148
AN GAOḊAL.
ENGLISH INFLUENCES
AS VIEWED BY AN IRISH AMERICAN.
“'Tis education forms the tender mind;
Which way the twig is bent the tree’s inclined."
For many years the works used in the educa-
tional institutions of this Republic have been
written in the English interest :— by a class who
ape English ideas of government and social life.
Fabrications the most absurd, and falsehoods the
most bare-faced, have been intentionally (malice
prepense) injected among and even substituted for
historical facts. The true character of the British
Empire, as the Highway Robber of Nations, is
studiedly obscured. All reference to her robbery
of weak and defenseless peoples is avoided; while
great pains are taken to make England appear in
a commendable manner on every possible occasion.
In “Harper’s Intermediate School Geography,"
the twig is bent in the following fashion, in order
to give the mind of Young America a pro-English
twist :
“The United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland is one of the most important countries in
the world. The title commonly given it is Great
Britain. It includes England, Scotland, Wales and
Ireland. The British are a very remarkable people.
Once they owned only Great Britain and Ireland.
Now they own nearly one half of North America;
British Guiana, in South America; British India
with its millions of inhabitants (!) in Asia. several
colonies on the coast of Africa, and the whole
continent of Australia. In addition, they own a
large number of valuable islands in different parts
of the world. Great Britain and Ireland, together
with these vast possessions, form the British Em-
pire, which is the most extensive on the globe."
(The reader will note, en passant, that the
writer of the foregoing paragraph so expresses
himself as to convey to the ill-informed the impres-
sion that Great Britain and Ireland were always
under one government. “The title commonly
given ” to the “United Kingdom” is not “Great
Britain.” I have never heard it called anything
but “Great Britain and Ireland.' Even though
England employed the most unutterably barbarous
means to subjugate Ireland, I have never yet
known an Englishman to assert that it was not so
— that both countries were always under one gov-
ernment. Yet that is what is implied by this
American snob, when he says, “ Once they owned
only Great Britain and Ireland.” With people
ignorant of Irish history, such equivocation will
serve his purpose as well as a straight-out lie. So,
its effect upon the minds of simple children may be
imagined.)
Many other evidences of the sophistry inculcated
in our Public Schools might be adduced, but this
one will serve as a specimen.
In consequence of such teachings, there has
sprung up a class who actually look upon the real,
substantial greatness of the Republic — the legiti-
mate outcome of free institutions — as a mere reflex
of the sham “greatness” of England! Of England!
whose greatness consists in that she periodically
slays millions of the natives of India by artificial
famines! by which means she reduced the popula-
tion of Ireland from nearly 9,000,000 in 1840, to
about 5,000,000 in 1880! Yet educated Americans
will stupidly accept such an absurdity. Therefore,
it is no surprise that the same class should echo
the vile falsehood of pro-English snobs, that there
was nobody here at the time of the Revolution
but “English colonists,” and that we’re “Saxons
and Britishers true, after all."
Of this class was Edward Everett, a man of great
literary ability and almost incredible precocious-
ness, having graduated from Harvard College at
18. "In Harpers Sixth Reader,” I find this extract
from a speech in which he attempts to explain
“Our obligations to England,” as follows: —
What citizen of our Republic does not feel, what
reflecting American does not acknowledge the in-
calculable advantages derived to this country out
of the deep fountains of civil, intellectual and
moral truth from which we have drawn in Eng-
land? What American does not feel proud that
his fathers were the countrymen of Bacon, of New
ton, and of Locke."
England — whose hands are to-day, as for centu-
ries past, steeped in the blood of the innocent vic-
tims of her marauding “civilizers" — contains, ac-
cording to Mr. Everett, “deep fountains of social,
intellectual, and moral truth!, To Irishmen who
remember the “City of the Violated Treaty.” that
superabundance of all kinds of truth contained in
England may not be very apparent. But then, of
course, England was not bound to keep faith with
barbarians, such as these “mere Irish” are repre-
sented to have been. It would have been beneath
her dignity as a nation to open to them her “deep
fountains of social, intellectual, and moral truth.”
Mr. Everet speaks of Bacon, Newton, and Locke as
men whom Americans might feel proud to be de-
scended from. Now, science will ever proudly
cherish the name of Newton, as the discoverer of
the principle or law of gravitation. But Mr. Ev-
erett, when he insinuated that the people of this
country are the descendants of Englishmen, stated
what he knew to be untrue. The effort is
born of the knownothing spirit, which endeavored
to make it appear that the descendants of English-
men are the American people, and that all others
are here on suffrance. (And when I see American
citizens allowed to remain in English dungeons
for months, with no crime even charged against
them, simply because they happen to be of Irish
birth, I cannot agree with those who believe that
the spirit of knownothingism is extinct. The
only “incalculable advantages” this country ever
derived from England grew out of the resistance
to her authority, and final successful rebellion
against it, aroused by the attempt of Parliament
to compel us to accept “taxation without repre-
