

Lord Stanley's National Education System, in 1831, at firstseemed of a character altogether above Protestant or infidelproselytism. But, the composition of the various boards underthat system, and some of the measures adopted, gave evidenceclearly and soon enough that the education proposed for theIrish was not in accordance with the true spirit of the nation,so eminently Catholic and religious as it is. Hence, the totalfailure—for such it is now admitted by all to have been—ofthat system ought to have opened the eyes of all impartialEnglishmen to the necessity of starting from the principle thatIreland is Catholic, and that the Irish are true children of theCatholic Church. But this fact seems not yet recognized oracknowledged by those who rule the nation, since, at this verymoment, a bill lies before Parliament against which all thebishops of Ireland have united in raising their voice. Thequeen's colleges all confess to be a wretched failure.

The injustice of centuries, then, is not, even in these freedays, when there is such a talk about educating the masses,repaired by the English Government; and this sad fact seems tomilitate against the power of moral force. However, it is butright to remember that only those establishments are here spokenof which are supported by state aid, and that complete freedomof education, independent of such assistance, does actuallyexist in Ireland. Have not the bishops all necessary power toopen schools of their own? Have they not even founded auniversity? Does the state dare to interfere in whatevereducational establishments they think proper to set on foot?They are now, in that regard, as free as the Catholic bishops inthe United States; and if the degrees granted by the facultiesunder their control have no value in the eyes of the state, theycan easily dispense with a concurrence, which is certainlyunjustly denied, but which, even if granted, would not, in theeyes of the Church, increase in the slightest the real value ofthe diplomas they themselves approve. They can afford to waitfor the time when complete justice will be done; meanwhile theyare freer than Catholic bishops at this moment are in allCatholic countries of Europe; and the freedom they enjoy isentirely owing to that moral force which, we allege, issufficient to insure, sooner or later, all the advantages thatcan be desired. When the present situation of the native Irish,from an educational point of view, is compared with the oppressionunder which they lay a hundred years ago, one cannot but wonderhow so much has been obtained, and the hope, that every thingstill wanting is sure to come by the agency of the force thathas already won so much, cannot be deemed vain and illusory.

Let not, however, what is here said be construed as advisingIreland to stand still while schemes of education, evidentlygodless, are concocted, matured, and passed into laws for theirspecial benefit. On the contrary, they must not only continuebut increase their efforts to cry them down, till they compel ablind and deaf government to open its eyes and ears to anational want and a national voice. This is what is meant by theuse of moral force.

But, can the complete remedy for pauperism and the solidestablishment and endowment of truly Catholic schools beexpected to come from any hands but those of an IrishLegislature? Can they be hoped for as long as the destiny ofIreland rests in the hands of an Imperial Parliament whose greatmajority can have no real sympathy with the long-oppressed race?In a word, is home-rule necessary to bring about those two greatmeasures, which seem absolutely indispensable for the completeresurrection of the nation?

Our readers already know that, in our opinion, an IrishParliament would not be a sure panacea for the evils of thecountry, particularly those of pauperism and ignorance, eventhough that Parliament sat in Dublin, and was composed ofIrishmen bred and born. The evils would not be struck outpromptly and utterly, although many great improvements wouldimmediately follow.

Some of our reasons for being chary of confidence in the successof home-rule have been already given. But we have also insistedon the necessity of leaving the question open, and admitted thatIrishmen have a right to discuss it, and take whatever side theymay think proper, provided always they stand, as they arestanding, within the limits of law and order.

Surely, the Irish have a right to be fairly represented; moderndoctrines, as far as they can go, consecrate that right; and, iffair representation is an impossibility in the present state ofaffairs in Ireland, that state should be so altered as that theIrish nation might obtain all the advantages which a trulyrepresentative government bestows.

It is clear that the difficulty consists in the paramountimportance of the union—of the empire; and this is not theplace to discuss so large a question. It may be said, however,that the union of the British Empire does not and cannot consistin the absorption into one whole of the three integral partswhich compose it. England, Scotland, and Ireland, are stillthree distinct national entities, each inhabited by a peculiarrace, and each race cannot, in such a political organization, bein justice ignored, for a mere abstraction called the state.

Certainly the question is a very complicated one; and to offer adogmatic solution of it would be pretentious. It is better toleave it to a future which is not far distant. What may beinsisted on is, that moral force is strong enough to bring abouta satisfactory decision, and that to resort to revolution forsuch a purpose would be as fatal as it is criminal.

A right discussion of the question must make clear the fact thatIreland is entitled to fair dealing as a component part of theempire. Many other political organizations embraced within thevast limits of the British power are allowed to discuss anddecide on questions peculiar to themselves, and which they areat full liberty to pronounce upon for themselves by a wiseadjustment and concession on the part of the mother-country asnecessary to their well-being. Canada is almost entirelyindependent; the Australian colonies have all their ownlegislatures; it is the same more or less with all the distantdependencies of England, yet there have been no complaints heardso far of these late concessions threatening the union of the Empire.

But the objection is urged: "If such a concession be made toIreland, where can you stop? The Scotch may ask the same, andthe Welsh; one has as much right to home-rule as the other;where can you draw the line?"

An easy answer to this is, that the Scotch have never asked forhome-rule, for the very good reason that they never had tocomplain of unfair treatment at the hands of the EnglishGovernment; their special wants and desires having been alwaysduly considered from the moment of their union with England. Butthe union of Ireland with England is not yet a century old, wasbrought about perforce, and by chicanery and fraud, and from themoment of its enactment to the present has been loudly protestedagainst by the Irish nation—the nation, that is, which we havefollowed all through, joined in this instance by numbers oftheir Protestant fellow-countrymen. A long list of pamphlets andbooks might be drawn up, as showing the fact that multitudes ofIrish writers, not of a revolutionary but of a trulyconservative character, who cannot be accused of disloyalty toEngland, have deplored, protested against, and clamored for therepeal of, the Union of 1800.

Such is not the case with Scotland. But suppose it were, andproofs furnished showing that Scotland is not fairly representedin a Parliament which meets at Westminster, then that countrywould have just as much right to see itself fairly represented,its special wants satisfied and met, as all the other branchesof the great British organization.

Certain it is that the empire cannot be sound when an important,a vital part of its political frame is incurably sore. Let thatsore be healed by justice, large, generous, and complete; letIreland be truly and really represented, in whatever manner herrepresentation may be carried out, and the sudden rise of thelittle western isle in wealth, contentment, true prosperity, andhappiness, will redound to the general good of the whole. As itnow stands, its still miserable condition is as great andconstant a danger to Great Britain as it is a reproach and ashame upon the maternal government which suffers the child, forwhose session it would stake its all, to continue in a state ofalmost hopeless poverty, materially and intellectually, and tostruggle unaided in its efforts to rise.

