RESURRECTION.-EMIGRATION.
To the eye of a keen beholder, Ireland to-day presents the
appearance of a nation entering upon a new career. She is
emerging from a long darkness, and opening again to the free
light of heaven. Whoever compares her present position with that
she occupied a century ago, cannot fail to be struck with wonder
no less at the change in her than at the agencies which brought
that change about. And when to this is added the further
reflection that she is still young, though sprung from so old-an-
origin-young in feeling, in buoyancy, in aspirations, in purity
and simplicity-the conclusion forces itself upon the mind that a
high destiny is in store for her, and that God proposes a long
era of prosperity and active life to an ancient nation which is
only now beginning to live.
In such cases, whether it be a people or an individual, which is
entering upon its life, crowds of advisers are ever to be found
ready to display their wisdom and lay down the plans whose
adoption will infallibly bring prosperity and happiness to the
individual or people in question.
Ireland, to-day, suffers from no lack of wise counsellors and
ardent well-wishers. Unfortunately, their various projects do
not always harmonize; indeed, they are sometimes contradictory,
and, as their number is by no means small, the only difficulty
is where to choose which road the nation should take in order to
march in the right direction.
In entering upon this portion of our work, where we have to deal
with actual questions of the day, and if not to draw the
horoscope of the future, at least to give utterance to our ideas
for the promotion of the welfare of the nation, we shall appear
to come under the same catalogue of advisers, fully persuaded,
with the rest, that our advice is the right, our voice the only
one worthy of attention.
Our purpose is far humbler; our reflections take another shape;
we merely say
During the last hundred years, Ireland has changed wonderfully
for the better; and although the old wounds are not yet quite
healed up, though they still smart, though she is still poor and
disconsolate, and her trials and afflictions far from being
ended; nevertheless, though sorely tried, Providence has been
kind to her. Many of her rights have been restored, and she is
no longer the slave of hard task-masters. When she now speaks,
her voice is no longer met by the gibe and sneer, but with a
kind of awe akin to respect, her enemies seeming to feel
instinctively that it is the voice of a nation which no longer
may be safely despised.
This fact being indisputable, the conviction forces itself upon
us that her improved condition is mainly, perhaps solely, due to
Providence; and that the career upon which she has entered, and
which she is now pursuing with a clear determination of her own,
has been marked out, designed, and already partially run, under
the guidance of that God for whom alone she has suffered, and
who never fails in his own good time to dry up the tears shed
for his sake, and crown his martyrs with victory.
Our task is merely to examine the progress made, the manner of
its making, the direction toward which it tends, with the aim,
if possible, of adding to its speed. We have no new plan to
offer, no gratuitous advice to give. The plan is already
sketched out--God has sketched it; and our only aim is to see
how man may cooperate with designs far higher than any proposed
by human wisdom.
The first thing that strikes us, standing on the verge of this
new region, opening out dimly but gloriously before our eyes, is
one great fact which is plain to all; which is greater than all
England's concessions to Ireland, more fruitful of happy
consequences, not alone to the latter country itself, but to the
world at large; a fact which is the strongest proof of the
vitality of the Irish race, which now begins to win for it
respect by bringing forth its real strength, a strength to
astonish the world; which began feebly when the evils of the
country were at their height, but has gone on constantly
increasing until it has now grown to extraordinary proportions;
and which instead of, as their enemies fondly supposed, wresting
Ireland from the Irish, has made their claim to the native soil
securer than ever, by spreading strong supporters of their
rights through the world. This great fact is emigration.
At this moment, Irishmen are scattered abroad over the earth. In
many regions they have numbers, and form compact bodies.
Wherever this occurs, they acquire a real power in the land
which they have made their new home. That power is certainly
intended by Almighty God to be used wisely, prudently, but
actively and energetically; not only for the good of those who
have been thus transplanted in a new soil, but also for the good
of the mother-country which they cannot, if they would, forget.
How can they utilize for such a purpose the power so recently
acquired, the wealth, the influence, the consideration they
enjoy, in their new country? How may such a course benefit the
land of their nativity as of their origin? These are important
questions; they are not airy theories, but rise up clearly from
a standing and stupendous fact. The turning their power of
expansion to its right use, the reproduction with Christian aim
of that old power of expansion peculiar to the Celtic race three
thousand years ago, is what we call the first true issue of the
Irish question:- Emigration and its Possible Effects.
In order to judge with proper understanding of the prospective
effects of Irish emigration, it is fitting to study the fact in
all its bearings; to examine the origin and various phases of
the mighty movement, the religious direction it has invariably
taken, the immediate good it has produced, and the special
consideration of the vast proportions which it has finally
assumed. The task may be a long one; but it is certainly
important and interesting; and it is only after the details of
it have been thoroughly sifted that one may be in a position to
judge rightly of the aid it has already furnished, and which it
is destine to furnish in a still greater degree, to the uprising
of the nation.
The movement originated with the Reformation. It began with the
flight of a few of the nobility in the reign of Henry VIII.;
their number was increased under Elizabeth, and grew to larger
proportions still under James I.; but a far greater number,
sufficient to make a very sensible diminution in the population
of the country, was doomed to exile by Cromwell and the Long
Parliament. It then became a compulsory banishment.
The next following movement on a large scale occurred after the
surrender of Kilkenny, when the Irish commanders, Colonel
Fitzpatrick, Clanricard, and others, could obtain no better
terms than emigration to any foreign country then at peace with
England. The Irish troops were eagerly caught up by the various
European monarchs, so highly were their services esteemed. The
number that thus left their native land, many of them never to
return, amounted, according to well-informed writers, to forty
thousand men, of noble blood most of them, many of the first
nobility of the land, and almost all children of the old race.
The details of this first exodus are to be found in the pages of
many modern authors, particularly in Mr. Prendergast's
"Cromwellian Settlement."
