THE WORLD UNDER THE LEAD OF THE EUROPEAN RACES.--MISSION OF THE
IRISH RACE IN THE MOVEMENT.
"The old prophecies are being fulfilled; Japhet takes possession
of the tents of Sem."--(De Maistre, _Lettre au Comte d'Avaray_.)
The following considerations will at once demonstrate the importance
and 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 continents
and islands of the globe, that the prophecy alluded to at the
head of this chapter was uttered, to be afterward recorded by
Moses, and preserved by the Hebrews and the Christians till the
end of time.
Never before has it been so near its accomplishment as we see it
now; and the great Joseph de Maistre was the first to point this
out distinctly. Yet he did not intend to say that it is only in
our times that Europe has been placed by Providence at the head
of human affairs; he only meant that what the prophet saw and
announced six thousand years ago seems now to be on the point
of complete realization.
It will be interesting to examine, first, in a general way, how
the race of Japhet, to whom Europe was given as a dwelling place,
gradually crept more and more into prominence after having at the
outset been cast into the shade by the posterity of the two other
sons of Noah.
The Asiatic and African races, the posterity of Sem and Cham,
appear in our days destitute of all energy, and incapable not
only of ruling over foreign races, but even of standing alone and
escaping a foreign yoke. It has not been so from the beginning.
There was a period of wonderful activity for them. Asia and Africa
for many ages were in turn the respective centres of civilization
and of human history; and the material relics of their former
energy still astonish all European travellers who visit the Pyramids
of Egypt, the obelisks and temples of Nubia and Ethiopia, the
immense stone structures of Arabia, Petraea and Persia, as well
as the stupendous pagodas of Hindostan. How, under a burning sun,
men of those now-despised races could raise structures so mighty
and so vast in number; how the ancestors of the now-wretched Copt,
of the wandering Bedouin, of the effete Persian, of the dreamy
Hindoo, could display such mental vigor and such physical endurance
as the remains of their architectural skill and even of their
literature plainly show, is a mystery which no one has hitherto
attempted to solve. Nothing in modern Europe, where such activity
now prevails, can compare with what the Eastern and Southern races
accomplished thousands of years ago. Ethiopia, now buried in sand
and in sleep, was, according to Heeren, the most reliable observer
of antiquity in our days, a land of immense commercial enterprise,
and wonderful architectural skill and energy. In all probability
Egypt received her civilization from this country; and Homer sings
of the renowned prosperity of the long-lived and happy Ethiopians.
It is useless to repeat here what we have all learned in our youth
of Babylon and Nineveh, in Mesopotamia; of Persepolis, in fertile
and blooming Iran; of the now ruined mountain-cities of Idumaea
and Northern Arabia; of Thebes and Memphis; of Thadmor, in Syria;
of Balk and Samarcand, in Central Asia; of the wonderful cities
on the banks of the Ganges and in the southern districts of the
peninsula of Hindostan.
That the ancestors of the miserable men who continue to exist in
all those countries were able to raise fabrics which time seems
powerless to destroy, while their descendants can scarcely erect
huts for their habitation, which are buried under the sand at the
first breath of the storm, is inexplicable, especially when we take
into consideration the principles of the modern doctrine of human
progress 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. Silently
and unnoticed they wandered from the cradle of mankind; and, if
scripture had not recorded their names, we should be at a loss
to-day to reach back to the origin of European nations. Yet were
they destined, according to prophecy, to be the future rulers of
the world; and their education for that high destiny was a rude
and painful one, receiving as they did for their share of the
globe its roughest portion: an uninterrupted forest covering all
their domain from the central plateau which they had left to the
shores of the northern and western ocean, their utmost limit.
Many branches of that bold race--_audax Japeti genus_--fell into
a state of barbarism, but a barbarism very different from that of
the tribes of Oriental or Southern origin. With them degradation
was not final, as it seems to have been with some branches at
least of the other stems. They were always reclaimable, always
apt to receive education, and, after having existed for centuries
in an almost savage state, they were capable of once more attaining
the highest civilization. This the Scandinavian and German tribes
have satisfactorily demonstrated.
It may even be said that all the branches of the stock of Japhet
first fell from their original elevation and passed through real
barbarism, to rise again by their own efforts and occupy a prominent
position on the stage of history; and this fact has, no doubt, given
rise to the fable of the primitive savage state of all men.
That the theory is false is proved at once by the sudden emergence
of all Eastern nations into splendor and strength without ever
having had barbarous ancestors. But, when they fall, it seems to
be forever; and it looks at least problematical whether Western
intercourse, and even the intermixture of Western blood, can
reinvigorate the apathetic races of Asia. As to their rising of
their own accord and assuming once again the lead of the world,
no one can for a moment give a second thought to the realization
of 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 their
younger brethren?
