Books: Irish Race in the Past and the Present

A >> Aug. J. Thebaud >> Irish Race in the Past and the Present

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Already was the young church robbing the old of some of its best
members, who were to give some weight to the Irish element in
this country.

"George A. Carrell was born at Philadelphia. . . . He was the
seventh child of his Irish parents, and the house they occupied,
and in which he was born, was the old mansion of William Penn,
at the corner of Market Street and Letitia Court."-- (Ibid.)

Two short observations naturally present themselves here.
Philadelphia is the city oftenest mentioned whenever foreigners
are spoken of as landing in North America at that time. It was
then the great harbor of the country, New York not having
attained the preeminence she now enjoys. Hence, the Church
counted seven thousand children in Pennsylvania; but very few
north of that city. Thither came the German Catholics, also, in
great numbers to spread themselves chiefly West and South. Such
was the direction then taken by the Catholic wave.

Our second remark only concerns the house in which he who became
Bishop Carrell was born. It seemed only fitting that an Irish
Catholic family should thus early take possession of the very
dwelling-place of the founder of the colony, as the Catholic
Church was destined, through the Irish element chiefly, to
supplant and outlive the little church of the "Friends."

All the facts, however, just quoted are exceptional, and regard
only the select few. What became of the mass, meanwhile? As
usual, history for the most part is silent with regard to it. A
very few words constitute the only record which can afford us a
glimpse of the real situation of the vast majority of those poor,
friendless, obscure immigrants, on whom, nevertheless, the
great hopes of the future were built.

We have, happily, some means left us of forming an opinion; and
it will be seen that their situation was much the same as that
of their earlier compatriots. For instance, in the "Lives of
American Bishops" we read the following startling story:

"The Abbe Cheverus very frequently made long journeys to convey
the consolations of religion or perform acts of charity. About
this time (1803) he received a letter from two young Irish
Catholics confined in Northampton prison, who had been condemned
to death without just cause, as was almost universally believed,
imploring him to come to them and prepare them for their sad and
cruel fate. He hastened to their spiritual relief, and inspired
them with the most heroic sentiments and dispositions, which
they persevered in to the last fatal moment of their execution.
According to custom, the prisoners were carried to the nearest
church, to hear a sermon preached immediately before their
execution; several Protestant ministers presented themselves to
preach the sermon; but the Abbe Cheverus claimed the right to
perform that duty, as the choice of the prisoners themselves,
and, after much difficulty, he was allowed to ascend the pulpit.
His sermon struck all present with astonishment, awe, and
admiration."

Here, in 1803, we have almost a repetition of the death of the
poor woman Glover; and, had it not been for the high character
of the admirable man who hastened to their assistance, those two
young Irish Catholics would have had for their only religious
preparation before death a sermon from one or more Protestant
ministers; and, as the great and good Cheverus could not be
everywhere in New England, there is little doubt but that such
was the fate of more than one of the newly-arrived immigrants.

In 1800 and the following years a comparatively large number of
Irishmen landed at New York, and the future terrible scourge of
their race, ship-fever, soon broke out among them. Dr. Bailey,
the father of Mrs.Seton, was Health Physician to the port of New
York at the time, and he allowed his daughter to visit and do
good among them. She was deeply impressed by the religious
demeanor of the Irish just landed. The Rev. Dr. White relates in
her "Life:" "'The first thing,' she said, 'the poor people did
when they got their tents was to assemble on the grass, and all,
kneeling, adore our Master for his mercy; and every morning sun
finds them repeating their praises.' In a letter to her sister-
in-law she describes their sufferings under the 'plague' in the
following golden words:

"'Rebecca, I cannot sleep; the dying and the dead possess my
mind--babies expiring at the empty breast of their mother. And
this is not fancy, but the scene that surrounds me. Father says
that such was never known before; that there are actually twelve
children that must die from mere want of sustenance, unable to
take more than the breast, and from the wretchedness of their
parents deprived of it, as they have laid ill for many days in
the ship, without food, air, or changing. Merciful Father! Oh,
how readily would I give them each a turn of my child's treasure,
if in my choice! But, Rebecca, they have a provider in heaven,
who will soothe the pangs of the suffering innocent.'"