The example thus given was followed on many occasions. The
Treaty of Limerick, October 3, 1691, gave the garrison under
Saarsfield liberty to join the army of King William or enter the
service of France. Mr. A.M. O'Sullivan has given a spirited
sketch of the making of their choice by the heroic garrison as
it defiled out of the city:
"On the morning of the 5th of October the Irish regiments were
to make their choice between exile for life or service in the
armies of their conqueror. At each end of a gently-rising ground
beyond the suburbs were planted on one side the royal standard
of France, and on the other that of England. It was agreed that
the regiments, as they marched out with all the honors of war,
drums beating, colors flying, and matches lighted, should, on
reaching the spot, wheel to the left or to the right, beneath
that flag under which they elected to serve. At the head of the
Irish marched the Foot Guards, the finest regiment in the
service, fourteen hundred strong. All eyes were fixed on this
splendid body of men. On they came, amid breathless silence and
acute suspense; for well both the English and Irish generals
knew that the choice of the first regiment would powerfully
influence all the rest. The Guards marched up to the critical
spot, and in a body wheeled to the colors of France, barely
seven men turning to the English side! Ginckle, we are told, was
greatly agitated as he witnessed the proceeding. The next
regiment, however (Lord Iveagh's), marched as unanimously to the
Williamite banner, as did also portions of two others. But the
bulk of the Irish army defiled under fleur-de-lys of King Louis,
only one thousand and forty-six, out of nearly fourteen thousand
men, preferring the service of England."
From that time out a large number of the Irish nobility and
gentry continued to enlist under French, Spanish, or Austrian
colors; and the several Irish brigades became celebrated all
over Europe until the end of the eighteenth century. It is said
by l'abbe McGeohegan that six hundred thousand Irishmen perished
in the armies of France alone. The abbe is generally very
accurate, and from his long residence in France had every means
at his disposal of arriving at the truth. Some pretend that
double the number enlisted in foreign service. There is no doubt
that in all a million men left the island to take service under
the banners of Catholic sovereigns, and it is needless to dwell
on the bravery and devotion of those men whom the persecution of
an unwise and cruel Protestant government drove out of Ireland
during 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, the
history of one of which, that in the service of France, has been
given us in the very interesting and valuable narrative of John
R. O'Callaghan-its various fortunes and final dissolution at the
breaking out of the French republic, when the English Government
was glad to receive back the scattered remnants of it-the
question which bears most on our present subject is: What was
the occupation of those Irishmen on the Continent when not
actually engaged in war? What service did their voluntary or
compulsory exile do their native country? Was that long
emigration of a century productive of something out of which
Providence may have drawn good?
The first departure of a few under Hugh O'Neill and Hugh
O'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, reports
some of which have been finally brought to light, conclusively
prove that most of the exiles held honorable positions in Spain
and Portugal, at Valladolid and Lisbon, where the O'Sullivans
and O'Driscolls lived; at the very court of Spain, or in the
Spanish navy, like the Bourkes and the Cavanaghs.
In Flanders, under the Austrian archdukes, were stationed the
McShanes, on the Groyne; the Daniells at Antwerp; the posterity
of the earls themselves with that of their former retinue. All
held rank in the Austrian army, and even in times of peace were
occupied in thinking of possible entanglements whereby they
might serve their country, while they made the Irish name
honored and respected all over that rich land. In Italy, at
Naples, Leghorn, Florence, and Rome, in the great centres of the
peninsula, the same thing was taking place, and there, at least,
the calumnies, everywhere so industriously circulated about
Ireland, could not penetrate, or, if they did, only to be
received with scorn.
But, when the next emigration, at the end of the Cromwellian and
Williamite wars, landed forty thousand soldiers, and twelve
thousand more a few years afterward, on the European Continent,
these armed men proved to the nations, by their bravery, their
deep attachment to their religion, their perfect honor and
generosity, that the people from which a persecuting power had
driven them forth could not be composed of the outlaws and blood-
thirsty cutthroats which the reports of their enemies would make
them. How striking and permanent must have been the effect
produced on impartial minds by the contrast between the aspect
of the reality and the base fabrications of skilfully-scattered
rumor!
And be it borne in mind that those men founded families in the
countries where they settled; as well as those who continued to
flock thither during the whole of the eighteenth century. They
carried about with them, in their very persons even, the history
of Ireland's wrongs; and the mere sight of them was enough to
interest all with whom they came in contact in favor of their
country. Hence the esteem and sympathy which Ireland and her
people have always met with in France, where the calumnies and
ridicule lavished on them could never find an entrance.
It would be a great error to imagine that they were to be found
only in the camp or in the garrisons of cities. They made
themselves a home in their new country, and their children
entered upon all the walks of life opened up to the citizens of
the country in which they resided. Thus, at least, the name of
Ireland did not die out altogether during that age of gloom,
when their native isle was only the prison of the race, where it
was 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 the
Church and in trade, as in the army. Thus, speaking only of
France, an Irishman-Edgeworth-was chosen by Louis XVI. to
prepare him for death and stand by him during his last ordeal of
ignominy; another-Lally Tollendal-would have wrested India from
England, if his ardent temperament had not brought him enemies
where 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 exiles
accomplished for the good of their country and religion, quite
apart from the heroism they displayed on battle-fields, and
their fidelity to principle during times of peace. Their very
presence in foreign countries was, perhaps, the best protest
against the enslavement of their own. They showed by their
bearing that they owed no allegiance to England, and that brute
force could never establish right. By identifying themselves
with the nations which offered them hospitality and a new right
of citizenship, they proved to the world that their native isle
could be governed by native citizens. Their honorable conduct
and successful activity in every pursuit of life showed that, as
they were capable of governing themselves, so likewise could
they claim self-government for their country.
The moral condition of France during the eighteenth century, and
the depths of corruption into which the higher class sank in so
short a time, are known to all. To the honor of the Irish
nobility and gentry then in France, not a single Irish name is
to be met with in that long list of noble names which have
disgraced that page of French history. Not in the luxurious
bowers and palaces of Louis XV. were they to be found, but on
the battle-fields of Dettingen and Fontenoy. It was a Scotchman-
Law-who infected the higher circles of the natives with the rage
for speculation, and the folly of gambling in paper. It was an
Italian- Cagliostro-who traded on the superstitious credulity of
men who had lost their faith. It was an Englishman-Lord
Derwentwater-and another Scotchman-Ramsay-who, by the
introduction of the first Masonic Lodge into France, opened the
floodgates of future revolutions.
Among those of foreign birth, no Irishman was found in France to
contribute to the corruption of the nation, and give his aid to
set 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 broad
infidelity peculiar to that age. If a few of them shared to some
extent in the general delusion, and took part with the vast
multitude in the insane derision, then so fashionable, of every
thing holy, their number was small indeed, and none of them
acquired in that peculiar line, the celebrity which crowned so
many 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 their
fathers, honoring her by their conduct, and their respectful
demeanor toward holy names and holy things. Eventually they, in
common with all Frenchmen, had to share in the misfortunes,
brought on by the subversion of all the former guiding
principles; but, though sharing in the punishment, they took no
part in the great causes which called it down.
