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THE IRISH RACE IN THE PAST AND THE PRESENT

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

PREFACE

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

This thought of the great Catholic writer requires some development.

It is not by a succession of periods of progress and decay only
That nations manifest their life and individuality. Taking any
one of them at any period of its existence, and comparing it with
others, peculiarities immediately show themselves which give it a
particular physiognomy whereby it may be at once distinguished
from any other; so that, in those agglomerations of men which we
call nations or races, we see the variety everywhere observable
in Nature, the variety by which God manifests the infinite activity
of his creative power.

When we take two extreme types of the human species--the Ashantee
of Guinea, for instance, and any individual of one of the great
civilized communities of Europe-the phenomenon of which we speak
strikes us at once. But it may be remarked also, in comparing
nations which have lived for ages in contiguity, and held constant
intercourse one with the other from the time they began their
national life, whose only boundary-line has been a mountain-chain
or the banks of a broad river. They have each striking peculiarities
which individualize and stamp them with a character of their own.

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

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

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

When we compare the vast despotisms of Asia, crystallized into
forms which have scarcely changed since the first settlement of
man in those immense plains, with the active and ever-moving
smaller groups of Europeans settled in the west of the Old World
since the dispersion of mankind, we see at a glance how the
characters of both may be read in their respective annals. And,
coming down gradually to less extreme cases, we recognize the
same phenomenon manifested even in contiguous tribes, springing
long ago, perhaps, from the same stock, but which have been
formed into distinct nations by distinct ancestors, although they
acknowledge a common origin. The antagonism in their character is
immediately brought out by what historians or annalists have to
say of them.

Are not the cruelty and rapacity of the old Scandinavian race
Still visible in their descendants? And the spirit of organization
displayed by them from the beginning in the seizure, survey, and
distribution of land--in the building of cities and castles--in
the wise speculations of an extensive commerce--may not all these
characteristics be read everywhere in the annals of the nations
sprung from that original stock, grouped thousands of years ago
around the Baltic and the Northern Seas?

How different appear the pastoral and agricultural tribes which
have, for the same length of time, inhabited the Swiss valleys and
mountains! With a multitude of usages, differing all, more or less,
from each other; with, perhaps, a wretched administration of
internal affairs; with frequent complaints of individuals, and
partial conflicts among the rulers of those small communities--with
all these defects, their simple and ever-uniform chronicles reveal
to us at once the simplicity and peaceful disposition of their
character; and, looking at them through the long ages of an obscure
life, we at once recognize the cause of their general happiness in
their constant want of ambition.

And if, in the course of centuries, the character of a nation has
changed--an event which seldom takes place, and when it does is
due always to radical causes--its history will immediately make
known to us the cause of the change, and point out unmistakably
its origin and source.

Why is it, for instance, that the French nation, after having lived
for near a thousand years under a single dynasty, cannot now find
a government agreeable to its modern aspirations? It is insufficient
to ascribe the fact to the fickleness of the French temper. During
ten centuries no European nation has been more uniform and more
attached to its government. If to-day the case is altogether
reversed, the fact cannot be explained except by a radical change
in the character of the nation. Firmly fixed by its own national
determination of purpose and by the deep studies of the Middle
Ages--nowhere more remarkable than in Paris, which was at that
time the centre of the activity of Catholic Europe--the French
mind, first thrown by Protestantism into the vortex of controversy,
gradually declined to the consideration of mere philosophical
utopias, until, rejecting at last its long-received convictions,
it abandoned itself to the ever-shifting delusions of opinions and
theories, which led finally to skepticism and unbelief in every
branch of knowledge, even the most necessary to the happiness of
any community of men. Other causes, no doubt, might also be assigned
for the remarkable change now under our consideration. The one we
have pointed out was the chief.

To the same causes, acting now on a larger scale throughout Europe,
we ascribe the same radical changes which we see taking place in
the various nations composing it: every thing brought everywhere
in question; the mind of all unsettled; a real anarchy of intellect
spreading wider and wider even in countries which until now had
stood firm against it. Hence constant revolutions unheard of
hitherto; nothing stable; and men expecting with awe a more
frightful and radical overturning still of every thing that makes
life valuable and dear.

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

These considerations, which might be indefinitely prolonged, show
the truth of the phrase of Joseph de Maistre that "all nations
manifest a particular and distinctive character, which deserves
to be attentively considered."

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

With respect to ages that have passed away, to nations which have
run their full course, a nobler study is possible--the more so
because inspired writers have traced the way. Thus Bossuet wrote
his celebrated "Discours." But he stopped wisely at the coming of
our Lord. As to the events anterior to that great epoch, he spoke
often like a prophet of ancient times; he seemed at times to be
initiated in the designs of God himself. And, in truth, he had
them traced by the very Spirit of God; and, lifted by his elevated
mind to the level of those sublime thoughts, he had only to touch
them with the magic of his style.