If home-rule be the measure which is to heal Ireland's wounds,it must be granted, and the voice of reason and right must riseabove the stupid clamor which says that it cannot, must not,shall not be granted! Such expressions were common ininflammatory pamphlets which flooded the country on the eve ofCatholic Emancipation, in 1829; and possibly many were issuedeven after the granting of this (from a certain English point ofview) suicidal act of justice to Catholics.

But whatever may be the ultimate issue of the home-rule movement,the question of education, which is so closely allied to, as toseem dependent on it, is of such importance that it brooks nodelay. Ireland is, as it may be hoped it will ever continue, atruly Catholic nation, and for such education must be special,and cannot be left to the direction of a non-Catholic state, notto use a worse expression. The result of the so-called nationalsystem, as exhibited by the Queen's Colleges and the rest, oughtto be enough to open the eyes of real statesmen. But non-Catholic legislators need a sense which they do not possess, toappreciate the blunders they must fall into when proposing totouch such delicate interests as spiritual things. Thirty yearsago, when those Queen's Colleges and schools were established inIreland, the Catholic hierarchy raised up their voice to warnthe British Government against so rash an attempt; for the veryfew who appeared willing to give the system a trial had theirown doubts and forebodings. The warning, as usual, was notheeded, and the consequence is, that the partisans of the systemnow confess that their darling scheme has turned out a completefailure. Yet, strange to say, they do not in the least seem tohave changed their ideas on the subject. On the contrary, theywish to secularize education more completely than ever, and toextend their project to the whole British Empire; though at thismoment the warning comes to them also from the Presbyterians ofScotland, who refuse to submit to the scheme, universal in itsscope, of educating the young according to state notions andworldly ideas.

In this the British Government only follows the lead of allEuropean cabinets and legislatures; for this great iniquity isnot confined to the British Isles, but is attempted everywhere,with the evident design of taking the government of souls out ofthe hands to which Jesus Christ confided it—the Church. TheSovereign Pontiff was compelled to protest, and, as is thecustom in these days, his protest fell unheeded. It remains tobe seen whether men, who call themselves Christians, willconsent to see their children educated by secular bodies, whichare not only void of all authority over the souls of men, butimbued, as all know, with doctrines the most pernicious anddisorganizing. The just complaint made by the Irish hierarchy isunfortunately not restricted to their own body; their complaintis one with that of all the rulers of the Church throughout theworld. It seems to us that there is greater hope of establishinga thorough Christian system of education in Ireland than in anyother country, because the Irish nation will always take a moredetermined attitude, and gather in a more compact and united bodyaround her natural leaders, the bishops and priests of God, thanany other modern Catholic nation; and, in this age, where thereare unanimity and a fixed purpose among any body of men, theycannot fail to result in a victory over all obstacles and opponents.

Of one thing England may be sure, that the Irish bishops wouldnever submit to the project now on foot in England, as to do sowould be to fail in their most sacred duty; and the mass of theIrish people is at their back. The Catholic hierarchy is alwaysready to support the secular power so long as that power remainswithin its province and does not step out of it to encroach ontheir unquestionable domain; but, when duty calls on them toresist, the experience of centuries is before the world, inIreland at least, to show how far they can carry their resistance.In this they will stand united as one man, and it is vain for theEnglish Government to flatter itself that it will find tools amongthem, should it foist on them the Birmingham scheme.

But a more threatening fact still is the compact union of allIrishmen in support of their bishops, against schemes which havealready excited such bitter opposition on their part, and onwhich they have already pronounced and given their solemnverdict in unmistakable tones. If in our days Irishmen have beenso eager to uphold many projects of a doubtful character,because those projects were opposed to England; if they haveshown in the most emphatic manner that the memory of the past isstill fresh, and that they are not yet prepared to accept theBritish Government as a friend; if they have seized everyoccasion, the most trifling as well as the most important, toshow that the union with England was distasteful to them—whatwill be their attitude when the question admits of no doubt, andcan give rise to no apprehension in a Christian conscience; when,indeed, they know that they stand where their duty to God bidsthem, urged at the same time by their natural feelings ofopposition to a power which they detest and to which they areirreconcilable? We do not say that we altogether approve oftheir dogged opposition to England; it is only alluded to as afact which it would be folly, in treating of questions betweenEngland and Ireland, to shut one's eyes to or doubt.

When such is the state of feeling, how can a scheme of godlesseducation hope to succeed, which, after all, requires theconsent of fathers and mothers of families? It is only naturalto suppose that the English Government, in the event of itssuccess, is scarcely prepared to employ such a numerous,watchful, and determined police as shall march the children offto school every lay by force—to schools which to them would beprisons, presided over by jailers in the shape of instructors.Nevertheless, the scheme now agitated by British statesmen mustculminate in some such measure, if they would have their schoolsattended; and the inference is natural that education viewedfrom such a stand-point becomes a design criminal and oppressivein its nature, as well as a sheer impossibility in its carryingout. Once again the whole British power would launch itself invain against the unyielding rock of as stubborn a will as everanimated human beings, as durable and unshrinking almost as theinner rock upon which it is built—Catholic faith.

Much space has already been devoted to the consideration of whatare here considered as the two great measures necessary andsufficient for the complete resurrection of the Irish race—thelifting of the load of pauperism under which they have so longlabored, and the establishment among them of a sound andthorough Christian education; and that those measures willundoubtedly be carried without any attempt at social convulsions,without any violation of law and order. But, as, unfortunately,many side-issues have been raised in Ireland of very inferiorimportance, but of a nature almost exclusively to engage theattention of Irishmen, to the great detriment of real progress,it may be well to dwell a little longer on the consequenceswhich must infallibly follow from a higher state of physicalcomfort and mental culture among them:

I. A higher state of physical comfort will naturally produce astronger attachment to their native soil and a correspondingreluctance to leave it, as they now do by wholesale emigration.The thought has been dwelt upon that emigration was a design ofDivine Providence, and even the first step in the resurrectionof the nation and in the establishment of its power within aswell as without. That the object of emigration is not yet fullyattained may be inferred from the fact that it still continueson so large a scale; that it must ultimately dwindle to muchsmaller proportions, if not cease utterly, is pretty certain.This is our wish and hope: for the home population of the islandmust be large enough to invest it with deserved importance inthe eyes of foreigners. Our title-page sets forth the words ofDr. Newman, expressive of the firm belief that the time willcome when the Catholic population of Erin will be as thick andprosperous as that of Belgium? Why should it not be so? Pauperismalone prevents it. Let their existence be one of comfort—merecomfort, not luxury—and there is no limit to the increase oftheir numbers. In such an event Protestantism would contract intosuch narrow limits that in Ireland it would become a thing unknown;the few sectarians still abiding there would themselvesshare inthe general prosperity, and would possibly of their own accordreturn to the bosom of the common mother of Christians.