These few words will suffice for the emigration of the Irish
nobility, and its effects on foreign countries; as well as
Ireland itself.
But another class of noblemen had emigrated to the Continent
side by side with those of whom we have just spoken; namely,
bishops, priests, monks, and learned men. England would not
suffer the Catholic clergy in Ireland; she was particularly
careful not to allow Irish youth the benefit of any but a
Protestant education. Irish clergymen were compelled to fly and
open houses of study abroad. Their various colleges in Spain,
France, Belgium, and Italy, are well known; they have already
been referred to, and it is not necessary to enlarge on the
subject. But, though mention has been made of the renown thus
acquired by Irishmen then residing on the Continent, it is
fitting to speak of them again in their character of emigrants.
They took upon themselves the noble task of making the
literature and the history of their nation known to all people;
and in so doing they have preserved a rich literature which must
otherwise have perished.
What was their situation on the Continent? They had been driven
by persecution from their country, sometimes in troops of exiles
to be cast on some remote shore; sometimes escaping singly and
in disguise, they went out alone to end their lives under a
foreign sky. Behind them they left the desolate island; their
friends bowed down in misery, their enemies triumphant and in
full power. The convents, where they had spent their happiest
days, were either demolished or turned to vile uses; their
churches desecrated; heresy ruling the land, truth compelled to
be silent. All the harrowing details given by the "Prophet of
Lamentations" might be applied to their beloved country.
True, they could find peace and rest among those who offered
them their hospitality; at least, the worship of God would be
free and untrammelled there. But it was not the place of their
birth, where they had received their first education; it was not
the mission intrusted to them when they consecrated their lives
to God. They would bear another language, see around them
different manners, begin life anew, perhaps, in their old age.
What a contrast to their former hopes! What a sad ending to the
closing days of their life!
Nevertheless, they might be of use to their countrymen. It was
not for them now to convert Europe, and preach Christianity to
barbarous tribes, as did their ancestors of old. The world which
received them was languishing with excess of refined
civilization; corruption had entered in, and was fast destroying
it; and they could scarcely hope to hold it back from its
downward career. But, at least, they might open houses for the
reception of the youth of their own country, where they should
receive an education according to the teachings of the true
Church, which was denied them at home. So they went to Salamanca,
to Valladolid, to Paris, Louvain, Douai, Rheims, Rome, wherever
there was hope or possibility of directing Irish youth in the
ways of true piety and learning.
The labors to which they devoted themselves, though unknown to
posterity, were of great utility at the time. They saw the youth
they educated grow up under their care; when their studies were
concluded, they sent them to labor in the ministry among their
countrymen; they heard of them from time to time of their
arduous life, the dangers they braved, the many persecutions
they underwent, their imprisonment when captured, their
conviction, torture often, and death by martyrdom. And thus,
through the exertions of those emigrant monks and priests, the
true Gospel was preached in Ireland, and the faith of the people
kept alive and strong.
A few of them chose another path, and consecrated the remainder
of their days to literary labors, which have shed down on their
persecuted country a halo of immortal glory.
Some Franciscan friars (two of them the brothers O'Cleary) had
already begun this work in the island itself, when driven from
their quiet homes to take refuge in the obscure "convents," that
is, out-of-the-way farm-houses mentioned before, where they were
received and hidden away from the world. The literature of
Ireland was fast perishing; the rage of their enemies being as
violently directed against their books as against their houses
and churches. Precious manuscripts were every day given to the
flames and wantonly destroyed, seemingly for the mere pleasure
of destruction. A very few years would have sufficed to render
the former history of the country a perfect blank. In no spot of
the same size on earth had so many interesting books ever been
written and treasured up; but before long there would remain no
friars on the island to preserve them, no library to contain
them, no one to care for them in the least. The brothers
O'Cleary saw this with dismay; and they, with two companions,
became known as the "Four Masters." They interested in their
work the faithful Irish who still retained possession of a farm,
or a cabin with a few acres of ground attached; the men, and
women even, were to search the country round for every volume
concealed or preserved, for every parchment and relic, for
vellum manuscripts, even a stray solitary page, did one remain
alone. The annals of Ireland were thus saved by the literary
patriotism of poor and unknown peasants. All that remains of
Irish lore was collected together in the rural convent of the
O'Clearys, and an ardent flame was enkindled which lasted the
whole of the seventeenth century.
To this initiative must be referred the subsequent labors of
Ward, Colgan, Lynch, and others; herculean labors truly, which
have enabled antiquarians of our days to resume the thread, so
near being snapped, of that long and tangled web of history
wherein is woven all that can interest the patriot and the
Christian of the island.
Knowing the position in which the writers found themselves, it
is astonishing to see what they wrote. It was not a work of
fancy to which their pens were devoted: A strong, feeling heart
and an active imagination were certainly theirs; but of little
service could either prove to them in the ungrateful task of
collecting manuscripts, classifying, reading them through,
ascertaining their age and authenticity, and finally using them
for the purpose of preserving the annals and hagiography of the
nation.
The large libraries they found in the various cities which
received them could be of little use to them. They had first to
collect their own libraries, to summon their authorities from
distant lands; many books were to be procured from Ireland
itself. With what precautions! It was real, (though lawful)
smuggling; for the export of Irish books was not only under
tariff, but strictly prohibited; the mere sight of them was more
hateful to a British custom-house officer of those days than the
sight of a crucifix to a Japanese official of Nagasaki. It would
be interesting to know the various stratagems devised to conceal
them, tarry them away, and convey them triumphantly to Louvain,
Paris, or Rome.
But Ireland was not the only repository of Irish books. Many
letters, official documents, copies of old MSS., interesting
relics of antiquity, had been gathered ages before and during
all the intervening time, in convents, churches, houses of
education, on the Continent, along the Rhine chiefly. It is said
that even to-day the richest mines of yet unexplored lore of
this character are scattered along both sides of the great
German river. The frequent movements of various armies, the
sieges of cities, the horrors of war which have raged there
constantly from the days of Arminius and Varro down, have not
destroyed every thing, could not exhaust the rich deposit of
Irish manuscripts there concealed. But the labor of striking the
mine!-of' opening those musty pages falling to pieces between
the fingers and leaving in the hand nothing but illegible
fragments of half-blackened parchment; and the further labor of
deciphering them, of discovering what they speak about, and if
they are likely to prove useful to the purposes.