When she wrote the above, Mrs. Seton was not yet professedly a
Catholic; but how truly animated with the spirit of the Church
of Christ! Happy would the poor immigrants have been had they
only met with Protestants of her stamp on landing, and of her
father's, who, although he prevented her becoming foster-mother
to those poor children, as her first duty regarded her own child,
died himself, a victim to his charity toward their parents,
contracting, in the fulfilment of his office, the fever they had
brought with them, which he was striving to allay!

The following fact, which will conclude this portion of our
inquiry, happened a little later, but, on that very account,
will serve as a connecting link with the considerations which
are to follow, and will open our eyes to the real position of
that already swelling mass of immigrants.

"During the year 1823, Bishop Connolly (of New York) made the
visitation of his entire diocese. . . . He extended his journey
along the route of the Erie Canal, which was commenced in 1819,
where large numbers of Irish laborers had been attracted, and
among whom the bishop labored with indefatigable zeal." At that
time the clergy of the whole diocese consisted of eight priests
with their bishop.

At last we find the "Irish people" at work. The spectacle is
full of sadness; and the only emotion which can fill the heart
is one of deep pity. In that vast wilderness of the West, for
such it then was, along public works extending hundreds of miles,
large gangs of men--such is the expression we are compelled to
use--are hard at work along that dreary Mohawk River; blasting
rocks, digging in the hard clay, uprooting trees, clearing the
ground of briars, tangled bushes, and the vast quantity of
debris of animal and vegetable matter accumulated during
centuries. This was the work which "attracted" large numbers of
Irish laborers. They had left their country, crossed the ocean
under circumstances that should come under our notice, and
landed on these (at that time) inhospitable shores, to find work;
and they found the occupation just mentioned. We can picture
the "shanties" in which they lived, the harpies who thrived on
them, the innumerable extortions to which they were subjected.
Bearing in mind that, in the immense State of New York and in
one-half of New Jersey, there were just eight priests with their
bishop, we may form some idea of the way in which they lived and
died.

How they must have blessed this bishop, who had left Rome, his
second country, and the noble associations which surrounded him
in the Eternal City, to come to the succor of his unfortunate
countrymen scattered away in a New World! And well did he
deserve that blessing!

But his passage along the Erie Canal could be nothing more than
a veritable passage--a transient sojourn of a few days or weeks
at most. What became of those gangs of men after, what had
happened to them before, no one has said, no one has told us, no
one now can ascertain; we are only left to conjecture, and the
spectacle, as we said, is too sad to dwell upon.

But, hidden within this melancholy view, lies a great and
glorious fact. It was the beginning of an "apostolic mission" on
the part of a whole people, a mission which will form one of the
most moving and significant pages of the ecclesiastical history
of the nineteenth century. Every Christian knows that apostolic
work is rough work; the brunt of the battle must be borne by the
earliest in the field, that it may be said of their successors
in the words of the Gospel: "Vos in labores eorum introistis."

Such being the hard lot of the immigrants in the interior of the
country, was that of those who remained in the cities much more
enviable? On this point we are enabled to judge, at least as
regards New York. In a letter written by Bishop Dubois, and
published in vol. viii. of the "Annals of the Propagation of the
Faith," we meet with the following exhaustive description:

"At the beginning of this century, the newly-arrived immigrants
were employed as day-laborers, servants, journeymen, clerks, and
shopmen. Now, the condition of this class here is precisely the
same as its condition in England; it is entirely dependent upon
the will of the trader: not because by law are they forced
thereto, but because the rich alone, being able to advance the
capital necessary for factories, steam-engines, and workshops,
the poor are obliged to work for them upon the masters' own
conditions. These conditions, in the case of servants especially,
sometimes degenerate into tyranny; they are frequently forced
to work on Sundays, permission to hear even a low mass being
refused them; they are obliged betimes to assist at the prayers
of the sect to which their masters belong, and they have no
other alternative than either to do violence to their conscience,
or lose their place at the risk of not finding another. Add to
this the insults, the calumnies against Catholics, which they
are daily forced to hear--a kind of persecution at the hands of
their masters, who do every thing to turn them away from their
religion; consider the dangers to which are exposed numbers of
orphans who lose their fathers almost immediately upon landing;
add to this the want of spiritual succor, a necessary
consequence of the scarcity of missionaries; and you will have a
feeble idea of the obstacles of every kind which we have to
surmount. . . . Supposing an immigrant, the father of a family,
to die, the widow and orphans have no other resources but public
charity; and if a home is found for the children, it is nearly
always among Protestants, who do every thing in their power to
undermine their faith."

This picture of immigrant-life in New York was certainly
repeated through all the other large cities. Under such a
combination of adverse circumstances it is most probable that
men and women of any other nation would have entirely lost their
faith. Such, then, was the dreary prospect for the new-comers.
Who at that time would have dared hope to witness the consoling
spectacle which followed soon after? To begin with the dawn of
that bright day, we must pass on to a new period of immigration,
commencing in 1815 or shortly after, and continuing down to the
"exodus" of 1846.

It may be well, before entering upon it, to look at the causes
which drove so many to leave the shores of Ireland. From the
year 1815 the number of immigrants increased considerably and
kept on a steady increase until it swelled to the startling
proportions of 1850 and the following years.

It is easy to demonstrate that the causes were twofold: 1. The
wretched state of the vast majority of the Irish at the best of
times. 2. The periodical famines which have regularly visited
the island since the beginning of last century. At any time it
was in the power of the English to remedy both causes by
effecting certain changes in the existing laws. The first of
these is evidently the necessary result of the penal laws which
had converted the Irish, designedly and with the wilful intent
of the legislators, into a nation of paupers. The second can
only be the result of the laws affecting the tenure of land and
the trade and manufactures of the country.

To attribute the pauperism which now seems a part and parcel of
the Irish nation while in their own country to the indolence and
want of foresight on the part of the natives themselves, as it
is a fashion with English writers to do, is wilfully to close
the eyes to two very important things: their past history in
their own land, and their present history outside of it.

As to their past history in their own land, it is an established
fact that pauperism was unknown in the island, until Protestant
legislators introduced it by their confiscations and laws with
the manifest intent of destroying, rooting out, or driving away
the race. What has been previously stated on this point cannot
be gainsaid; and it suffices for the vindication of a falsely-
accused people. There might be some hope for a speedier and
happier solution of the vexed "Irish difficulty" did the
grandsons of those who wrought the evil only honestly
acknowledge the faults of their ancestors--the least that might
be expected of them; and it would not be too much to imagine
them honest enough to repair those faults in these days of
severe reckoning and self-scrutiny.

As to the present history of the race outside their own land,
now that it has been scattered, by these grievous calamities,
all over the world, whatever characteristics its children may
present, indolence and want of foresight can scarcely be
numbered among them, in view of the success which attends their
march everywhere. And if these qualities would seem to be rooted
in the native soil, they are only "importations" like the men
who fastened them there, and due only to the cramped position in
which their legislators so carefully confined them. Where should
there be energy, when every motive that could urge it has been
taken away? How is it possible to improve their condition, when
every improvement only imposes an additional burden upon them in
the shape of rack-rent or eviction?

In his work on "The Social Condition of the People," Mr. Kay
quotes from the Edinburgh Review of January, 1850, the evidence
on this point given by English, German, and Polish witnesses
before the Committee of Emigration, and the proofs gathered from
every source as to the rapid improvement of the Irish emigrant,
wherever he goes, are certainly convincing.