The question, then, of increase of physical comfort for Irishmenis one of the utmost importance, and, as the tenure of land isso closely connected with it, not to this question is the termside-issue applied. The land-question should be thoroughlyexhausted until the true solution, the real measure, which hasnot yet appeared, may be brought to the surface and carried outto the full. The land-question in all its bearings lies beyondour competence; not so, certain reasons for believing that thepossession of land is necessary for the complete restoration ofthe nation. Manufactures and commercial pursuits are ofsecondary importance in a country like Ireland, which iseminently agricultural. This should not be taken to mean thatsuch matters are to be neglected, and the Irish to bediscouraged in engaging in them, particularly in their homemanufactures; nor in calling for better laws to help them, atleast for fair dealing as far as legislation goes. But supposingthem completely independent and masters of themselves; supposingnot only the repeal of the Union, but even the separation fromthe British organization effected, how could they hope tocompete in manufacturing skill, and science, with the inventivegenius of the American, the systematic comprehensiveness of theEnglishman, or the artistic taste of the French? Goods aremanufactured for the markets of the world, and the Irish are notyet prepared for such extensive enterprises; and, taking thecharacteristics of the race into consideration, it is doubtfulwhether they will ever be successful in such ventures.

The same may be said of commerce. When are they likely to have anavy of their own? They are still Celts, and would it be wellfor them to cease to be Celts? The oceans of the globe arecovered with ships bearing the flags of many nations. Supposethem to unfurl a national flag to the breeze, which is saluted,wherever met, by the crafts of other civilized nations, whenwould it become perceptible among the crowded fleets whichalready hold possession of the seas? The broad thoroughfares ofthe ocean know two or three national colors; all the others areso seldom seen, that their presence or absence is alikeunnoticed by the world at large. Among these would the Irish benumbered, if they engaged in commerce on their own account, andsailed no longer under British colors.

It is for them, then, to turn their attention to the land, whichis their chief source of wealth. Let them buy it up, or gain itby long leases, inch by inch and acre by acre, until not onlythe bleak bogs and wild mountains of Connaught are again theirown, but the rich meadow-lands and smiling wheat-fields ofMunster and Leinster. Let their brethren in America andAustralia associate with them in this, and thus will they buildup again a true Irish yeomanry and nobility—for nobility has anew meaning to-day—more glorious, perhaps, than the old one.Poverty and rags will give place to prosperity and comfort, evenin the lowliest cottages, and mirth and glee will be heard againin the country from which they have so long been banished.

Is such a picture a dream, and its realization an impossibility?It is our belief that, to make it a reality, only requiressteadiness of purpose, perseverance, energy, and association.Fifty years ago it would certainly have seemed a dream; butmatters have advanced within the last half-century, and everything is now prepared for such a hoped-for consummation.

II. Together with physical comfort, the culture produced by asound and thorough education is the second thing absolutelynecessary for the resurrection of the nation. Education has, atall times, been of the utmost importance; in our age it is moreso than ever. It may be said that, in the opinion of mankind, ittends more and more to replace blood. The privileges that oncebelonged to rank and birth are now everywhere freely accorded toa truly-educated man. And here, wealth, which is almostworshipped by many, cannot altogether take the place ofeducation. Consequently, a great effort should be made inIreland to raise the standard of the intellectual scale ofsociety. Owing to former tyranny and oppression, the rising mustbegin at the lowest grade. But the first impulse has alreadybeen given by the Church of God, and that impulse must continueand increase with a constantly-accelerated force.

Unfortunately, a false direction has been given it by the state.The means which will surely defeat this action of the state havebeen seen. Nevertheless, it works mischievously for the generalresult; and the money paid by the nation has been and still issquandered for a most unholy purpose, when, if properly applied,it would be so fruitful of good.

Should the government persevere in its project, one course onlylies open before all true Irishmen; and that is, to ignore theaction of the government, and follow a plan of their own. Theyhave only to do what the Catholics in France would mostwillingly do if the state allowed them; what Catholics in theUnited States have been doing for some time, and will have to dofor some time longer—not murmur too loudly at the taxes paid bythem for educational purposes and used so lavishly by the statewithout any profit to them; but with steady purpose raise fundswhich the state cannot touch, devoted to an object with whichthe state cannot interfere, namely, the solid Christianeducation of their children under the eyes and chief control ofthe Church, with competent and truly religious masters.

Let them reflect that until recently education in Christiancountries was always imparted by the Church of Christ, and thatit* secularization is but a work of yesterday; that the effectof that secularization is manifest enough in the mental anarchywhich grows more prevalent in Europe every day; that the nationwhich comes back to the old system, and places again the care ofyouth in the hands of religious teachers, is sure to obtain afar sounder and more effective education than those who take forteachers of their children men void of faith and remarkable onlyfor a false and superficial polish, which sooner or later willbe reckoned by all at its true value, and meet only with well-merited neglect and contempt.

No one will deny that moral training, the first and mostimportant part of education, is far surer and safer in the careof religious teachers than in that of mere laymen, whosemorality is often doubtful, and whose reputation is not of thebest. With regard to scientific teaching, the mind of thereligious is not, to say the least, lowered by the holyobligations which he has contracted: and it is an awkward factfor those who in a breath uphold secular education and abuse thereligious, that in former ages the men who excelled in arts andsciences, the geniuses whose works will live as long as theearth, were either themselves monks or the pupils of monks. Alist of them would fill many pages, and their names are notunknown to the world.

For the mass of the people, the common level of primaryeducation with which so many are now satisfied may at least beas satisfactory in its results when imparted by religious, maleand female, as when under the direction of young men and womenwho have received every possible diploma which is at thedisposal of school commissioners or boards of gentlemen investedwith an office, worthy of the gravest attention, but to whichthey can devote but very little time.

But the subject may be said to have passed beyond discussion.The true and authorized leaders of the Irish in such matters,the Catholic bishops, have already taken the matter into theirown hands; and in a very short time have covered the island withtheir schools, with every prospect of a university. It restswith the government to give or refuse its aid in imparting atrue national education to a nation which is Catholic; but, withor without this aid, the Irish will have the means of educatingtheir children rightly; and the culture they receive willfavorably compare with that imparted by rival establishmentsfostered by the state, whose pupils will not know a word even oftheir own national history, since, in the authorized books,Ireland has no existence other than that of an unworthy subjectof the great British Empire.