It is needless to descant on such a theme. It is impossible to
give any true idea of the literary labors of those men, without
having seen and perused their huge folios, many of which have
not yet been published to the world. Poor Colgan could give us
little more than his "Trial Thaumaturga and that was only
destined to form the portal of the edifice he purposed erecting
as a shrine to the memory of the whole host of saints nurtured
in the island-the Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae
The grand idea, which first germinated in the minds of those men,
expanded afterward in others under circumstances more favorable.
Did they not suggest to Bollandus and his fellows the thought
whose realization has immortalized them?
In tasks such as these were the Irish emigrant monks of the time
employed.
There was yet another class of involuntary Irish exiles those
shipped to the " plantations" of America, to the 11 tobacco" and
11 sugar" islands, to Virginia and Jamaica, but principally to
the Barbadoes. The origin of this new kind of emigration,
already touched upon, is worthy of the times and of the men who
called it forth.
After forty thousand soldiers had been allowed, or rather
compelled, by Cromwell to enlist in foreign armies, it was found
that many had left behind them their wives and children. What
was to be done with these " widows" whose husbands and numerous
offspring were still living ? They could not be sent to Coff as
women, with children only, could not be expected to "plant" that
desolate province; they could not be expected to "plant" that
desolate province; they could not be allowed to remain in their
native place, as the decree had gone forth that all the Irish
were to "transplant" or be transported: it would have been
inconvenient and inexcusable to do what had been so often done
in 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 with
the new British colonies of North America, thought it a
providential opening for a great profit to accrue to the soils
of the benighted Irish women and children, and likely at the
same time to add something to their own purses and those of
their friends, the West India planters.
It was only under Elizabeth that permanent colonies were sent
out from England to the continent and islands of the New World.
The Cavaliers of Virginia are as well known in the South as the
Puritans of New England in the North. This last colony dated
only from the time of the Stuart dynasty. The great question for
all those transatlantic establishments was that of labor; but in
the South it was more difficult of solution than in the North,
where Europeans could work in the fields, a thing scarcely
possible in the tropics. The natives as we know, were first
employed in the South by the Spaniards, and soon succumbed to
the demands of European rapacity.
In the West Indies, natives of two different races existed: the
soft and delicate Indian of Hayti and Cuba, and the ferocious
Caribs of many other islands. The first race soon disappeared;
the other continued refractory, indomitable, choosing to perish
rather than labor; and some remnants of it still remain, saved
by the Catholic Church. As yet, African negroes had not been
conveyed there in sufficient numbers.
A brilliant thought struck the minds, at once pious, active, and
business-like, of those above-mentioned Bristol merchants-a
thought which was the doom of thousands of Irish women and
children.
The names of a few of those Bristol firms deserve to be handed
down. Those of Messrs. James Sellick and Leader, Mr. Robert
Yeomans, 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 orders
upon the governors of garrisons to deliver them prisoners of war
. . . . upon masters of work-houses, to hand over to them the
destitute 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 had
no visible means of livelihood, and deliver them to these agents
of the Bristol merchants; in execution of which latter
directions, Ireland must have exhibited scenes in every part
like the slave-hunts in Africa."
A contract was signed on September 14, 1653, by the Com
missioners of Ireland and Messrs. Sellick and Leader, "to supply
them (the merchants) with two hundred and fifty women of the
Irish nation, above twelve years and under the age, of forty-
five."
The fate reserved for the human cattle, as they must have been
looked upon by the godly gentlemen who bartered over them, may
be well imagined. It is calculated that, in four years, those
English firms of slave-dealers had shipped six thousand and four
hundred Irish men and women, boys and maidens, to the British
colonies of North America.
The age requisite for the females who were thus shipped off may
be noted; the boys and men were not to be under twelve or over
fifty. These latter were condemned to the task of tilling the
soil in a climate where the negro only can work and live. As all
the cost to their masters was summed up in the expense of
transportation, they were not induced to spare them, even by the
consideration of the high price which, it is said, caused the
modern slave-owners of America to treat their slaves with what
might be called a commercial humanity. It is easy to imagine,
then, the life led by so many young men forced to work in the
open fields, under a tropical sun. How long that life lasted, we
do 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, had
once left the Irish harbor from which they set sail, no one ever
heard of them again; and, if the parents still lived in the old
country, they were left to their conjectures as to the probable
situation 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 thus
transplanted; but the total number of Irish sent to perish in
the tobacco-islands, as they were called, was estimated in some
Irish accounts at one hundred thousand."
The "Irish accounts" may have been exaggerated, but the English
atoned for this by certainly falling below the mark, as is clear
from the fact that, according to them, the Commissioners of
Ireland 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," and
was carried on with such ardor by the agents of many English
firms that those men-catchers employed persons "to delude poor
people by false pretenses into by-places, and thence they forced
them on board their ships; that for money sake they were found
to have enticed and forced women from their husbands, and
children from their parents, who maintained them at school; and
they had not only dealt so with the Irish, but also with the
English." For this reason, the order was revoked, and the "hunt"
forbidden.
When agents were reduced to such straits after the government
had used force, as Henry Cromwell acknowledged, the large extent
of country mentioned above must have been well scoured and
depopulated; and certainly a far greater number of victims must
have been secured by all those means combined than is given in
the English accounts. We believe the Irish.
One other source of supply deserves mention. Not only women and
children, but priests also, were hunted down and shipped off to
the same American plantations; so that persons of every class
which is held sacred in the eyes of God and man for its
character and helplessness, were compelled to emigrate, or
rather to undergo the worst possible fate that the imagination
of 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 3d
of May, the governors of the respective precincts were ordered
to send them with sufficient guards, from garrison to garrison,
to Carrickfergus, to be there put on board of such ships as
should sail with the first opportunity to the Barbadoes. One may
imagine the sufferings of this toilsome journey by the petition
of one of them. Paul Cashin, an aged priest, apprehended at
Maryborough, and sent to Philipstown, on the way to
Carrickfergus, there fell desperately sick; and, being also
extremely aged, was in danger of perishing in restraint from
want of friends and means of relief. On the 27th of August, the
commissioners having ascertained the truth of his petition, they
ordered him sixpence a day during his sickness, and (in answer,
probably, to this poor prisoner's prayer to be saved from
transplantation) their order directed that the sixpence should
be continued to him in his travel thence (after his recovery) to
Carrickfergus, 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 of
practising their religion themselves, of fulfilling their holy
obligation of prayer and sacrifice, these victims of such an
atrocious persecution were employed as laborers in the fields:
their transplantation had cost money, and the money had to be
repaid a hundred-fold by the sweat of their brow.