A great deal has been written, and with a vast amount of dogmatism,
concerning the Pelasgians and their colonizations and conquests on
the shore and over the islands of the Mediterranean Sea. But nothing
can be proved with certainty in regard to their origin and manners,
their rise and fall. In fact, European history begins with that of
Greece; and the struggle between Hellas and Persia is at once the
brilliant introduction of the sons of Japhet on the stage of the
world--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 that
profound slumber wherein they still lie buried, and which the
brilliant 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, contemporaneous
with the supremacy of Greece over the East. The great peninsula
of India was still to show for many ages an astonishing activity
under the successive sway of the Hindoos, the Patans, the Moguls,
and the Sikhs. China also was to continue for a long time an immense
and prosperous empire; but the existence of both these countries
was concentrated in themselves, so that the rest of the world felt
no result from their internal agitations. Life was gradually ebbing
away in the great Mongolian family, and the silent beatings of
the pulse that indicated the slow freezing of their blood could
neither be heard nor felt beyond their own territorial limits.
Nothing new in literature and the arts is visible among them after
the appearance, on their western frontiers, of the sons of Japhet,
led by the Macedonian hero. It now seems established that Sanscrit
literature, the only, but really surprising proof of intellectual
life in Hindostan, is anterior to that epoch.
As to China, the great discoveries which in the hands of the
European races have led to such wonderful results, the mariner's
compass, the printing-press, gunpowder, paper, bank-notes, remained
for the Chinese mere toys or without further improvements after
their first discovery. It is not known when those great inventions
first appeared among them. They had been in operation for ages
before Marco Polo saw them in use, and scarcely understood them
himself. Europeans were at that time so little prepared for the
reception of those material instruments of civilization, that the
publication of his travels only produced incredulity with regard
to those mighty engines of good or evil.
But those very proofs of Oriental ingenuity establish the fact of
a point of suspension in mental activity among the nations which
discovered them. Its exact date is unknown; but every thing tends
to prove that it took place long ages ago, and nothing is so well
calculated to bring home to our minds the great fact which we are
now trying to establish as the simple mention of the two following
phenomena in the life of the most remote Eastern nations:
The genius of the East was at one time able to produce literary
works of a philosophical and poetical character unsurpassed by
those of any other nation. The most learned men of modern times
in Europe, when they are in the position to become practically
acquainted with them, and peruse them in their original dialects,
can scarcely find words to express their astonishment, intimately
conversant as they are with the masterpieces of Greece and Rome
and of the most polite Christian nations. They find in Sanscrit
poems and religious books models of every description; but they
chiefly find in them an abundance, a freshness, a mental energy,
which fill them with wonder; yet all those high intellectual
endowments have disappeared ages ago, no one knows how nor precisely
when. It is clear that the nation which produced them has fallen
into a kind of unconscious stupor, which has been its mental
condition ever since, and which to-day raises puny Europe to the
stature of a giant before the fallen colossus.
Again: many ages ago the Mongolian family in China invented many
material processes which have been mainly the clause of the rise
of Europe in our days. They were really the invention of the Chinese,
who neither received them from nor communicated them to any other
nation. Ages ago they became known to us accidentally through their
instrumentality; but, as we were not at that time prepared for the
adoption of such useful discoveries, their mention in a book then
read all over Europe excited only ridicule and unbelief. As soon
as the Western mind mastered them of itself, they became straightway
of immense importance, and gave rise, we may say, to all that we
call modern civilization. But in the hands of the Chinese they
remained useless and unproductive, as they are to this day, although
they 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 was
originally theirs, but so improved and altered as to render the
original utterly contemptible and ridiculous. And, what is stranger
still, though they can compare their own rude implements with ours,
and possess a most acute mind in what is materially useful, they
cannot be brought to confess Western superiority. The advantage
which they really possessed over us a thousand years ago is still
a reality to their blind pride.
But it is time to return to the epoch when the race of Japhet began
to put forth its power.
Roman intellectual and physical vigor was the first great force
which gave Europe that preeminence she has never since lost; and
there was a moment in history when it seemed likely that a nation,
or a city rather, was on the point of realizing the prophetic
promise made to the sons of Noah.
But an idolatrous nation could not receive that boon; and the
Roman 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 reach
the sea, she established there posts of armed men; colonies were
sent out and legions distributed along the line; even in some places,
as in Britain, walls were constructed, stretching across islands, if
not along continents. Whatever country had the happiness of being
included between those limits belonged to "the city and the world"
-_urbi et orbi_; beyond was Cimmerian darkness in the North, or
burning deserts in the South. Mankind had no right to exist outside
of her sway; and, if some roaming barbarians strayed over the
inhospitable confines, they could not complain at having their
existence swept off from the field of history, so unworthy were
they of the name of men. Science itself, the science of those
times, had to admit such ideas and dictate them to polished writers.
Hence, according to the greatest geographers, mankind could exist
neither in tropical nor in arctic regions; and Strabo, dividing the
globe into five zones, declared that only two of them were habitable.
We now know how false were those assertions, and indeed how
circumscribed was the power of ancient Rome. She pretended to
universal as well as to eternal dominion; but she deceived herself
in both cases. Under her sway the races of Japhet were not "to
dwell in the tents of Sem." She was not worthy of accomplishing
the great prophecy which is now under our consideration.