It was necessary to give prominence to what is here consideredas the most effective means of bringing about the great resultwhich engages our attention in this chapter. There are secondaryobjects which might be treated, but which, in the final workingof the divine will, may be insignificant. For, to repeat whathas been said before, the restoration of the nation which is nowprogressing so steadily almost unaided by any action of man,however much he may indulge in agitation, is the work of God,and before long will so manifest itself to all. Meanwhile it isenough to assert in general terms that Ireland is entitled toall those things which render a people happy and contented. Thatwished-for state is not far off; let them continue to be activein its pursuit. A previous chapter has already touched upon thegreat means to be employed in bringing this about: association,whose centre should be Ireland, and whose branches shouldspread wherever Irishmen have established themselves; whoseguides should be the clergy, but its chief workers, intelligentand energetic laymen. On this point it is desirable particularlyto be rightly understood; it is not our purpose to say that insuch a work laymen ought not to cooperate, or even to lead; withthe memory of O'Connell before us, such a thing would beimpossible; on the contrary, the external working of the wholescheme should be placed in the hands of good, active, andintelligent laymen. They are the proper instruments for carryingon such a work actively and efficaciously; they form, at leastnumerically, the principal part of the moral power of the nation,and that power should be developed on a larger scale than ithas ever yet been. But the first impulse should be given by themoral leaders, rulers of the Church. Let the nation work underthe guidance, the leadership of the men who alone stood by themwhen all else had been lost, who, in fact, by preserving theirreligion, preserved to them their nationality; let them workunder their eyes and with their sanction, and assuredly theirlabor will not be labor in vain.

What will the final result be of such a cooperation of workers?The formation or rather consolidation of a truly Christian andCatholic people; a most remarkable phenomenon in this wonderfulnineteenth century! It would seem that they have thus far beendeprived of a government of their own only to win a governmentat last which shall be, what is so sadly wanted in these days,Christian and Catholic. Modern governments have broken loosefrom Christianity; they have declared themselves independent ofall moral restraint; they have pronounced themselves supreme,each in its own way; and, to be consistent, they have becomegodless. Donoso Cortes has shown this admirably in his work on"Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism." The sad spectaclewhich in our age meets the eye of the Christian, is universal;there is no longer a Catholic nation; Christendom has ceased toexist. This is held by the statesmen of to-day to be a vastimprovement on the old social system. Medieval barbarism, asthey term it, has, according to them, met with just condemnation;and to return to it now, would be to drag an advanced agecenturies backward, a horror which no sane man could contemplate.

Undoubtedly there were many abuses under the old regime, whichthe most sincere Christian regrets, and could not wish to seerestored, or again attempted. But, its great feature, the innerlink which bound the system together, its unity under theguidance of the universal Church, was the only safeguard for thegeneral happiness of mankind. This admirable unity has beenbroken into fragments; each part does for itself, and thus theworld lies at the mercy of Might, and each nation goes aboutlike "a strong man armed, keeping his house."

Even Heeren, a writer who is strongly Protestant and liberal, isdriven to confess in his "History of the Political System ofEurope," that the reign of Frederick the Great, in Prussia, was"immediately followed by those great convulsions in states,which gave the ensuing period a character so different from theformer. The contemporary world, which lived in it, calls it therevolutionary; but it is yet too early to decide by what name itwill be denoted by posterity, after the lapse of a century."

After a brief review of the various states as they existedtoward the middle of the last century, he adds: "The efforts ofthe rulers to obtain unlimited power had overthrown the oldnational freedom in all the states of the Continent; theassemblies of the states had disappeared, or were reduced tomere forms; nowhere had they been modelled into a true nationalrepresentation."

He does not see that, in order to obtain that "unlimited power,"the rulers had thrown off the yoke of Church authorityeverywhere, and that Christendom disappeared with the "oldnational freedom" as soon as the key-stone of the edifice, thepapacy, was ejected from its place.

Nevertheless, he was keen enough to perceive it necessary tocall in armed force to uphold that usurped power of rulers:

"For the strength of the states no other criterion was knownthan standing armies. And, in reality, there was scarcely anyother. By the perfection which they had attained, and which keptpace almost with the growing power of the princes, the line ofpartition was gradually drawn between them and the nations;they only were armed; the nations were defenceless."

This great German historian carries his views further still, andconfesses that, "if the political supports were in a totteringcondition, the moral were no less shattered. The corner-stone ofevery political system, the sanctity of legitimate possession,without which there would be only one war of all against all,was gone; politicians had already thrown off the mask in Poland;the lust of aggrandizement had prevailed . . . . Theindissoluble bond connecting morals and politics being broken,the result was to make egotism the prevailing principle ofpublic as well as private life."

Admirable reflections, doubtless, but incomplete; theProtestantism of the writer not allowing him to perceive that,the only sure defender of morality having been discarded,egotism could not but prevail. Therefore does he complain, beingblind to the true cause of the disorder, that "democratic ideas,transported from America to Europe, were spread and cherished inthe midst of the monarchical system—ready materials for aconflagration far more formidable than their authors hadanticipated, should a burning spark unhappily light upon them.Others had already taken care to profane the religion of thepeople; and what remains sacred to the people when religion andconstitution are profaned?"

This last observation, thrown in at the end of some very soundconsiderations, would have made them far more striking, had itappeared at their head as the great source of all thecatastrophes which ensued. But it requires a Catholic eye totake in the whole truth, and a Catholic tongue to give the rightexplanation of history, as of all things else.

Many reflections similar to those above quoted have been made bynon-Catholic writers, and the defenders of the Church havespoken with clearness and energy throughout. Nevertheless, theevil has continued to grow more universal and more alarming,until, to-day, no principle on which the social fabric cansecurely stand is acknowledged by those who rule the exteriorworld. And of what Heeren calls the violation of "the sanctityof legitimate possession," let Poland and many other statesspeak, nay, those of the Father of the faithful himself, towhose warning voice rulers have now so long persistently turneda deaf ear. Where are now even the fragments of that "corner-stone" of the old "political system?"

Such is the state of affairs, not only in Europe, but generallythroughout the world, so that the Catholic Church has at lengthentered fully upon that stage of her existence when she possessesindividual subjects full of tender affection and devotedness,whose number, thank God! increases every day, but not a singleState which acknowledges her as its director and teacher.

Ireland may be destined to become the first one which shallacknowledge her, and set an example to the rest. If ever sheenjoys self-government, she will surely do so, for Catholic sheis to the core, and Catholic she cannot but remain.

When it was said that home-rule would not serve as a surepanacea for all her evils, it will be understood as applying tothe actual moment and nothing else. That it would not be a goodthing for her ever to enjoy real self-government was never inour mind. Moral force is bringing this nearer to her; and stepby step she is learning how to walk without support. Already,she possesses something of political franchise, and enjoysmunicipal government more truly than Frenchmen do after alltheir social convulsions.

There are men, Irishmen even, who pretend that she would subsideinto anarchy if her destiny were confided to her own care. Theypoint to the constant wranglings which have been her bane forcenturies, and the "prophet" who wrote the "Battle of Dorking"represents her, as soon as the humiliation of England left herfree, struggling painfully in the throes of anarchy. That thisgeneral opinion of men with regard to Ireland is but too true,was conceded in another place, yet only so far as concernedinterests which were trifling, or, at best, of no high character;that when the object at stake is one of great importance, therewas more steadiness, unanimity, energy, and true heroism in theIrish people, than in any other known to history in modern times.And this reflection is certainly borne out by the issues of allthe secular struggles of the Irish with Scandinavianism,feudalism, and Protestantism.