Ship-loads of them had been discharged on the inhospitable shore
of that island; each with a high calling which he could no
longer carry out; each, therefore, tortured in his soul, with
all the sweet or bitter memories of his past life crowding on
his mind, and the dreary prospect spreading before him, to the
end of his life, of no change from his rude and slavish
occupation under the burning sun, hearing no voice but that of
the harsh taskmaster; his eyes saddened and his heart sickened
by the open and daily spectacle of immorality and woe, with no
ending but the grave.
It seems, however, that these holy men found some means of
fulfilling their sacred duty as God's ministers, for the inhuman
traffic in such slaves as these to the Barbadoes lasted but one
year. In 1657 it was decreed that this island should no longer
be their place of transportation, but, instead, the desolate
isles of Arran, opposite the entrance to the bay of Galway, and
the isle of Innisboffin, off the coast of Connemara. Mr.
Prendergast thinks that this change of policy in their regard
may have been caused by the price of their transportation, which
probably mounted to a high aggregate sum. But he must be
mistaken. 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 nature
of the site substituted for the Barbadoes as their place of
exile. The "holy isles" of Arran and the isle of Innisboffin
were then, as now, bare of every thing--almost of inhabitants.
The priests could be there kept as in a prison, and, though they
might be of no profit to their masters, they could not hear a
voice or see a face other than those of their fellow-captives.
In the West India islands there existed an already thick
population, and the very women and children who had been
transported thither before them would be consoled by their
ministry, though practised by stealth, and strengthened in their
faith, 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 living
in the island until quite recently, was not owing to their
exhortations?
"The first Irish people who found permanent homes in America,"
says Thomas D'Arcy McGee, "were certain Catholic patriots
banished by Oliver Cromwell to Barbadoes. . . . In this island,
as in the neighboring Montserrat, the Celtic language was
certainly spoken in the last century,1 (1 The Celtic language--
that sure sign of Catholicity--was not only spoken there last
century, but is still to-day. The writer himself heard last year
(1871), from two young American seamen, who had just returned
from a voyage to this island, that the negro porters and white
longshoremen who load and unload the ships in the harbor, know
scarcely any other language than the Irish, so that often the
crews of English vessels can only communicate with them by signs.)
and perhaps it is partly attributable to this early Irish
colonization, that Barbadoes became 'one of the most populous
islands in the world.' At the end of the seventeenth century, it
was reported to contain twenty thousand inhabitants."
Although Barbadoes is the chief island concerned in the present
considerations, nevertheless nearly all the British colonies
then existing in America, received their share of this
emigration. Several ship-loads of the exiles were certainly sent
to New England, at the very time that New-Englanders were
earnestly invited by the British Government to "come and plant
Ireland;" Virginia, too, paid probably with tobacco for the
young men and maidens sent there as slaves. The "Thurloe State
Papers" disclose the fact that one thousand boys and one
thousand girls, taken in Ireland by force, were dispatched to
Jamaica, 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 to
various parts of British America--a movement quite compulsory,
which in our days has become voluntary, and is productive of the
wonders soon to claim our attention.
The involuntary emigration of soldiers and clergymen to the
Continent of Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, was, as has been seen, the cause of great advantages
to Ireland, and became, in the designs of a merciful Providence,
a powerful means of drawing good from evil. At first sight, it
seems impossible to discover a similar advantage in this other
most involuntary emigration to the plantations of America.
A pagan has declared that "there is no spectacle more grateful
to the eyes of God than a just man struggling with adversity;"
and where, except in the first ages of Christianity, could more
innocent victims, and a more cruel persecution, be witnessed?
After the horrors of a civil war, horrors unparalleled perhaps
in the annals of modern nations, the children and young people
of both sexes are hunted down over an area of several Irish
counties, dragged in crowds to the seaports, and there jammed in
the holds of small, uncomfortable, slow-going vessels. What
those children must have been may be easily imagined from the
specimens of the race before us to-day. We do not speak of their
beauty and comeliness of form, on which a Greek writer of the
age of Pericles might have dilated, and found a subject worthy
of his pen; we speak of their moral beauty, their simplicity,
purity, love of home, attachment to their family, and God, even
in their tenderest age. We meet them scattered over the broad
surface of this country--boys and girls of the same race, coming
from the same counties, chiefly from sweet Wexford, the
beautiful, calm, pious south of Ireland. Who but a monster could
think of harming those pure and affectionate creatures, so
modest, simple, and ready to trust and confide in every one they
meet? And what could be said of those maidens, now so well known
in this New World, of whom to speak is to praise, whom to see is
to admire? Such were the victims selected by the Bristol firms,
by "Lord" Henry Cromwell, Governor-General of Ireland, or by
Lord Thurloe, secretary and mouth-piece of the "Protector." They
were to be violently torn from their parents and friends, from
every one they knew and loved, to be condemned, after surviving
the horrible ocean-passage of those days, the boys to work on
sugar and tobacco plantations, the girls to lead a life of shame
in the harems of Jamaica planters!
Such of them as were sent North, were to be distributed among
the "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 new
and hard task-masters, to be greeted with words of dubious
praise as "brands snatched from the burning," "vessels of
reprobation," destined, perhaps, by a due imitation of the
"saints," to become some day "vessels of election," in the mean
time to be unmercifully scourged by both master and mistress
with the "besom of righteousness" probably, at the slightest
fault or mistake.
Such was the sorrowful prospect held out to them; there was no
possibility of escape, no hope of going back to the only country
they loved. In the South they soon, very soon, sank into an
obscure grave. In the North a prolonged life was only a
prolongation of torment. For, who among them could ever think of
becoming a "convert?" They had been taken from their island-home
when over twelve years of age; they had already received from
their mothers and hunted priests a religious education, which
happily could never be effaced; they were to bury in their
hearts 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 marking
in all places with deep pity his erring children, find souls
more worthy of his vast paternal love? Can we imagine that the
ears of Heaven were deaf to their prayers poured out unceasingly
all those long days and nights of trials and of tears? Can we
read in the designs of Providence the blessed decrees which such
scenes called forth? Blind that we are, unable often to judge
rightly of our own thoughts, often an enigma to ourselves, how
shall we dare to judge of what is so far above us? No Christian
at least can pretend that all those miseries, accumulated on the
heads of so many innocent victims, had no other object than to
make them suffer. Ireland will yet profit by all the merits,
unknown and untold, gained by so many thousand human hearts and
souls and bodies given over to misfortunes which baffle
expression.