It is, however, undoubtedly due to her that the children of Japhet
became 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 only
to appear on her borders to insure immediate submission.
Syria and Mesopotamia were fast becoming the frightful deserts they
are to-day. Persia dared not move in the awful presence of a few
legions scattered along the Tigris; and, if, later on, the Parthian
kings made a successful resistance against Rome, it was only owing
to the abominable corruption of Roman society at the time; but,
in fact, Iran had fallen to rise no more, save spasmodically
under Mohammedan rule.
The fact is, that, in the subsequent flood of barbarians which for
centuries overwhelmed and destroyed the whole of Europe, we behold,
on all sides, streams of Northern European races, members of the
same family of Japhet. It was the Goths that ruined Palestine even
in the time of St. Jerome. If side by side with Northern nations
the Huns appeared, no one knows precisely whence they came. Attila
called himself King of the Scythians and the Goths, as well as
grandson of Nimrod. He came with his mighty hosts from beyond the
Danube; this is all that can be said with certainty of his origin.
The East, therefore, was already dead, and could furnish no powerful
foe against that Rome which it detested. It is even in this Oriental
supineness that we can find a reason for the duration of the
inglorious empire of Constantinople. Rome and the West, though far
more vigorous, were overwhelmed by barbarians of the same original
stock sent by Providence to "renew its youth like that of the eagle."
Constantinople and the East continued for a thousand years longer to
drag out their feeble existence, because the far Orient could not
send a few of its tribes to touch their walls and cause them to
crumble into dust. It is even remarkable that the armies of Mohammed
and his successors, in the flush of their new fanaticism, did not
dare for a long time to attack the race of Japhet settled on the
Bosporus. From their native Arabia they easily overran Egypt and
Northern Africa, Syria and Palestine, Mesopotamia and Persia. But
Asia Minor and Thrace remained for centuries proof against their
fury, and, whenever their fleets appeared in the Bosporus, they
were easily defeated by the unworthy successors of Constantine
and Theodosius. This fact, which has not been sufficiently noticed,
shows conclusively that the energy imparted by Mohammedanism
to Oriental nations would have lasted but a short time, and
encountered in the West a successful resistance, had not the
Turks appeared on the scene, destroyed the Saracen dynasties,
and, by infusing the blood of Central Asia into the veins of
Eastern and Southern fanatics, prolonged for so many ages the
sway of the Crescent over a large portion of the globe.
This was the turning-point in human affairs between the East and
the West. We do not write history, and cannot, consequently, enter
into details. It is enough to say that a new element, strengthened
by a long struggle with Moslemism, was to give to the West a lasting
preponderance which ancient Rome could not possess, and whose
developments we see in our days. This new element was the Christian
religion, solidly established on the ruins of idolatry and heresy;
far more solidly established, consequently, than under the Christian
emperors of Rome, while paganism still existed in the capital itself.
The Christian religion, which was to make one society of all the
children of Adam; which, at its birth, took the name of universal
or catholic (whereas previously all religions had been merely
national, and therefore very limited in their effects upon mankind
at large); which alone was destined to establish and maintain,
through all ages, spite of innumerable obstacles, a real universal
sway over all nations and tribes--the Christian religion alone
could give one race preponderance over others until all should
become, as it were, merged into _one_.
At first it seemed that Providence destined that high calling for
the Semitic branch of the human family. The Hebrew people, trained
by 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 divine
Lord, himself a Hebrew, chose twelve men of the same nation to
be the founders of the great edifice. We know how, the divine
plan was frustrated by the stubbornness of the Jews, who
_rejected the corner-stone of the building_, to be themselves
dashed against its walls and destroyed. The sons of Japhet were
substituted for the sons of Sem, Europe for Asia, Rome for
Jerusalem; and the real commencement of the lasting preponderance
of the West dates from the establishment of the Christian Church
in Rome.
See how, from Christianity, the Caucasian race, as we call it,
came to be the rulers of the world. A mighty revolution, wherein
all the branches of that great race become intermingled and
confused, sweeps over the Roman Empire. Every thing seems
destroyed by the onset of the barbarians, in order that they, by
receiving the only true religion which they found without seeking
among those whom they conquered, might become worthy of fulfilling
the designs of Providence. All the barriers are overthrown that one
institution, called Christendom, may take form and harmony. There
are to be no more Romans, nor Gauls, nor Iberians, nor Germans, nor
Scandinavians--only Christians. It is a renewed and reinvigorated
race of Japhet, imbued with true doctrine, clothed with solid
virtues, animated with an overwhelming energy. It is a colossal
statue, moulded by popes, chiselled by bishops, set on its feet by
Christian emperors and kings, chiefly by Charlemagne, Alfred, Louis
IX, and Otho. Is there not perfect unity between those great men
divided by such intervals of space and time? Is not their work a
universal 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 and
deeper into apathy and corruption, while Europe is reserved for
mighty purposes in centuries to come. A stream is gathering in the
West, 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 in
thousands of volumes, many of which, however, are totally unreliable
fables of those mighty events. Those only have had the key to its
right interpretation who have followed the Christian light given from
above, as a star, to guide the wonderful giant in his course. The
chief among them were: of old, Augustine, the author of the "City
of God;" Orosius, the first to condense the annals of the world
into the formula, "_divina providentia regitur mundus et homo;_"
Otho of Freysinguen, in his work "_De mutatione rerum;_" and the
author of "_Gesta Dei per Francos;_" in modern times, Bossuet and
his followers.