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

There remains, therefore, but one thing to do: to consider
each nation apart, and read its character in its history. Should
this be done for all, the only practical philosophy of modern
history would be written. For then we should have accomplished
morally for men what, in the physical order, zoologists accomplish
for the immense number of living beings which God has spread
over the surface of the earth. They might be classified according
to a certain order of the ascending or descending moral scale.
We could judge them rightly, conformably with the standard of
right or wrong, which is in the absolute possession of the Christian
conscience. Brilliant but baneful qualities would no longer
impose on the credulity of mankind, and men would not be led
astray in their judgments by the rule of expediency or success
which generally dictates to historians the estimate they form and
inculcate on their readers of the worth of some nations, and the
insignificance or even odiousness of others.

In the impossibility under which we labor of penetrating, at
the present time, the real designs of Providence with respect to
the various races of men, so great an undertaking, embracing the
principal, if not all, modern races, would be one of the most
useful efforts of human genius for the spread of truth and virtue
among men.

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

And we may here remark that the number of a people and the
size of its territory have absolutely no bearing on the estimate
which we ought to form of its character. Who would say that
the Chinese are the most interesting and commendable nation
on the surface of the globe? They are certainly the most ancient
and most populous; their code of precise and formal morality is
the most exact and clear that philosophers could ever dictate,
and succeed in giving as law to a great people. That code
has been followed during a long series of ages. Most discoveries
of modern European science were known to them long before
they were found out among us; agriculture, that first of arts,
which most economists consider as the great test whereby to
judge of the worth of a nation, is and always has been carried by
them to a perfection unknown to us. Yet, the smallest European
nationality is, in truth, more interesting and instructive than
the vast Celestial Empire can ever be--whose long annals
are all compassed within a few hundred pages of a frigid
narrative, void of life, and altogether void of soul.

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

We select it, first, because it is and always has been thoroughly
Catholic, from the day when it first embraced Christianity;
and this, under the circumstances, we take to be the best proof,
not only of supreme good sense, but, moreover, of an elevated,
even a sublime character. In their martyrdom of three centuries,
the Irish have displayed the greatness of soul of a Polycarp,
and the simplicity of an Agnes. And the Catholicity which
they have always professed has been, from the beginning, of a
thorough and uncompromising character. All modern European
nations, it is true, have had their birth in the bosom of the
Church. She had nursed them all, educated them all, made
them all what they were, when they began to think of emancipating
themselves from her; and the Catholic, that is, the Christian
religion, in its essence, is supernatural; the creed of the
apostles, the sacramental system; the very history of Christianity,
transport man directly into a region far beyond the earth.

Wherever the Christian religion has been preached, nations
have awakened to this new sense of faith in the supernatural,
and it is there they have tasted of that strong food which made
and which makes them still so superior to all other races of men.
But, as we shall see, in no country has this been the case so
thoroughly as in Ireland. Whatever may have been the cause, the
Irish were at once, and have ever since continued, thoroughly
impregnated with supernatural ideas. For several centuries after
St. Patrick the island was "the Isle of Saints," a place midway
between heaven and earth, where angels and the saints of heaven
came to dwell with mere mortals. The Christian belief was
adopted by them to the letter; and, if Christianity is truth,
ought it not to be so? Such a nation, then, which received such
a thorough Christian education--an education never repudiated
one iota during the ages following its reception--deserves a
thorough examination at our hands.

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

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

That constant refusal of the Irish to fall in with the rapid torrent
of European thought and progress, as it is called, is the strangest
phenomenon in their history, and gives them at first an outlandish
look, which many have not hesitated to call barbarism. We hope
thoroughly to vindicate their character from such a foul aspersion,
and to show this phenomenon as the secret cause of their final
success, which is now all but secured; and this feature alone of
their national life adds to their character an interest which we
find in no other Christian nation.

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

It is true that, in reading the first chapters of all the various
histories of Ireland, the foreign reader is struck and almost
shocked by the dogmatism of the writers, who invariably, and with
a truly Irish assurance, begin with one of the sons of Japhet, and,
following the Hebrew or Septuagint chronology, describe without
flinching the various colonizations of Erin, not omitting the
synchronism of Assyrian, Persian, Greek, and Roman history. A
smile is at first the natural consequence of such assertions; and,
indeed, there is no obligation whatever to believe that every thing
happened exactly as they relate.

But when the large quartos and octavos which are now published from
time to time by the students of Irish antiquarian lore are opened,
read, and pondered over, at least one consequence is drawn from
them which strikes the reader with astonishment. "There can be no
doubt," every candid mind says to itself, "that this nation has
preceded in time all those which have flourished on the earth, with
the exception, perhaps, of the Chinese, and that it remains the same
to-day." At least, many years before Christ, a race of men inhabited
Ireland exactly identical with its present population (except that
it did not enjoy the light of the true religion), yet very superior
to it in point of material well-being. Not a race of cannibals, as
the credulous Diodorus Siculus, on the strength of some vague
tradition, was pleased to delineate; but a people acquainted with
the use of the precious metals, with the manufacture of fine tissues,
fond of music and of song, enjoying its literature and its books;
often disturbed, it is true, by feuds and contentions, but, on the
whole, living happily under the patriarchal rule of the clan system.