And as yet we have said nothing of those cargos of priests
shipped from Carrickfergus to Barbadoes, and afterward to Arran
and Innisboffin. Deprived of all means of making their new
country in America a witness of Catholic prayer and worship--not
one of them probably being able to offer the holy sacrifice even
for a single day, nor administer any sacrament unless perhaps
that of penance-by stealth; not one dared open his mouth and
preach the truth publicly to all. What could they do? They
offered the sacrifice of themselves; the very sight of them
possessed almost the virtue of a sacrament, and their lives
preached a sermon more eloquent than any of those which entrance
the vastest audience of a solemn cathedral.
No! the first emigration of 'the Irish to America was not
unfruitful in its results. And were we to attribute the great
progress made by Catholicity on the American Continent in the
present age to the merits of those numerous victims of
persecution, who could prove us to be in error, and say that
between the sufferings of innocence in the seventeenth and the
glorious success of their countrymen in the nineteenth century
there is no connection? The old phrase of Tertullian, "Sanguis
martyrum, semen Christianorum," has been proved true too often
in the annals of the Catholic Church to be falsified in this one
instance; yet, if what our days witness be not the result of
former sufferings and sacrifices, those trials were barren, and
are consequently inexplicable. Every cause must have its effect;
and it is a truth which no Christian can hesitate to admit, that
the most efficacious source of blessings is the tear of the
innocent, the anguish of the pure of heart, the humble prayer of
the persecuted servant of God.
When we come to speak of the emigration of the race to the
American Continent, which is now in progress, the stupendous
facts which will make our narrative and excite our admiration
must be regarded and accounted for from a religious and Catholic
stand point, and we shall then be able to refer to this first
and apparently barren emigration. Many losses, spiritual as well
as temporal, may stagger the unreflecting, particularly when the
whole designs of Providence are as yet scarcely in their
inceptive 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 wise
and merciful!"
But it is time at last to enter on the consideration of what we
esteem the first great issue involved in the resurrection of
Ireland, namely, all the probable consequences of the present
emigration, which is the true point we are aiming at, as our
purpose is to show the benefit that Ireland has already derived,
and is sure to derive later on, from that incessant flow of the
great human wave starting from her shore to oversweep vast
continents and islands of the sea. What aid will it afford to
her own resurrection at home, in order to render that complete
and lasting? This may be said to have been our main object in
writing these pages; for, although it may be impressive enough
for those who regard the subject attentively, and although it
will certainly be a source of wonder to those who come after us,
nevertheless it fails to strike as it ought the great mass of
beholders.
Often in the history of nations, while the mightiest revolutions
are in progress, they are scarcely perceptible to the actors in
them; all their circumstances, their most active and effective
operations, being like the silent workings of Nature, scarcely
sensible to those around, until the end comes and the great
result is achieved; then history records the event as one
fraught with the greatest blessings, or misfortunes, to mankind.
So will it be, we have no doubt, with that strange concatenation
of small domestic facts which now form the universal phenomenon
of all English-speaking countries: the spread of the Irish
everywhere.
What were its beginnings? Nothing at all. What good effects
followed it? None perceptible for a long time. These two
reflections claim our attention first, for we must study the
phenomenon, in all its circumstances and bearings.
This new emigration we call voluntary, to distinguish it from
the first, which was forced upon large portions of the Irish
race. But, in reality, the Irish undertook it at the beginning
with reluctance; the intolerable state of existence which they
were compelled to undergo in their own land acting upon them
with a kind of moral compulsion amounting to an almost
irresistible force. For it was either the famine or persecution
of 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 a
part of it into the heart of Asia. But this particular branch
had been rooted to the soil for so many centuries, by the stern
necessity of repelling a series of successive invasions, that
this great characteristic appeared for a long time to be totally
extinct in it. They seemed neither to know nor care any more for
foreign countries; and no race in Europe, from the ninth to the
eighteenth century, showed itself so completely wedded to the
soil, and incapable of the thought of spreading abroad.
At last they began to move. And what was the first origin of the
new movement? No one can say precisely. Only, in various
accounts of occurrences taking place in the island during the
last century, we occasionally meet with such entries as the
following by Matthew O'Connor, in his "Irish Catholics:"
"The summer of 1728 was fatal. The heart of the politician was
steeled against the miseries of the Catholics; their number
excited his jealousy. Their decrease by the silent waste of
famine must have been a source of secret joy; but the Protestant
interest was declining in a proportionate degree by the ravages
of starvation. . .
"Thousands of Protestants took shipping in Belfast for the West
Indies. . . . The policy that would starve the Catholics at home
would 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 the
time when the Protestant Irish went to America, where they
doubtless met with congenial minds in the Puritans of New
England, the Catholics still turned, as before, to Spain and
France.
But a new entry in 1762 unfolds a new aspect. This time
Catholics alone are spoken of: "No resource remained to the
peasantry but emigration. The few who had means sought an asylum
in the American plantations; such as remained were allowed
generally 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 Catholics
emigrating to America, at least in comparatively large bodies.
They were no doubt encouraged to take this step by the accounts
which reached them of the success of the Ulster Protestants who
had gone before, and whose posterity is now to be found in the
South chiefly, as low down as Carolina and Georgia.
But the relative prospects of the Protestants and Catholic were
at that time far from being equally good. The first, driven from
home by famine, found a land of plenty awaiting them, a genial
climate, 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 were
unable 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. All
persons and all things then smiled on the new-comer, and within
a very short time he found himself possessed of more than he had
ever expected. Thus others were induced to follow from the north
of Ireland, and famine was no longer the only motive power which
impelled them to leave their native land. Mr. Bancroft tells us
they were called Scotch-Irish.
On the other hand, the Irish Catholics found a fertile soil and
an inviting climate; Nature welcomed them, but man recoiled,
inflamed by a bitter hostility against their faith and their
very name. This feeling of opposition, on both accounts, was
already fast wearing away in Europe; but the "liberality"
springing up in the Old World, owing to a variety of
circumstances, had not yet penetrated into the British colonies
of North America. They were still, in this respect, in the state
in which the Revolution of 1688 had left them: Catholicity was
proscribed everywhere, and the penal laws of the Old World were
attempted to be enforced in the New, as far as the different
state of the country would permit. A few details, taken mainly
from Mr. Bancroft's history, will give us a tolerably exact idea
of the situation in which the newly-arrived Irish Catholic found
himself in that future land of liberty.