The destruction of idolatry was of such vital importance in the
regeneration of the world that it sufficed as a dogma to imbue a
great branch of the Semitic family with a strong life for several
centuries. Moslemism has no other truth to support it than the
assertion of God's unity; but, by waging war against the Trinity
and, consequently, against the very foundation of Christian belief,
it became, for a long time, the greatest obstacle to the dissemination
of truth. It prevented the early triumph of the Caucasian race,
and galvanized, for a time, the nations of the East and South into
a false life.
The ravages of the Tartar hordes under Genghis Khan and his
successors were in no sense life, but only a fitful madness.
The European stream was thus impeded in its flood by the new
activity of Arabia and Turkomania. It was a struggle in which
victory, for a long time, hung in the balance: it required many
crusades of the whole of Western Europe; the long heroism of the
Spanish and Portuguese nations; the incessant attack and defence
of the Templars and the Knights of Malta over the whole surface
of 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 no
insurmountable obstacle to the free flowing of the European stream.
This stream, however, is not homogeneous: far from it. Had the
Christian element always remained alone in it, or at least supreme,
long ere this the victory would have been secure forever, and the
Catholic missions alone would have fulfilled the old prophecies
and given to the sons of Japhet possession of the tents of Sem--a
glorious work so well begun in the East, in India and Japan; in
the West, in the whole of America!
But, unfortunately, the policy of the papacy, which was also that
of Charlemagne, and of other great Christian sovereigns, was not
continued. The Norman feudalism of England and Northern France;
the Caesarism of Germany and the Capetian kings; the heresies
brought from the East by the Crusaders; the paganism and neo-Platonism
of the revival of learning; above all, the fearful upheaval of the
whole of Europe by the Protestant schism and heresy, troubled the
purity of that great Japhetic stream, and has retarded to our days
its momentous and overwhelming impetuosity.
Wonderful, indeed, that in the whole of Europe one small island
alone 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 stupendous
fact is the object of the present volume.
Having stood aloof so long from all those wanderings from the
right path, she has scarcely appeared in the field of European
history save as the victim of Scandinavia and of England. But
there is a time in the series of ages for the appearance of all
those called by Providence to enact a part. What is a myriad of
years for man is not a moment for God; and it would seem that we
had reached at last the epoch wherein Ireland is to be rewarded
for her steadfastness and fidelity.
The impetus now imparted to European power becomes each day more
clearly defined, and, to judge by recent appearances, Irishmen are
about to play no inglorious part in it. The power of expansion, so
characteristic of them from the beginning, has of late years assumed
gigantic proportions. The very hatred of their enemies, the measures
adopted by their oppressors to annihilate them, have only served to
give them a larger field of operations and a much stronger force.
It is not without purpose that God has spread them in such numbers
over so many different islands and continents. It is theirs to give
to the spread of Japhetism among the sons of Sem its right direction
and results. The other races of Western Europe would, had they been
left to themselves alone, have converted that great event into a
curse for mankind, and perhaps the forerunner of the last calamities;
but the Irish, having kept themselves pure, are the true instruments
in the hands of God for righting what is wrong and purifying what
is corrupt.
Had Europe remained in its entirety as steadfast to the true
Christian spirit as the small island which dots the sea on its
western border, what an incalculable happiness it would have proved
to the whole globe, resting as it does to-day under the lead of
the race of Japhet !
But where now are the pure waters which should vivify and
fertilize it? Innumerable elements are floating in their midst
which can but destroy life and spread barrenness everywhere.
Let us see what Europeans believe; what are the motives which
actuate them; what they propose to themselves in disseminating
their influence and establishing their dominion; what the real,
openly-avowed purposes of the leaders are in the vast scheme
which embraces the whole earth; what becomes of foreign races
as soon as they come in contact with them.
The bare idea causes the blood of the Christian to curdle in
his veins, and he thanks God that his life shall not be
prolonged to witness the successful termination of the vast
conspiracy against God and humanity.
For, in our days, spite of so many deviations in the course of
the great European stream, it is truly a matter of wonder what
power it has obtained over the globe in its mastery, its control,
its unification. What, then, would have been the result had its
course remained constantly under Christian guidance!