Surely is there in them the right material for a nation; and,when the day comes for the country to take in hand, underProvidence, her own destiny and work it out, the "prophet" willfind himself sadly mistaken when, freed forever from thedegradation of pauperism, she is at liberty to raise herthoughts above food and raiment; when her children, lifted by asolid Christian education to the high level of intellectualforesight, shall be able to discuss the great objects of theirnational interests, with no question of clan and clan; thenwrangling will cease, as far as public questions are concerned,and be merely left to matters of minor importance, or privateaffairs, as with all other nations. But that concentrated energywhich has marked the race throughout that long fight ofcenturies against such overwhelming odds, will still continue astheir distinguishing characteristic, but turned now to thequestion of their own national welfare, and no longer to theaversion of doom.

Then will Europe see what a truly Christian people is, for thenthere will be no other left; and the superiority of principles,of strength of mind, energy of character, naturally fostered bydeep religious convictions, will afford another proof ofMontesquieu's reflection, that "the Christian faith, which seemsto have for its object only the future life, is likewise thebest calculated to make people happy and prosperous during this."

If ever men are brought to acknowledge the fatal error they madein rejecting the sacred safeguard which Christ left them in hisChurch, it will be by looking on the example of a nationactually existing, governed by the great principles which alonecan insure the happiness of the individual and the prosperity ofthe whole people.

In all the foregoing considerations Ireland has been looked uponas a nation full of vigor and energy; but, as this vital pointis denied by some, who bear the reputation of thoughtful writers,it is well to establish it clearly before our minds.

Is Ireland a nation? Some say, No; others, among them Mr. Froude,say she is divided into two nations.

The first of these assertions, that she is not a nation, is inappearance so self-evident and true that it seems folly to denyit. She has no government of her own; her destinies seem to bealtogether in the hands of a hostile race, which rules her by aParliament, where her voice is scarcely heard. She has no armynor navy, no commerce, no treasury, not the lowest prerogativeof sovereignty. There is a green flag still somewhere with aharp on it and a crown above the harp, reserved for stateoccasions, and unfurled now and again, when a show of loyaltyand a little enthusiasm is called for; but that flag never wavesthe Irish to battle, not even when fighting for England. Thereis no Irish standard-bearer for it, as there was under theTudors, when the flag of Ulster was seen amid the armies ofElizabeth. The name of Ireland is never mentioned in any treatywith foreign powers; and, when the sovereign of England,Scotland, and Ireland, signs a treaty, a convention, nay, a poorprotocol, with any foreign state, the name of Ireland is not tobe seen on the parchment, save at its head, among the titles ofthe monarch. There is no Irish seal even to affix to thedocument: the country is a national non-entity.

But other men, and wise men too, discover a strange anomaly inthis curious country. They hold that it is composed of twodistinct nations, and furnish excellent reasons in support oftheir theory.

They talk in this fashion: "Look at the people; travel thecountry north and south, and converse with them as you go. Whatdo you find? Unity of feeling, aims, agreement of opinion on allpossible subjects? Just the opposite! You find Jacob and Esau onevery side struggling in the womb of their mother. The quarrelbetween Sassenach and Gael still goes on. What two figures canbe found more antagonistic than the Orangeman of Ulster and theMilesian of Connaught? Yet they are both children of the samecountry."

And so deep-grained is the difference between them that,although they have lived side by side for centuries, they arestill as hostile to each other as when they first met in battlearray. The Danes, after a struggle of a little more than twocenturies, gave up the contest and became Celts. Strongbow'sNormans soon adopted the manners of the old inhabitants,intermarried with them, and, after a lapse of four centuries,though quarrels often broke out between the one and the other,they were to all intents and purposes Celts, the old race, as itwere, absorbing the Norman blood, and always showing itself inthe children.

But, when will the children of James's Scotchmen or Cromwell'sCovenanters coalesce with the descendants of the Milesians? Thelonger they dwell together, the farther they seem apart, themore they seem to hate each other; and every 12th of July, 5thof November, 17th of March, or even 15th of August, bringsdanger of bloodshed and strife to every city, hamlet, and town.Surely, this fact speaks of two nations in the country.

The question here presented is indeed a complicated one,requiring solid distinctions in order to elucidate it; and,strange to say, this last difficulty of the presence of twonations in Ireland offers greater obstacles to the firmestablishment of our opinion than the first assertion, so clearand undeniable in appearance, that there is no Irish nation!

If true nationality existed only in the externals of government,in an army, navy, commerce, a public seal and flag, andrecognition by foreign powers, further discussion would clearlybe useless, and the subject might as well at once be dropped.

But the true idea of a nation embraces much more than this;there is such a thing as a national soul, and all the array ofaccidents alluded to above constitute only the body, or, moretruly, the surroundings. As a writer in the North AmericanReview (vol. cxv., p. 379) has well expressed it, a nation is "arace of men, small or great, whom community of traditions andfeeling binds together into a firm, indestructible unity, andwhose love of the same past directs their hopes and fears to thesame future."

In this sense nationality assuredly belongs to Ireland. More,perhaps, than among any other people on earth, is there for thegreat 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, becausethat past has been clouded with sorrow? Nay, this fact makes thepast dearer, and tends all the more to direct their hopes andfears to the same future; a future, indeed, still dim anduncertain, and not to be named with perfect certainty, butwrapped in mists like the morning; yet the faint flush of thedawn is already there that shall pale and die away when the fullorb of the sun appears.

The reader may remember what was said of the unanimity sostriking in all Irishmen, wherever they may be found; that,though private disputes may be taken up among them with suchardor that their quarrels have become proverbial, when thequestion refers to their country or their God, in a moment theyare united, suddenly transformed into steady friends, ready toshed their blood side by side for the great objects whichentirely absorb their natures.

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

These reflections being kept in view, judicious men will agreethat, among Europeans at least, there is scarcely any othernationality so strong and vigorous as the Irish. Theirtraditional feeling keeps their past ever present to their eyes;their ardent nature hopes ever against hope; misfortunes whichwould utterly break down and dishearten any other people, leavethem still full of bright anticipations, and, as they seem toweep 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 radicallyopposed to each other and incapable of coalescing? Supposing aresurrection of the people, which of the two is to prevail—thenumerical majority, or the so far influential minority? Ineither event, it is fair to suppose a new state of helotism forthe one party or the other. Is this the spectacle which theregenerated nation is likely to present?

In speaking of the resurrection of Ireland, the old, massive,compact body of the people, the venerable race, Celtic in itsaspirations and tendencies, if not altogether in its origin, hasalways been kept in view; and that anomalous, foreignexcrescence which has so steadily refused to assimilate with themass, and has until our days remained "encamped" in Ireland, asthe 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 inits grammatical and not in its religious sense—in fellowship.The race, as now constituted, is assuredly of mixed origin, andlarge drafts of foreign population have been added from time totime to the primitive stock, which has always been kind to admit,absorb, and make them finally Celtic. Strongbow's Normans werenot the last who submitted to that process; as was seen, manyCromwellians became the fathers, or grandfathers at least, of assturdy an Irish branch as ever flourished in the strong air ofthe country.