The consequences of the downfall of James II. were soon fully
accepted by the British colonies, throughout which changes of
greater or less degree took place in the laws, not only without
any great opposition, but in the main with the full applause of
all parties. The Stuart dynasty was thrown over more easily in
America than it had been in the British Isles.
It is universally admitted that one of the greatest consequences
of that downfall was the renewed persecution of Catholics in
England and Ireland. In the words of Mr. Bancroft:
"The Revolution of 1688, narrow in its principles, imperfect in
its details, frightfully intolerant toward Catholics, forms an
era in the liberty of England and of mankind."
It will be no surprise, then, on coming to review the various
colonies, to find the oppression of the Catholic Church common
to all without one exception.
Beginning with the South, we find the new governor of South
Carolina, Archdale, a Quaker, and, on that account, personally
well disposed toward all, desirous of showing that a Quaker
could respect the faith of a "Papist," commencing his
administration by sending back to the Spanish Governor of
Florida four Indian converts of the Spanish priests, who were
exposed as slaves for sale in Carolina. He likewise enfranchised
the Huguenots of South Carolina, who, up to this time, had been
kept under by the High Church oligarchy. Yet, when he came to
urge the adoption of liberal measures toward all in the state,
the colonial Legislature consented to confer liberty of
conscience on all Christians, with the exception of "Papists."
In North Carolina, the Church of England was actually made the
state Church, in 1704, and the Legislature enacted that "no one
who would not take the oath prescribed by law should hold a
place of trust in the colony."
Of Virginia, Spotswood, the governor, could write to England, in
1711: "This government is in perfect peace and tranquillity,
under a due obedience to royal authority, and a gentlemanly
conformity to the Church of England."
Of Maryland, Mr. Bancroft writes that the English Revolution was
a Protestant revolution.
"A convention of the associates 'for the defence of the
Protestant religion' assumed the government, and, in an address
to King William, denounced the influence of the Jesuits, the
prevalence of popish idolatry, the connivance by the previous
government at murders of Protestants, and the danger from plots
with the French and Indians."
Hence, a little farther on, we read: "The Roman Catholics alone
were left without an ally, exposed to English bigotry and
colonial injustice. They alone were disfranchised on the soil
which, long before Locke pleaded for toleration, or Penn for
religious freedom, they had chosen, not as their own asylum only,
but, with Catholic liberality, as the asylum of every
persecuted sect. In the land which Catholics had opened for
Protestants, the Catholic inhabitant was the sole victim to
Anglican intolerance. Mass might not be said publicly. No
Catholic priest or bishop might utter his faith in a voice of
persuasion. No Catholic might teach the young. If the wayward
child of a Papist would but become an apostate, the law wrested
for him from his parents a share of their property. The
disfranchisement of the proprietary related to his creed, not to
his family. Such were the methods adopted 'to prevent the growth
of Popery.'"
Mr. Bancroft adds with much truth and force: "Who shall say that
the faith of the cultivated individual is firmer than the faith
of 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 Catholic
Church for that of England; the persecution never crushed the
faith of the humble colonists."
Pennsylvania appears to form an exception to that universal
animosity against Catholics. It is said that, owing to William
Penn, "religious liberty was established, and every public
employment was open to every man professing faith in Jesus
Christ. . . . In Pennsylvania human rights were respected: the
fundamental law of William Penn, even his detractors concede,
was in harmony with universal reason, and true to the ancient
and just liberties of the people."
Such may have been the written law--the theory; but the law as
executed--the fact--was far from realizing those fine promises.
As late as the end of the Revolutionary War, the Catholics of
Philadelphia were compelled to hide away their worship in a
small chapel, surrounded by buildings whose only access was a
dark and winding alley still in existence a few years back.
It is known, moreover, that Penn himself, in 1708, forbade mass
to be celebrated in the colony. According to T. D. McGee,
Governor Gordon, in 1734, prohibited the erection of a Catholic
church in Walnut Street; and, in 1736, a private house having
been purchased at the corner of Second and Chestnut streets for
the same object, it was again prohibited.
New Jersey showed her liberality in the form sacred to all the
other colonies: "Liberty of conscience was granted to all but
papists."
There was as yet no homogeneity in New York, the Dutch still
preserving great power, and, consequently, "the idea of
toleration was still imperfect in New Netherlands; equality
among religious sects was unknown." If this was the case with
several Protestant organizations, what must it have been with
the Catholics? It is well known that no one dared openly avow
his faith in the true Church, and that John Ury was hanged in
1741 for being a priest, though whether he was a priest or not
is still a question.
Rhode Island had proclaimed in the beginning "entire freedom of
mind;" but, after the Revolution of 1688, the colony
"interpolated into the statute-book the exclusion of papists
from the established equality."
The spirit of Connecticut is well expressed in the words of the
address sent by the colony to King William of Orange, on his
accession: "Great was the day when the Lord who sitteth upon the
floods did divide his and your adversaries like the waters of
Jordan, and did begin to magnify you like Joshua, by the
deliverance of the English dominions from popery and slavery."
We wonder how the taciturn Hollander received this effusion of
Connecticut? There is nothing more to add on the situation of
the Catholics in the land of the "blue laws."
In Massachusetts it will be no surprise to hear that "every form
of Christianity, except the Roman Catholic, was enfranchised."
This short sketch is eloquent enough with reference to the
position in which the poor Irish immigrant found himself on
landing on the shores of the New World. His faith he found
proscribed as severely almost as in his own country. He was
compelled to conceal it; and, even had he been free to make open
profession of it, he could find no minister of his creed
tolerated anywhere. The country was a perfect blank as far as
the ceremonies of his religion went. In his native land he knew
where to find a priest; he was advised of the day and of the
precise place where he might assist at the sacred mysteries of
his 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 and
receive his God as truly and as worthily as in the magnificent
domes looking proudly to heaven under Catholic skies. But in
British 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 be
found, though forced to conceal, or at least not expose
themselves too freely, he knew that elsewhere it was useless for
him to inquire, not only for a sacred edifice where he might go
to thank his God on landing, but even to look for a priest
should he find himself at the point of death.