As for the foolish (for it is nothing else, unless it be wicked)
assertion that those frightful famines referred to are to be
attributed to the sufferers themselves, it is only necessary to
say in refutation that in the very years when thousands were
being swept away daily by their ravages in Ireland--1846 and
1847-- the harbors of the island were filled with English
vessels, loaded with cargoes of provisions of every kind to be
transported to England in order to pay the rents due to absentee
landlords: and all these provisions were the product of the
famine-stricken land, won by the toil of the famine-stricken
nation. This has invariably been the case when famine has swept
over the island: the island's riches were in her harbors, stored
in the holds of foreign vessels, to be carried away and
converted into money that these noble Anglo-Irish landlords
might be enabled to "sustain" life

Others have ascribed these periodical visitations to a surplus
population; but, without entering into a discussion on the
subject, Sir Robert Kane, in his "Industrial Resources of
Ireland," shows that, taking the island in her present state and
under the existing system of cultivation, she could support with
ease eighteen million inhabitants; that, if the best methods of
farming were generally adopted, the soil, by double and even
triple crops, could feed without difficulty, not only twenty-
five million, the figure stated by Mr. Gustave de Beaumont, a
French publicist of eminence, but as many as from thirty to
thirty-five million inhabitants.

But, as the same judicious writer observes, "the enormous
quantity of cattle annually shipped off from Ireland to England
would, in that case, be consumed in the country which produces
it."

It is clear, therefore, that the pretended surplus population of
Ireland is, as Sir Robert Kane says, a piece of pure imagination,
perfectly ideal, and that it is its unequal and not its
aggregate amount which is to be deplored.

But no one has presented the question more clearly and solved it
more precisely than Mr. Gustave de Beaumont in his admirable
work on Ireland, from which we note one or two telling passages,
as given in Father Perraud's "Ireland under English Rule."

"The celebrated French publicist, who was the first to present
to us (in France) a complete picture of the condition of Ireland,
examining in 1829 how emigration might or might not do away
with all the misery he had witnessed, proposed to himself the
following questions:

"I. To what extent ought emigration to be carried, in order to
bring about a material change in the general state of Ireland?
namely, by taking away the pretended surplus population.

"II. Would it be possible to carry it out to the proposed extent?

"III. Supposing it practicable, would it be a radical and final
solution of existing difficulties?

"The advocates of emigration replied to the first question by
estimating at a minimum of two million the number of individuals
who would have to leave Ireland, at one time, in order to
produce there that kind of vacuum which would improve the
conditions of labor and the existence of the rest of the
agricultural population.

"Upon these data the solution of the second question was easy.
It was by no means difficult to prove that the system was
impracticable on so large a scale; impracticable on account of
the insufficiency of the means of transport at disposal;
impracticable on account of the enormous sums required to carry
it out.

"In fact, supposing an emigrant-ship to carry a thousand
passengers--a very high figure--two thousand vessels would be
required to attain the end in view, namely, the sudden and
universal emigration of the whole so-called surplus population.
That is to say, the whole merchant navy of Great Britain would
have to be drawn off from the commerce of the world, and
chartered for the execution of this very chimerical plan. Where
was the sum required for the most necessary expenses and urgent
wants of two million passengers to be got? And what country in
the world would have submitted to a monster invasion like those
of barbarous times? Unless, indeed, these two million
individuals were beforehand coldly devoted to death by hunger,
was there a single country in which it could be hoped they would
immediately find work or the means of subsistence?"

All those impossibilities, genuine indeed and at the time, 1829,
of unforeseen solution, became, under Providence, possible by
extending the period of transportation from one year to twenty;
so that, instead of two, in reality three million and a half
were thus transported.

But, where M. de Beaumont displayed all his talent for
appreciation and keen reasoning was, when he came to consider
the third and most embarrassing question of all. Was it certain
that, the system of renting and cultivating land always
remaining the same, emigration would suffice to heal those
inveterate sores, and effect, in conformity with the wishes of
its partisans, a social transformation?

On this point, he showed, in a manner admitting of no reply,
that the emigration of a third or even of half the population
would not radically put an end to the misery of the country. The
difficulty with Ireland does not consist in being unable to
produce wherewith to feed her population; it lies in the manner
in which landed property is managed, a system which no amount of
emigration can possibly modify; for, "if one of the first
principles of the landlord be that the farmer should gain by
tilling no more than is strictly necessary to support him--if,
in addition, this principle is, as a general rule, rigidly
followed out, and all economical means of living resorted to by
the farmer necessarily induce a rise in the rent--what, upon
this supposition (of the sad reality of which every one knowing
Ireland is perfectly conscious), can be the consequence of a
decrease of population?"