But a comparatively small body of men has doggedly refused tosubmit to this process, and continued to this day an English orLowland Scotch colony on the Irish soil. The future of Irelanddoes not take them in, for the very simple reason that they arenot of her, they do not belong to her, they are as muchforeigners to-day as they ever were. Therefore do we admit theexistence of two nations, if people are pleased to call them so,in Ireland, but of one nation only have we written. The onlyquestion in regard to this second "nation" is: What will becomeof them in the future? Are they, in their turn, to become helots,after having vainly striven so long to make helots of theothers? God forbid! No true Irishman nourishes in his soul suchfeelings of retaliation or revenge.

Assuredly, they will be prevented from disturbing any longer thepublic order, and forced at length to respect the majority, orrather, the mass of their countrymen. No one can object tohaving such a necessary measure imposed upon them. In the manycivil discords which, for more than a century and a half, havedisgraced the north of Ireland, they have almost invariably beenthe aggressors. The government openly taking their part for along time, they had the whole field to themselves, and what usethey made of their privilege, and how they improved theiropportunity, is known to all. When, at last, the publicauthorities could no longer pretend to ignore their hatefulspirit, and began to show some signs of protecting the hithertomuch-abused majority, by forbidding those odious processions towhich the others always attached such importance, they gavethemselves the airs of a persecuted body of men, and pretendedthat henceforth their lives, and those of their wives andchildren, were no longer safe.

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

It is surely time that an end be put to such absurd anddangerous antics, not abroad only, but at home. In the new orderof things now dawning upon Ireland, there can no longer be roomfor them; and the very name of Orangeman must disappear foreverfrom the vocabulary of the new nation, to the joy of allpeaceful and law-abiding citizens.

That is all the persecution they need expect. Not only willthere be room for them still in the country of their birth, butof course they will have their due share in all the privilegesof citizenship. Political distinctions between themselves andthe old race will be unknown; social distinctions will be aquestion for themselves to settle. Should they show theslightest desire of combining with the majority of theircountrymen, these latter will be generous enough to forget thepast, and perhaps the others may imitate their predecessors, theDanes, the Normans, and even some of their Cromwellian kin, andbecome, at last, Hibernis hiberniores.

What is said of political and social distinctions will hold goodalso for religious tenets. Let them, if they choose, continue tostand by their Presbyterian dogmas, provided they do not quarrelwith the majority for professing what they love to believe; butthat belief must come to an external and public profession. Theywill often hear the bells of Catholic churches; as they passoutside, if they do not enter, the strains of the glorious musicand noble anthems, resounding within, will fall on their ears;they will see the statue of the Blessed Virgin borne through thestreets on the 15th of August, amid showers of snowy blossoms,falling from the innocent hands of children; all this they mustendure, if it be so hard to endure it; but this is notpersecution. Even to their eyes, if their heart be not frozen bya cold belief, the sight will bear some attractions. And if theycome to think, that what is oldest in Christianity is the best,and that, after all, Catholicity has something in it which makeslife sweet and pleasant, it can scarcely be held a crime in theuniversal Church to open her arms and receive back to her bosomthose wandering and so long obstinate children.

When will all this come to pass? Who can tell? But strangerthings than these have already taken place in Ireland, and weare confident that future historians of the race will have torecord greater wonders still, and facts more stubborn anddifficult of explanation.

At all events, should the inflexible Puritanism of the Scotchcolony stand proof against the allurements of a motherly andtender-hearted Church, they must at least become subject to theiron laws of population and absorption. When the public statutesare no longer drawn up for their special benefit, when no newswarms of brethren come to swell their ranks, when they areabandoned to the merciless laws of loss and gain in numbers,then will people soon see on which side is true morality, and bywhich the ordinances of God are really respected; then will manyvapid accusations against the holy Catholic Church of themselvesdisappear, and the eyes of men will open to the great fact thatIreland must be and remain one in race, feeling, and, above all,in religion. The foreign element will have dwindled toinsignificance, if it shall not have utterly disappeared. Indeed,it may be safely predicted that the day will arrive when theannouncement of the natural demise of the last Puritan inIreland will appear in the daily newspapers as a curious pieceof 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 readersinfer that Irishmen should adopt the do-nothing policy, andleave to God alone the work of raising them up. The moral forcespoken of is that of human beings endowed with activity anddetermination; 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. Direcalamities, which God designed from the first to convert intoblessings, have scattered them over the world, and brought outthat power of expansion which was always in their nature, butlay dormant and cramped under the pressure of terriblecirc*mstances. They again show themselves as that old race whichthree 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 universalityin time and space. To that sign, since the triumph of theSaviour on the day of his resurrection, is given the rule of theworld till the end of time. Now that our globe is known at last,the cross must be planted all over its surface, and in thisgreat work the Irish race is clearly destined to bear aconspicuous part.

In the fulfilment of that divine vocation they are dispersed,and whatever is dispersed is deprived of a great part of itsstrength. How can the disjecta membra, scattered far and wide byTyphon, become again Osiris? Under the guidance of God, by thatgreat instrument of modern times, the power of association andorganization, 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, hearthe word of the Lord. . . . Behold, I will send spirit into you,and ye shall live; and I will lay sinews on you, and will causeflesh to grow over you, and will cover you with skin; and I willgive you spirit, and ye shall live."

All this seems to be the work of God alone, yet, in the verywords of the prophet, the dry bones have their part to perform:

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

There is the whole process; it supposes a noise, a commotion, arising, an assembling together, and a fitting each one into hisown joint. They possess an activity of their own, which theymust use. And the phenomenon is to take place in the midst of "avast plain "—two great continents—over the surface of whichthe "bones" are found on every side, appearing "exceeding dry."

With what a power will that army be invested when it rises upand stands upon its feet! We may form some faint idea of it,when in our large cities any thing occurs to excite the interestand warm up the feeling of that apparently inert Celtic mass.The largest halls constructed cannot contain the multitudes whohave only read the announcement of a meeting, a lecture, or acharitable undertaking. Such scenes are witnessed every dayalong the banks of the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, and theDelaware Rivers; by the shores of Chesapeake Bay; in all thegreat centres of population dotting the Atlantic coast; in theheart of the continent along the winding course of theMississippi and Missouri; and already, even in the far West, onthe spreading shores of the Pacific Ocean. The same is occurringall over the inhabited portion of Australia and the adjacentislands. 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 fortheir country's sake? Is each man so busy, and lost in his ownlittle sphere of interest and speculation, that he cannot sparea moment's thought for the claims of his native country? Who cansay this? Moreover, the best means of promoting their ownprivate interests would be to raise before the eyes of all thestatus of the country with which they are naturally identified.The truth is, each one waits for another to set the example, themass being ever ready to follow a lead and show its good-will.Association is needed.