It is only a short time since the whole earth has become known
to us; and we may say that, for Europe, it has been enough only
to know it in order to become at once the mistress of it; such
power has the Christian religion given her! The first circumnavigation
of the globe under Magellan took place but yesterday, and to-day
European ships cover the oceans and seas of the world, bearing
in every sail the breath and the spirit of Japhetism. The stubborn
ice-fields of the pole can scarcely retard their course, and hardy
navigators and adventurous travellers jeopardize their lives in
the pursuit of merely theoretical notions, void almost of any
practical utility.
The most remote and, up to recently, inaccessible parts of the
earth are as open to us, owing to steam, as were the countries
bordering on the Mediterranean to the ancients. The Argonautic
expedition along the southern coast of the Black Sea was in its
day an heroic undertaking. The Phoenician colonies established
in Africa and Spain by a race trying for the first time in the
history of man to launch their ships on the ocean in order
to trade with Northern tribes as far as Ireland and the Baltic,
though never losing sight of the coast; the attempts of the
Carthaginians to circumnavigate Africa; the three years' voyages
of the ships of Solomon in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf,
were one and all far more hazardous undertakings than the long
voyages 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, lines
of steamers now bear men to every point of the compass, so that
the very boards at the entrances of offices, to be found everywhere
for the accommodation of travellers, are as indices of works on
universal geography.
And the European, still unsatisfied with all he has achieved
in speed and comfort, looks to more rapid and easier modes of
conveyance. Scientific men have been for many years engaged
in experiments by means of which they hope to replace the ocean
by the atmosphere as a public highway for nations; and the currents
of air rushing in every direction with the velocity of the
most rapid winds may yet be used by our children instead of
rivers, thenceforth deserted, and of ocean-streams at last left
empty and waste as before the voyages of Columbus and De Gama.
All this constitutes a positive and stern fact staring us in the
face, and giving to the Caucasian race a power of which our ancestors
would never have dreamed. And if all this is to be the only result
of man's activity--the attainment of merely worldly purposes--God,
whose world this is, may look down on it from heaven as on the work
of Titans preparing to attack his rights, and He will know how to
turn all these mighty efforts of the sons of Japhet to his own
holy 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 consideration
which we shall examine later on.
Meanwhile the great mass of the European family is allowed to go
on in its wonderful undertaking; and we turn to it yet a short while.
As if to favor still more directly this work of the unification
of the globe, Providence has placed at the disposal of the prime
movers in the enterprise pecuniary means which no one could have
foreseen 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 soon
a great part of the country is found to be immensely rich in the
precious metal. That first discovery is followed by others equally
important, and after a few years gold is found in abundance on both
sides 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, and
that new continent, whose exploration has scarcely begun, is said
to be dotted all over by large oases of auriferous rock and gravel.
In due time the same news comes from South Africa, where it has
been lately reported that diamonds, in addition to gold, enrich
the explorer and the workman.
It is needless to speak of mines of silver and mercury after gold
and diamonds; but the result is that the European race is straightway
provided with an enormous wealth commensurate with the immense
commercial and manufacturing enterprises required for the establishment
of its supremacy all over the globe.
There is work, therefore, for all the ships afloat; others and
larger ones have to be constructed; and modern engineering skill
places on the bosom of the deep sea vessels which few, indeed, of
the 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 eagerly
cultivated even at the risk of life. New avenues to trade are
opened up in places where men, still living in the most primitive
state, have few if any wants; and it is considered as part of the
keen merchant's skill to fill the minds of these uncouth and
unsophisticated barbarians with the desire of every possible
luxury. Have we not lately heard that the savages of the Feejee
Islands, who were a few years ago cannibals, have now a king
seeking the protection of England, if not the annexation of his
kingdom to the British empire?
Yes, the material civilization of Europe, the new discoveries
of steam and magnetism, the untiring energy of men aiming at
universal dominion, give to the Caucasian race such a superiority
over the rest of mankind that the time seems to be fast approaching
when the manners, the dress, the look even of Europeans, will
supersede all other types, and spread everywhere the dead level
of our habits.
This fact has already been realized in America, North and South.
Geographers may give lengthened descriptions of the original tribes
which still possess a shadow of existence; foreign readers may
perhaps imagine that the continent is still in the quiet
possession of rude and uncivilized races roaming at will over its
surface, and allowing some Europeans to occupy certain cities and
harbors for the purposes of trade and barter. We know that nothing
could be more erroneous. The Europeans are the real possessors,
north and south; the Indians are permitted to exist on a few spots
contracting year by year into narrower limits. The northern and
larger half of the continent is chiefly the dwelling-place of the
most active branch of the bold race of Japhet. The first of the
iron lines which are to connect its Atlantic and Pacific coasts
has recently been laid. Cities spring up all along its track: the
harbors of California, Oregon, and Alaska, will soon swarm much
more than now with hardy navigators ready to europeanize the various
groups of islands scattered over the Pacific. Already in the Sandwich
and Tahiti groups the number of Europeans is greatly in excess of
that of the natives. Those natives who, in the Philippine Islands,
have been preserved by the Catholic Church, will too soon disappear
from the surface of the largest ocean of the globe.