The ruins which are now explored, the relics of antiquity which
are often exhumed, the very implements and utensils preserved by
the careful hand of the antiquarian--every thing, so different
from the rude flint arrows and barbarous weapons of our North
American Indians and of the European savages of the Stone period,
denotes a state of civilization, astonishing indeed, when we reflect
that real objects of art embellished the dwellings of Irishmen
probably before the foundation of Rome, and perhaps when Greece
was as yet in a state of heroic barbarism.

And this high antiquity is proved by literature as well as by art.
"The ancient Irish," says one of their latest historians, M.
Haverty, "attributed the utmost importance to the accuracy of their
Historic compositions for social reasons. Their whole system of
society--every question as to right of property--turned upon the
descent of families and the principle of clanship; so that it cannot
be supposed that mere fables would be tolerated instead of facts,
where every social claim was to be decided on their authority. A
man's name is scarcely mentioned in our annals without the addition
of his forefathers for several generations--a thing which rarely
occurs in those of other countries.

"Again, when we arrive at the era of Christianity in Ireland, we
find that our ancient annals stand the test of verification by
science with a success which not only establishes their character
for truthfulness at that period, but vindicates the records of
preceding dates involved in it."

The most confirmed skeptic cannot refuse to believe that at the
introduction of Christianity into Ireland, in 432, the whole island
was governed by institutions exactly similar to those of Gaul when
Julius Caesar entered it 400 years before; that this state must
have existed for a long time anterior to that date; and that the
reception of the new religion, with all the circumstances which
attended it, introduced the nation at once into a happy and social
state, which other European countries, at that time convulsed by
barbarian invasions, did not attain till several centuries later.

These various considerations would alone suffice to show the real
importance of the study we undertake; but a much more powerful
incentive to it exists in the very nature of the annals of the
nation itself.

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

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

The second act of the great drama occupied a period of four Hundred
years, during which all the resources of the Irish clans were arrayed
against Anglo-Norman feudalism, which had finally to succumb; so
that Erin remained the only spot in Europe where feudal institutions
never prevailed.

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

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

We have thought, therefore, that there might be some real interest
and profit to be derived from the study of this eventful national
life--an interest and a profit which will appear as we study it
more in detail.

It may be said that the threefold conflict which we have outlined
might be condensed into the surprising fact that all efforts to
drag Ireland into the current of European affairs and influence
have invariably failed. This is the key to the understanding of
her whole history.

Even originally, when it formed but a small portion of the great
Celtic race, here existed in the Irish branch a peculiarity of its
own, which stamped it with features easy to be distinguished. The
gross idolatry of the Gauls never prevailed among the Irish; the
Bardic system was more fully developed among them than among any
other Celtic nation. Song, festivity, humor, ruled there much more
universally than elsewhere. There were among them more harpers and
poets than even genealogists and antiquarians, although the branches
of study represented by these last were certainly as well cultivated
among them as among the Celts of Gaul, Spain, or Italy.

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

The only people in Europe which remained untouched by what is
called Roman civilization--never having seen a Roman soldier on
their shores; never having been blessed by the construction of
Roman baths and amphitheatres; never having listened to the
declamations of Roman rhetoricians and sophists, nor received the
decrees of Roman praetors, nor been subject to the exactions of
the Roman fisc--they never saw among them, in halls and basilicas
erected under the direction of Roman architects, Roman judges,
governors, proconsuls, enforcing the decrees of the Caesars
against the introduction or propagation of the Christian religion.
Hence it entered in to them without opposition and bloodshed.

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

First, then, although the Germanic tribes of the first invasion,
as it is called, did not reach their shore, for the reason that
the Germans, as little as the Celts, never possessed a navy--although
neither Frank, nor Vandal, nor Hun, renewed among them the horrors
witnessed in Gaul, Spain, Italy, and Africa--they could not remain
safe from the Scandinavian pirates, whose vessels scoured all the
northern seas before they could enter the Mediterranean through
the Straits of Gibraltar.

The Northmen, the Danes, came and tried to establish themselves
among them and inculcate their northern manners, system, and
municipal life. They succeeded in England, Holland, the north of
France, and the south of Italy; in a word, wherever the wind had
driven their hide-bound boats. The Irish was the only nation of
Western Europe which beat them back, and refused to receive the
boon of their higher civilization.

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

Soon after this first victory of Ireland over Northern Europe, the
Anglo-Norman invasion originated a second struggle of longer
duration and mightier import. The English Strongbow replaced the
Danes with Norman freebooters, who occupied the precise spots
which the new owners had reconquered from the Northmen, and never
an inch more. Then a great spectacle was offered to the world,
which has too much escaped the observation of historians, and
to which we intend to draw the attention of our readers.