When they turn their eyes to the incessant struggle going on inthe mother-country, when they read in their own newspapers thediscussions of the Irish press, of the questions debated on thesoil most dear to them, and the agitation of the momentousinterests pending and awaiting a final decision among theirformer countrymen, no doubt their feelings are strongly moved;the hopes and fears of their youth, before they left theirnative shores, are revived with renewed force, and their lovefor their green island is as ardent as ever.

But is this all? Is it enough that the heart of each one isstirred within him? Is it not for them to see that the influenceof their new name, new position, and bettered circ*mstances, bebrought to bear, however far away they may be, upon the greathome questions of land-tenure, education, the elective franchise,a native Parliament, commerce, manufactures, and all matterstouching on the general welfare of Ireland? If, having becomeadopted citizens of a new country, they can no longer act ascitizens of Erin, they may and ought at least to interest themselves in these matters as far as true loyalty to their adoptedcountry may allow them; and this they can best do by association.

The bonds of a wise organization would give firmness andcompactness to the whole moral force of the dispersednationality. By association, the scattered "dry bones" would bespeedily changed into a solid array of living warriors standingupon their feet, and the startling spectacle would astonish thewhole world, and win for the race the involuntary respect of allwho should witness or hear of it. Nothing would be easier thanto set such a thing on foot, for, although so far apart inappearance, the ma- jority of Irish families, from the very factof emigration, have half of their members at home and halfabroad, joined together by an active correspondence and aconstant transmission of funds. The managers of the movementwould only have to organize for a general object, what alreadyis organized in fact, and direct to the common good what is nowdone privately.

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

The class here designated as leaders of the nation is alreadyknown to the reader. The old nobility having been destroyed,there is no other body which truly represent the Irish people to-daysave the clergy. This is, no doubt, a misfortune, but none theless a fact. It offers the anomaly of clergymen meddling to acertain extent in politics; but, in Ireland, this is unavoidable.

How does the whole body of the European Catholic clergyunderstand its position in all those Catholic congresses andunions, which are now, thank God! starting up in all Christiancountries? How do the laymen, on their side, appreciate theshare they have to take in those various movements? How do theyact under the lead of their spiritual advisers? Are any odiousdistinctions ever known in those associations? Can anymisunderstanding arise among men animated with a true love forreligion? And why should not the same be true of Ireland, amonga people so full of love for country? This is what is meant whenthe terms leaders and followers, clergy and laity, are here used.

Another consideration will show still more forcibly theimportance of the great measure here proposed. One circ*mstancemust have struck those who read the detailed reports of theCatholic congresses mentioned above—the sudden appearance of alarge array of laymen, illustrious 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 theChurch. A new channel of activity was suddenly opened up to them;they threw themselves into it, and became the bold champions ofa cause to which, undoubtedly, they had been individuallyattached, but of which they now became the public men. And thereis little doubt that many young men, lukewarm before, andperhaps with nothing more than the remembrance of the Christianeducation they had once received, suddenly revived in spirit andmade a solemn profession of a cause which, perhaps, they wouldnot have had the courage openly to advocate, did not the numberand names of the first originators of the movement encouragethem to join in it heart and soul.

Now, it is said, perhaps too truly, that the warm religiousfeeling which has been all along claimed as the most strikingcharacteristic of the Irish race, is no longer shared alike byall classes of Irish Catholics; that, too often, whenindividuals among them rise in the social scale, and reach astep in the social ladder from which they imagine that they canlook down upon the despised mass below, they no longer feel thatdeep reverence for their religion which had characterized theiryouth, and, after all, are not very different from the mass ofnon-Catholics among whom they prefer to move. This class of menhas been well described by Moore in his own person, in variouspassages of his "Irish Gentleman in search of a Religion."

The fact is, indeed, too true; but what is the chief cause ofit? One of the most active means of bringing about such a resultwe take to be the complete isolation in which young men of theclass referred to find themselves in their own sphere of life.There is, in fact, no motive for displaying their attachment totheir religion, and no respectable means of doing so. They donot feel their souls moved by sufficient proselytic ardor toinduce them, of their own accord, to originate any thing of thatkind, and the generality of them have, probably, not receivedfrom Nature the talents requisite to make them leaders in anycause whatever. No one around them moves in that direction;hence their apathy and consequent lukewarmness in the practiceand outward profession of their faith.

But change all the surroundings; present them an influentialbody to which it is an honor to belong—a body marching openlyunder the banner of the true Church of Christ and of theircountry, bound together as of old—and then will it be seenwhether or not they indeed are the degenerate sons of martyredancestors they now appear to be.

It is indeed very remarkable that, of all countries, Irelandseems to make the least show in those Catholic unions andcongresses now so widely spread throughout Europe. The reasonfor this, perhaps, is, that there seemed less cause for theirexistence in Ireland than elsewhere. But, as, in Ireland, theirobject would not only embrace the interests of religion, butlikewise those of the country itself, it seems natural to thinkthat there they are particularly wanted.

Let the leaders of the nation, then, bestir themselves. Longages of oppression unfortunately have rendered them somewhattimid and seemingly afraid of jeopardizing the importantinterests confided to their care. Let them lift up their eyesand see that the time for timidity has passed away: the enemy isreckless and open in his attacks; their resistance must beequally undisguised and fearless. The people themselvesunderstand this and occasionally display a boldness which showsthat the old heroism still lives in them; but they want leaders,and, if the right ones are not fast to take hold of them, theymay fall into the hands of wrong-headed guides. Let the trueguides look out and see how broad are the lines which divide thegood from the evil, and that victory is sure to the stout ofheart, when backed by the serried masses of a united people.

The principle of association and the machinery of organizationmust be applied to all subjects connected with the resurrectionof the country. What has been done so effectually for the causeof temperance must be done likewise for education, for thepurchase or tenure of land, for the development of agriculture,manufactures, and commerce, for the true representation of thenation, for free municipal government, for the securing of atruly Irish yeomanry and gentry, for a thousand objects on whichthe future welfare of the nation depends. All classes of society,persons of every age and of either sex, yes, women and children,ought to be induced to take an interest in what concerns allalike. Every possible occasion should be taken advantage of toinsure the attainment of the ultimate object. When such a workis really entered upon in earnest, the results will beastonishing.