Always obliged to live as sparingly as possible, in order to
escape a rise in the rent, and forced to undergo daily
privations in order to meet his engagements, how is the Irish
farmer to gain by the departure of his neighbor? "Thus, after
millions of Irishmen have disappeared, the fate of the
population which remains is in no wise changed; it will forever
be equally wretched."

Then, glancing at the past, making a sad enumeration of
Ireland's losses during the last three centuries, and evoking
from these too eloquent figures the accents of a touching
eloquence, the writer asks himself how far so much bloodshed,
such armies of individuals, stricken down by death, or hurried
out of the country by transportation--so many families extinct,
and the like--had contributed to restore and save Ireland?

"Open the annals of Ireland, and see the small amount of
influence which all those violent enterprises and all those
extraordinary accidental causes of depopulation have had upon
the social state of the country. Calculate the number of souls
that perished during the religious wars; count the thousands of
Irishmen that perished under the sword of Cromwell; to all that
the victor massacred add the myriads that he transported; think
of the hundreds of thousands who sank under famine, the number
of whom exceeded in one year, 1741, forty thousand; do not
overlook the formerly considerable number who yearly died by the
hand of the executioner; in fine, to this add the twenty-five or
thirty thousand individuals who emigrate from the country every
year" (this was written before 1830); "and, having laid down
these facts, you look for the consequences: when, in the midst
of these different crises, you see Ireland always the same,
always equally wretched, always crammed with paupers, always
bearing about with her the same hideous and deep wounds, you
will then recognize that the miseries of Ireland do not arise
from the number of her inhabitants; you will conclude that it is
the nature of her social condition to generate unmitigated
indigence and infinite distress; that, supposing millions of
poor swept out of her by a stroke of magic, others would be seen
rising up in abundance out of a well-spring of misery, which in
Ireland never dries up; and that the fault does not lie in the
number of her population, but in the institutions in force in
the country."

The celebrated French writer had certainly pointed out what were
the real causes of the distress in Ireland. He had shown how
false were the pretended causes then assigned for it by
Englishmen; he touched the key-note--the land tenure; and, as a
well-wisher to Ireland, deprecating any new calamities, he was
firmly opposed to those various fancy projects of emigration en
masse, suggested by numerous British writers, many of whom, such
as the editors of the London Times, were induced to promulgate
them by their deep hatred for the old race, which led them to
represent under a modern garb the old Norman and Puritan
philanthropic desires of rooting out and sweeping off the Irish
from the land.

The projects of emigration, therefore, were most eagerly
advanced by the enemies of the Irish, their real friends being,
on the whole, opposed to the movement at the time. But, the true
causes of Irish misery being either unseen or unappreciated, or,
if known, studiously fostered, with a view of bringing about the
one aim which ran all through the English policy, of emptying
the island and destroying the race, eventually it did actually
become a dire necessity for the people to fly; and therefore,
from 1815 to 1845, the wave of emigration began to rise fast,
and go on swelling in volume and widening in extent from year to
year. Midway between the two extreme points, about 1830, it
amounted to between twenty-five and thirty thousand. M. de
Beaumont could not see how two millions could be transported at
once. Nor were they. But he did not foresee that in the twenty
years succeeding that in which he wrote more than three millions
and a half would actually be shipped from the island; and all
the difficulties that he anticipated--the number of ships
requisite, the immense amount of money needed, the countries
where such numbers might be received--were furnished by
Providence for the spread of the Irish in many lands. But these
considerations can only be briefly touched upon here; they will
form the interesting subject of the next chapter. What we have
now to consider is the commencement of the great exodus,
confined so far to Canada and the United States, but already
working wonders over the vast stretch of country which spreads
away between the St. Lawrence and the Gulf of Mexico.