Then Eastern Asia will be attacked much more seriously than ever
before. Since its discovery, Europeans could only reach it
through the long distances which divide Western Europe from China
and Japan. But within a short time numerous lines of steamships,
starting from San Francisco, Portland, Honolulu, and many other
harbors 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 Isthmus
of Panama, or Darien, or Tehuantepec, as has already been done
with that of Suez; and soon ships starting from Western Europe
will, with the aid of steam, traverse the Atlantic and Pacific
Oceans successively as two large lakes to land their passengers
and cargoes on the frontiers of China and India.
The Japanese, those Englishmen of the East, are ready to adopt
European inventions. They are indeed already expert in many of
them, and seem on the alert to conform to European manners. It
is said that the nation is divided into two parties on that very
question of conformity; before long they will all be of one mind.
What an impulse will thus be given to the europeanization of China
and Tartary!
In Hindostan, England has fairly begun the work; but the climate
of the peninsula offering an obstacle to the introduction of a
large number of men of the Caucasian race, it will be more probably
from the foot of the Himalaya Mountains that the spread of the race
will commence. Already the English and the Russians are concentrating
their forces on the Upper Indus. The question merely is, Which
nation will be the first to inoculate the dreamy sons of Sem with
the spirit and blood of Japhet? It seems that Central Asia will form
the rallying-ground for the last efforts of the Titans to unify their
power, as it was thence that the power of God first dispersed them.
A glance at the rest of the world as witnessing the same astonishing
spectacle, and we pass on. Australia is clearly destined to be entirely
European; the number of natives, already insignificant compared to that
of 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 its
deserts, its terrible climate, and the savage or childish disposition
of its inhabitants. Yet the attempt to europeanize it is at this
moment in earnest action at its southernmost cape, all along its
northern line skirting the Mediterranean, in Egypt chiefly, and
also through the Erythrean Gulf in the east; finally, on many
points 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 as
though all races of men, except the Caucasian, were undergoing
a 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 hold
together in the presence of the Russians and the English.
In Africa, Mohammedanism still preserves to the natives a certain
activity of life, but even that is fast on the wane.
Finally, in Australia and the Pacific Ocean the disappearance of
the natives is still more striking and more sudden in its action
than even in America.
This state of things did not exist two hundred years ago; and
when the Crusades began the reverse was the case.
We cannot believe that this immense, universal fact is merely an
exterior one resulting from new appliances, new comforts, new
outward habits; what is called material civilization. We cannot
believe that it is merely the dress, houses, culinary regime, the
popular customs of those numerous foreign tribes or nations which
are undergoing such a wonderful change. This outward phenomenon
supposes a _substratum_, an interior reality of ideas and principles
worthy our chief attention as the real cause of all those exterior
changes; a cause, nevertheless, which is scarcely thought of in
the 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, the
headlong desire of an impossible or unholy happiness, the reckless
sway of unbridled passions, which try to spread themselves among
all nations, and bring them all up, or rather down, to the level
of intoxicated, tottering, maddened Europe.
If the monstrous scheme succeeds, there will be no more prayer in
the villages of the devout Maronites, no more submission to God in
the mountains of Armenia, no more simplicity of faith among the
shepherds of Chaldea, no more purity of life among the wandering
children of Asiatic deserts.
Side by side with truth and virtue many errors and monstrosities
will doubtless disappear, but not to be replaced with what is
much better.
The muezzin of the mosques will no longer raise his voice from the
minarets at noon and nightfall; the simple Lama will no longer
believe in the successive incarnations of Buddha; no longer will
the superstitious Hindoo cast himself beneath the car of Juggernaut;
many another such absurdity and crime will, let us hope, disappear
forever. But with what benefit to mankind? After all, is not
superstition even better for men than total unbelief? And, when
the whole world is reduced to the state of Europe, when what we
daily witness there shall be reproduced in all continents and
islands, will men really be more virtuous and happy?
We must not think, however, that there is nothing truly good in
the stupendous transformation which we have endeavored to sketch.
If it really be the accomplishment of the great prophecy mentioned
by us at the beginning of this chapter, it is a noble and a
glorious event. God will know how to turn it to good account, and
it 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 is
because Europe, or the agglomeration of the various branches of
the race of Japhet, was for fifteen hundred years overshadowed
by the true temple of God, his glorious and infallible Church;
it is because the education of Europeans is mainly due to the
true messengers of God, the Popes and the bishops; it is because
the 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 and
crusaders, that on them devolves the great mission of regenerating
and blending into one the whole world.
But, unfortunately, the work is spoiled by adjuncts in the movement
which have grown up in the centuries preceding us. In fact, the
whole European movement has been thrown on a wrong track, which
we have already pointed out as mere material civilization.
Still, in spite of all the dross, there is a great deal of pure
metal in the Japhetic movement. Underlying it all runs the
doctrine that all men are sprung from the same father, and that
all have had the same Redeemer; that, consequently, all are
brethren, and that there should be no place among them for castes
and classes, as of superior and inferior beings; that the God the
Christians adore is alone omnipotent; that idolatry of all kinds
ought to disappear, and that ultimately there should be but one
flock and one shepherd.