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

Such a system would, we firmly believe, result in the ultimaterestoration of Ireland's rights and would surely culminate inher final resurrection at no distant date. That the Irish wouldenter with spirit into those various associations has beensufficiently demonstrated by previous examples, particularlyunder O'Connell; and it is impossible to see how surer, greater,and speedier results could be obtained by any amount of physicalforce of which Ireland is capable. What array of physical forcecan the Irish muster to compete at all with their powerfulrivals, situated as they are with the chains of centuries stillbinding them down, for, though the shackles may be actuallyremoved, their effect is still there. The very statement of theterms, Ireland versus England, is enough to show thehopelessness of such a combat. It is a very easy thing tomagnify the old heroism of the Irish, and cast opprobrium on thepresent bearers of the name, as did several newspaper writersrecently, for not displaying the "pluck" of their ancestors whofought against Elizabeth, Cromwell, and William of Orange. It isforgotten that circ*mstances have altered considerably sincethose days when the Irish possessed a regular army led byexperienced generals: restore those circ*mstances, and the Irishof to-day might outdo their ancestors; at all events, there isno reason for supposing that they would be inferior. However,there is such a thing as impossibility, and any attempt of sucha nature, with such surroundings, must be deemed by all sensiblemen not merely rashness, but folly.

In concluding these pages, the author begs to be allowed a wordas to their general character, in reply to a dogmatic andcomprehensive criticism which it is easy to foresee will bepassed on them. It will undoubtedly be asserted that an undueprominence has been given to the religious side of the Irishquestion, while its many political aspects have been left in thebackground. This charge will be laid at the door of the clericaland religious character of the writer, and may give rise to thenotion that the view here taken of the subject is not the rightone, but a radical failure.

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

The Irish is a religious race, and nothing else. It seems thatsuch was its character thousands of years ago, even when pagan.At the time when Hanno was sent by the Carthaginian senatebeyond the Pillars of Hercules to explore the western coast ofAfrica, toward the south—of which voyage the short narrative isstill left us—Himilco, brother to Hanno, was similarlycommissioned to form settlements on the European coast, towardthe north. The account of this latter expedition, which wasextant in the time of Pliny the Elder, is unfortunately lost;but, in the poem of R. Festus Avienus, entitled "Ora Maritima,"there are copious extracts from it, in which, at least, thesense of the original is preserved. Avienus, after speaking ofthe "Insulae OEstrimnides," which Heeren thinks must be theScilly 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 passage runs almost into literal English as follows:

"Thence in two days, a good ship in sailing
Reaches the Holy Isle(1)—so was she called of old—
That in the sea nestles, whose turf exuberant
The race of Hibernians tills."

(1 Dr. Lingard, evidently perplexed by this expression, askshimself, "What might its origin have been?" and suggests thatthe name of Ierne—the same as Erin—having been given toIreland by the ancients, and the Greek iepa—holy— bearing agreat resemblance to it, Avienus might have thus fallen into avery natural mistake of confounding the one with the other. But,in the first place, Himilco's report was certainly not writtenin Greek, but in Phoenician, and Avienus seems merely to havetranslated that report. Moreover, the word iepa begins with avery strong aspirate, equivalent to a consonant, while there arefew vowels softer in any language than the first in Erin orIerne. Heeren does not attempt such an explanation, but concedesthat the Carthaginians, as well as the Phoenicians before them,called Ireland the Holy Isle.)

In the time of Himilco, therefore, five hundred years beforeChrist, Ireland was called the Holy Isle, a title she hadreceived long before: Sic insulam discere prisci. In what thatholiness may have consisted precisely, it is impossible now tosay; all we know is, that foreign navigators, who wereacquainted with the world as far as it was then known, whoseships had visited the harbors of all nations, could find no moreapt expression to describe the island than to say that, morally,it was "a holy spot," and physically "a fair green meadow," or,as her children to this day call her, "the green gem of the sea."

But we have better means of judging in what the holiness of thepeople consisted after the establishment of Christianity intheir midst; and the description of it given in the fourthchapter of this book, taken from the most trustworthy documents,shows how well deserved was the title the island bore.

From that day forth the religious type was clearly impressed onthe nation, and has ever remained deeply engraven in itscharacter. The race was never distinguished for its fondness fortrade, for its manufactures, for depth of policy, for worldlyenlightenment; its annals speak of no lust of conquest among itspeople; the brilliant achievements of foreign invasion, the highpolitical and social aspirations which generally give lustre tothe national life of many a people, belong not to them. Butreligious feeling, firm adherence to faith, invincibleattachment to the form of Christianity they had received from St.Patrick, formed at all times their striking characteristics.

From the day when their faith was first attacked by the Tudorsdid it chiefly blaze forth into a special splendor, which thesepages have striven faintly to represent. Before taking up thepen to write, after the serious study of documents, only onegreat feature struck us—that of a deep religious conviction;and, after having seen what some writers have had to sayrecently, the same feature strikes us still. We will not denythat this fact moved us to write, and the task was the moregrateful, probably, because of our own personal religiouscharacter; but we are confident that any layman, whatever mightbe his talent and disposition for describing worldly scenes, whotook up Irish history, could find nothing else in it of realimportance to render the annals of the race attractive to thecommon run of readers.

And is not religion more capable of giving a people truegreatness and real heroism than any worldly excellence? Men ofsound judgment will always find at least as much interestattached to the history of the first Maccabees as to that ofEpaminondas; and the self-sacrifice of the Vendean Cathelineau,with his "beads" and his "sacred heart," will always appear toan impartial judge of human character more truly admirable thanthat of any general or marshal of the first Napoleon. Religiousheroism, having for object something far above even the purestpatriotic fervor, can inspire deeds more truly worthy of humanadmiration than this, the highest natural feeling of the humanheart; and, for a Christian, the most inspiring pages of historyare those which tell of the superhuman exertions of devotedknights to wrest the sepulchre of our Lord from the pollutedhands of the Moslem.

But religion did not confine her influence over Irishmen to thebravery which she breathed into them on the battle-field.Religion truly constituted their inner life in all thevicissitudes of their national existence; it was the onlysupport left them in the darkest period of their annals, duringthe whole of the last century; and, when the dawn came at lastwith the flush of hope, religion was the only halo whichsurrounded them. Their emigration even, their exodus chiefly,was in fact the sublime outpouring of a crucified nation,carrying the cross as their last religious emblem, and plantingit in the wilds of far-distant continents as their onlyescutcheon, and the sure sign which should apprise travellers ofthe existence of Irishmen in the deserts of North America andAustralia.

Truly, those men are very ignorant of the Irish character whowould abstract the religious feature from it, and paint thenation as they would any other European people, whose great aimin these modern days seems to be to forget the first fervor oftheir Christian origin. With the Irish this cannot be. The vividwarmth of their cradle has not yet cooled down; and, if it wouldbe indeed ridiculous to represent the English of the nineteenthcentury as the pious subjects of Alfred or Edward, it would beequally foolish to depict the Irish of to-day as the worldlingsand godless of France, Italy, or Spain. The Irish patriot couldnot be like them, without deserting his standard and the colorsfor which his race has fought. The nation to which he has thehonor of belonging is still Christian to the core; and, if somefew have really repudiated the love of the religion they took inat their mother's knee, the only means left them of remainingIrishmen, at least in appearance, is not to parade their totallack of this, the chief characteristic of their race.