At the present day it is almost impossible to give any details
and move the reader by a picture of the complete spiritual
destitution of the Irish immigrant in his new home. Here and
there, however, we meet, in reading, facts apparently
insignificant in themselves, which at first sight seem to have
no connection whatever with the subject on hand, yet which, with
the aid of reflection, throw quite a flood of light on it, as
convincing as it is unexpected. Take, for instance, the
following:
"In the last year of the administration of Andros in
Massachusetts," says Mr. Bancroft, "the daughter of John Goodwin,
a child of thirteen years, charged a laundress with having
stolen linen from the family. Glover, the mother of the
laundress, a friendless immigrant, almost ignorant of English,
like a true woman, with a mother's heart, rebuked the false
accusation. Immediately, the girl, to secure revenge, became
bewitched. The infection spread. Three others of the family, the
youngest a boy of less than five years old, soon succeeded in
equally arresting public attention. . . . Cotton Mather went to
pray by the side of one of them, and, lo! the child lost her
hearing till prayer was over. What was to be done? The four
ministers of Boston and the one of Charlestown assembled in
Goodwin's house, and spent a whole day of fasting in prayer. In
consequence, the youngest child, the little one of five years
old, was 'delivered.' But if the ministers could thus by prayer
'deliver' a possessed child, there must have been a witch. The
honor of the ministers required a prosecution of the affair; and
the magistrates, William Stoughton being one, with a 'vigor'
which the united ministers commended as 'just,' made 'a
discovery of the wicked instrument of the devil.' The culprit
was evidently a wild Irishwoman, of a strange tongue. Goodwin,
who made the complaint, 'had no proof that could have done her
any hurt;' but the 'scandalous old hag,' whom some thought
'crazed in her intellectuals,' was bewildered, and made strange
answers, which were taken as confessions, sometimes, in
excitement, using her native dialect. . . . It was plain the
prisoner was a Roman Catholic; she had never learned the Lord's
Prayer in English; she could repeat the Pater Noster fluently
enough, but not quite correctly; so, the ministers and Goodwin's
family had the satisfaction of getting her condemned as a witch
and executed."
The position of this poor woman, who had never openly declared
herself a Catholic, but which fact the people were led to infer
from various circumstances, expresses the condition of all Irish
immigrants at the time. A further fact recorded by the same
historian shows what the feeling toward Catholics was at the
time 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 of
power had blinded their judgment."
The reason was plain: Glover was a Catholic. How could the girl
be 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 a
creature?--"a vessel of wrath," in any case; a "predestined
reprobate," beyond doubt, whose ignominious death on earth and
eternal punishment afterward were "a true source of joy in
heaven 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 we
find in Pennsylvania, after Penn's suppression of them in 1708,
was connected with the house of a Miss Elizabeth McGauley, an
Irish lady, who, with several of her tenantry, settled on land
on the road leading from Nicetown to Frankfort. Near the site of
this ancient sanctuary stood a tomb, inscribed, 'John Michael
Brown, ob. 15th December, A. D. 1750. R. I. P.' He had been a
priest residing there incognito."
Miss E. McGauley was not poor, like Glover. On coming to America
with some of her tenantry, she secured herself beforehand
against the difficulty of practising her religion; and, knowing
well that no priest was to be found in the country, she brought
one with her. All the remainder of his life did this minister of
God reside in her house incognito, keeping the ministry
intrusted to him for the service of all a profound secret. He
never attempted, probably, to enlighten his prejudiced and
ignorant neighbors; the knowledge of his character and the
benefits arising from his presence were confined to the lady of
the house and her faithful tenantry. Even after his death the
secret was still kept, and only the cabalistic characters "R. I.
P." remain to tell an intelligent reader that he was neither
Quaker nor Protestant; and, probably, tradition alone, preserved
doubtless in the neighborhood, could assure us that he was a
priest.
How many Catholics scattered over the broad colony of
Pennsylvania, immigrants like Miss McGauley, but unlike her in
their poverty, and therefore unable to hire a clergyman, never
knew that they might unburden their consciences and enjoy the
consolations of their religion, by travelling a hundred miles or
so to the house "on the road leading from Nicetown to
Frankfort?" How many lived and died within a short distance, and
never knocked at the door, owing to their ignorance of the class
of inmates? Thus, although there were some ministers of God in
the country, their number was so small, and they were so far
distant from each other, that their labors were utterly
unavailing for the great body of the Catholic immigrants, who
would have rejoiced to throw themselves at their feet, and ease
their hearts and purify their souls by confession.
Some Irishmen, it is true, had emigrated before such concealment
was requisite, in Maryland at least, where an asylum for all had
been opened by Lord Baltimore, a Catholic. Thus, the Carrolls
had settled in Prince George County. They were at liberty to
make open use of the services of the English fathers of the
Society of Jesus, who for a long time officiated undisguisedly
among their English Catholic flocks; but, as was seen, after the
Revolution of 1688, Catholics were disfranchised in Maryland
even, their religious rites proscribed, and penalties enacted
against the open profession of their worship.
Thus, concealment became a necessity, there also; the policy of
keeping the existence of clergymen and the celebration of the
holy mysteries secret had to be adopted there as in other
colonies. The Carroll family, like Miss Elizabeth McGauley, gave
refuge in their house to a minister of their own religion, and
it was in such a chapel-house that John Carroll was born, on the
8th of January, 1735--the first Bishop and Archbishop of
Baltimore.
It is therefore no matter for wonder that the number of children
of the Church in North America did not increase in proportion to
the number of Catholic immigrants; on the contrary, the
posterity of the majority of those who chose the British
colonies, for their home was lost to her. The immigrants
themselves, we are confident, never lost their faith. Although
living for years without any exterior help, without receiving a
word of instruction or advice, without the celebration of any
religious rite whatever, or the reception of any sacrament, yet,
faith was too deeply rooted in their minds and hearts to be ever
eradicated, or shaken even.
But, though they themselves clung fast to their faith in the
midst of so many adverse circumstances, what of their children?
There is no doubt that many of them did, individually, every
thing possible to transmit that faith to their children; but all
they could do was to speak privately, to warn then against
dangers, 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 a
Catholic school-master to instruct them. Even the "hedge-school"
could not be set on foot. Books were unknown; Catholic
literature, in the modern sense, had not yet been born; there
was no vestige of such a thing beyond, perhaps, an occasional
old, worn, and torn, yet dearly-prized and carefully-concealed
prayer-book, dating from the happy days of the Confederation of
Kilkenny.
There is no reason, then, for surprise in the fact that,
although the families of those first Irish settlers were
numerous and scattered over all the district which afterward
became the Middle and Southern States, only a faint tradition
remained among many of them that they really belonged to the old
Church and "ought to be Catholics." How often was this the case
thirty years ago, particularly in the South!
It would not be right to conclude that all this was a pure and
unmitigated loss to the Church of Christ. Later on, we shall
have to speak of more numerous and serious losses: but a few
words on this first one may not be thrown away.