These are saving truths, still held to in the main by the race
of 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 the
leaders in the movement. And who are those leaders? A question
all-important.
England is certainly the first and foremost. Endowed with all the
characteristics of the Scandinavian race, which we shall touch upon
after, deeply infused with the blood of the Danes and Northmen, she
has all the indomitable energy, all the systematic grasp of mind and
sternness of purpose joined to the wise spirit of compromise and
conservatism of the men of the far North; she, of all nations, has
inherited their great power of expansion at sea, possessing all
the roving propensities of the old Vikings, and the spirit of
trade, enterprise, and colonization, of those old Phoenicians of
the arctic circle.
The Catholic south of Europe, Spain and Portugal, having, through
causes which it is not the place to investigate here, lost their
power on the ocean; the temporary maritime supremacy of Holland
having passed away, because the people of that flat country were
too close and narrow-minded to grasp the world for any length of
time; France, the only modern rival of England as a naval power,
having been compelled, owing to the revolutions of the last and
the present centuries, to concentrate her whole strength on the
Continent of Europe; the young giant of the West, America, being
yet unable to grasp at once a vast continent and universal sway
over the pathways of the ocean, England had free scope for her
maritime enterprises, and she threw herself headlong into this
career. Out of Europe she is incontestably the first power of the
whole 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, and
the Ionian Isles.
"In Africa, Bathurst, Sierra Leone, many establishments on the
coast 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 many
establishments in China.
"In America, she is mistress of Canada, New Brunswick, and other
eastern 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 groups
of Oceanica are hers.
"What other state can compete with her in the management of
colonies, and in the selection of situations from which she
could command the sea? Jersey and Guernsey are her keys of the
Straits of Dover; from Heligoland she can open or shut the mouths
of the Elbe and Weser; from Gibraltar she keeps her eye on Spain
and 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 commands
Eastern Africa and Abyssinia. Ormuz, Chesmi, and Buschir, give
her the mastery over the Persian Gulf, and the large rivers which
flow into it. Aden secures the communication of Bombay with Suez.
Pulo Pinang makes her mistress of the Straits of Malacca, and
Singapore, of the passage between China and India. At the Cape
of Good Hope her troops form an advanced guard over the Indian
Ocean; and from Jamaica she rules the Antilles and trades securely
with the rest of Central and South America.
"Englishmen have made a careful survey of the whole of the
Mediterranean Sea, of the course of the Indus, the Ganges, the
Bramaputra, the Godavery, and other rivers of India; of the
whole littoral between Cape Colony and China; England has steamships
on the Amazon and Niger, and her vessels are found everywhere on
the coast of Chili and Peru."
Other European families try to follow in her footsteps; at their
head the United States now stand. Primitively an offshoot of the
English stock, the blood of all other Japhetic races has given the
latter country an activity and boldness which will render it in
time superior in those respects to the mother-country herself.
Yet at this time, even in the presence of the United States, in
the presence of all other maritime powers, England stands at the
head of the Japhetic movement.
Unfortunately, her first aim, after acquiring wealth and securing
her power, is, to exclude the Roman Catholic Church as far as is
practicable from the benefit of the system, to oppose her whenever
she would follow in the wake of her progress, and either to allow
paganism or Mohammedanism to continue in quiet possession wherever
they exist, or to substitute for them as far as possible her
Protestantism. At all events, the Catholicity of the Church is
to be crushed, or at least thwarted, to make room for the
catholicity 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 opposition
to the false wanderings of the European stream, had not insisted
on following the English lord in his travels, dogging his steps
everywhere, entering his ships welcome or unwelcome, rushing on
shore with him wherever he thought fit to land, and there planted
his shanty and his frame church in the very sight of stately
palaces lately erected, and gorgeous temples with storied windows
and softly-carpeted floors.
And after a few years the Irish Celt would show himself as active
and industrious in his new country as oppression had made him
indolent and careless on his own soil; the shanty would be replaced
by a house worthy of a man; above all, the humble dwelling which he
first raised to his God would disappear to make room for an edifice
not altogether unworthy of divine majesty; at least, far above the
pretentious structures of the oppressors of his religion. The eyes
of men would be again turned to "the city built upon a mountain;" and
the character of universality, instead of being wrested from the true
Church, would become more resplendent than ever through the steadfast
Irish Celt.
Thus the spreading of the Gospel in distant regions would be
accomplished without a navy of their own. As their ancestors did
in pagan times, they would use the vessels of nations born for
thrift and trade; the stately ships of the "Egyptians" would be
used by the true "people of God."
For them hath Stephenson perfected the steam-engine, so as to
enable vessels to undertake long voyages at sea without the necessary
help of sails; for them Brunel and others had spent long years in
planning and constructing novel Noah's arks capable of containing
all clean and unclean animals; for them the Barings and other
wealthy capitalists had embraced the five continents and the isles
of the ocean in their financial schemes; the Jews of England,
Germany, and France, the Rothschilds and Mendelssohns, had
accumulated large amounts of money to lend to ship-building
companies; for them, in fine, the long-hidden gold deposits
of California, Australia, and many other places, had been
discovered at the proper time to replenish the coffers of the godless,
that they might undertake to furnish the means of transportation
and settlement for the missionaries of God!
And, to prove that this is no exaggeration, it is enough to look
at the number of emigrants that were to be carried to foreign parts,
and that actually left England for her various colonies or for the
United States. For several years one thousand Irish people sailed
_daily_ from the ports of Great Britain; and for a great number
of years 200,000 at least did so every twelve months. When we come,
to contrast the Irish at home with the Irish abroad, we shall
give fuller details than are possible here. These few words suffice
to show the immense number of vessels and the vast sums that were
required for such an extraordinary operation.
This phenomenon is surely curious enough, universal enough, and
sufficiently portentous in its consequences, to deserve a thorough
inquiry into its causes and the way in which it was brought about.
It will be seen that it all came from the Irish having kept
themselves aloof from the other branches of the great Japhetic race
in order to join in the general movement at the right time and in
their 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 of
this general idea; the few remarks with which we close the present
may tend to set the conclusion which we draw more distinctly before
our minds.
There is no doubt that, taking the Irish nation as a whole, we
find in it features which are visible in no other European nation;
and that, taking Europe as a whole, in all its complexity of
habits, manners, tendencies, and ways of life, we have a picture
wholly distinct from that of the Irish people. England has striven
during the last eight hundred years to shape it and make it the
creature of her thought, and England has utterly failed.
The same race of men and women inhabit the isle of Erin to-day as
that which held it a thousand years ago, with the distinction that
it 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 they
have not furnished a single man to that army of rash minds which
have carried the rest of Europe headlong through lofty, perhaps,
but at bottom empty and idle theories, to the brink of that
bottomless 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 lead
them astray, no propounder of social theories opposed to those
of the Gospel, no inventor of new theogonies and cosmologies--new
in name, old in fact--rediscovered by modern students in the
Kings_ of China, the _Vedas_ of Hindostan, the _Zends_ of Persia,
or _Eddas_ of the North; no ardent explorer of Nature, seeking
in the bowels of the earth, or on the summits of mountains, or
in the depths of the ocean, or the motions of the stars, proofs
that God does not exist, or that matter has always existed, that
man has made himself, developing his own consciousness out of
the instinct of the brute, or even out of the material motions
of the zoophyte.
We would beg the reader to bear in mind those insane theories so
prevalent to-day, out of which society can hope for nothing but
convulsions and calamities, to see how all the nations of Europe
have contributed to the baneful result except the Irish; that
they alone have furnished no false leader in those wanderings
from the right path; that their community has been opposed all
through to the adoption of the theories which led to them, have
spurned them with contempt, and even refused to inquire into
them: with these thoughts and recollections in his mind, he may
understand what we mean when we assert that the Irish have
stubbornly refused to enter upon the European movement. Although,
by the reception of Christianity, they were admitted into the
European family, the Christianity which they received was so
thoroughly imbibed and so completely carried out that any thing
in the least opposed to it was sternly rejected by the whole
nation. Hence they became a people of peculiar habits. Rejecting
the harsh features of feudalism, not caring for the refinement of
the so-called revival of learning, sternly opposed at all times to
Protestantism, they would have naught to do with what was rejected
or even suspected by the Church, until in our days they offer to
the eyes of the world the spectacle we have sketched. Thus have
they, not the least by reason of their long martyrdom, become fit
instruments for the great work Providence asks of them to-day.
England, the great leader in the material part of the social
movement which has been the subject of this chapter, for a long
time hesitated to adopt principles altogether subversive to
society. In her worldly good sense she endeavored to follow what
she imagined a _via media_ in her wisdom, to avoid what seemed
to her extremes, but what is in reality the eternal antagonism
of truth and falsehood, of order and chaos. Twenty years back
there was a unanimity among English writers to speak the
language of moderation and good sense whenever a rash author of
foreign nations hazarded some dangerous novelties; and in their
reviews they immediately pointed out the poison which lay
concealed under the covering of science or imagination, and the
peril of these ever-increasing new discoveries. If any
Englishman sanctioned those theories, he could not form a school
among his countrymen, and remained almost alone of his party.
But at last England has given way to the universal spread of
temptation, and to-day she runs the race of disorganization as
ardent as any, striving to be a leader among other leaders to
ruin. Every one is astounded at the sudden and remarkable change.
It is truly inexplicable, save by the fearful axiom, _Quos Deus
vult perdere, dementat_. Hence not a few expect soon to see
storms sweep over the devoted island of Great Britain, which no
longer forms an exception to the universality of the evil we
have indicated.
Which, then, is the one safe spot in Europe, whither the tide
of folly, or madness rather, has not yet come?
Ireland alone is the answer.