332
AN GAODHAL.
condary religion, to prompt them to noble actions
— without anything to strive for in this world but
self. No wonder that the wealthier classes in Ire¬
land stand as a living example of all that is self¬
ish, cruel, contemptible and unpatriotic in the
history of these times. Of Protestant colleges or
protestants I have no complaint to make. From
the majority of them one dont expect devotion to
Ireland, or regard for the history of the past, in
which most of them have no part. They are most¬
ly, English in blood, in religion and traditions.
But if the sons of the Celts were brought up as
Irishmen, we would not now be what we are, the
laughing stock of the nations; nor would we be
going a begging to Germans, Frenchmen and It¬
alians to teach us the history of our fathers.
A certain Irish genntleman of the last century
thanked God that he had a country to sell. His say¬
ing expressed in brief the spirit of "higher Irish ed¬
cation" since the union with England. The type
was fully realiz'd when the highest church authority
in Ireland approved the policy and traffic of Judge
Keogh and his friends. It was a pretty picture, and
one to take pride in the the agitators and patriots tal¬
king and writing in favor of an Irish nation with
more or less sincerity on one side, and the colleges
and schools utterly destroying all national ideas and
aspirations in the minds of the children of these pa¬
triots. The schools and colleges have been and are
all the time entirely on the side of England and the
Union, and have done the work of destruction more
thoroughly than Cromwell's army.
The Irish are only a nation of humorists — at their
own expense; a people whose public conduct is a
great Irish bull. Listen to a story in point. A con¬
tractor was recently employed to build a wall for its
preservation and an old Irish ruin. He did so
and when the men who let the job came to examine
it, they saw the new wall built but no ruin inside.
When called on to explain, the contractor said that
he used up the old ruin as material for the new
wall. Like to this was the conduct of the leaders
of thought in the Emerald Isle. The highest Cath¬
olic Church authorities killed off the Irish language
fraught and full as it was of the letter and spirit of
traditions and influence of Catholicity, and they in¬
troduced the language of a foreign, heretical peo¬
ple — a language full of the infidelity and sneers of
Bolinbroke, Gibbon and Paine, as well as of the o¬
dor and essence of Protestantism. What an Irish
way of keeping a people Catholic, to fill their
mouths with a Protestant speech, their heads full
of the teaching of a Protestant literature, and their
bookshelves full of Protestant books! or five hun¬
dred years St. Patrick and his successors labored in
every province of human thought to make the Irish
the most Catholic people on the face of the earth.
These great and good men, as Dr. Windisch has
shown thoroughly purged the literature, law, poet¬
ry, legends and customs of tho Irish Gael of all
taint of paganism, made them instinct with soul,
spirit, flavor and color of Catholicity. But for the
last hundred years, quite another line of policy has
prevailed. The language of Darwin, Gibbon and
Swinnburne has been substituted for the language
of Columcille and Cormac of Cashel. Some of the
effects of this we have seen in the famine of '47, in
Keogh and Pigott, and in the myriad of Irishmen
and sons of Irishmen who all over the world are lost
to the faith of their fathers.
So at last they write in Irish newspapers of the
decay of ancient "Irish Characteristics" Why not
be plainer; why not say that the old purity, faith,
charity — the once especial virtue of the Irish, as the
late father Murphy called them, are dying out very
fast before "Ouida's" novels and other English pub¬
lications of the like nature. Why not admit that
there is a most ravenous consumption of the worst
and most heinous English reading by the young ge¬
neration of Irish boys and girls. Why not go farth¬
er and admit that new vices of the most un-Irish
character are creeping in among young Irish boys.
Old Irish characteristics are dying rapidly — yes in
truth they are, and no wonder. When you cut down
the trunk it is no wonder if the branches wither. You
cannot grow roses in Greenland.
Many years ago I took a note of how bundles of
newspapers containing the details of tho famous
"Baggot Will Case." were smuggled into "higher"
educational establishments for Catholics of both sex¬
es. I observed how "Ouida," "George Elliot," Miss
Braddon, Swinburne and such like began to conquer
the Irish Catholics. My American experience of life
and manners, enables me to forecast be result of
this teaching on my countrymen and country women
The Anglicization of Ireland if allowed to go on as
it has been doing for the last half century, will not
only destroy the Irish nation, but the Irish Catho-
lic faith and Irish moral greatness.
So sensible were the Romans of the influence of
language over national manners, that it was their
most serious care to extend with the progress of
their arms the use of the Latin tongue. The obser¬
vation of Gibbon is fully borne out by the experience
and course of policy of modern nations. The man
who thinks, speaks, writes and reads English will
be an Englishman in manners, customs and beliefs,
if some more potent foreign influences do not inter¬
pose. Now, say if there was anything in the life
and manners of the ancient Catholic Irish worth pre¬
serving, it can only be preseved in the embalming
casket of a cultivated Irish language and literature.
In looking over Irish history we find the Irish of¬
ten almost free, on the point of winning, but always
beaten in the end, and hurled back to deeper slaver¬
y. They were farther advanced towards freedom
and prosperity one hundred years ago than they are
today. Then they were richer in numbers and in¬
dustries. Fifty years ago we find them after great
and terrible misfortunes once more apparently far
advanced on the road to freedom — then another ter¬
rible collapse. Once again they have made consid¬
erable headway and and we ask them with breathless
anxiety, shall they win this time? What shall they
win, a nation is it? And shall they throw away
their prize as Brennus threw away Rome for gold
or some other bribe? But how did it happen that
Ireland became the prey of a few military adventu¬
rers? Because the Irish had the 'qualities of bad
citizens," as Momsen says in his famous chapter on
"The Celts," and from the consequences of these
qualities their other one of "good soldiers" could
not save them. As Thierry said of their Gaelic cou¬
sins: They have "much intelligence, but at the
same time an extreme volatility, want of persever¬
ance, aversion to discipline and order, ostentation
and perpetual discord, the result of boundless vani¬
ty" — How terribly true of our countrymen these o¬
ther words of Mommsen. But all their enterprises
melted away like snow in spring; and no where did
they create a great state or develop a distinctive
culture of their own." These very qualities meet
us at every step backward in the field of Irish his¬
tory. The same want of union, selfrestraint and per¬
severance, with the same inordinate vanity that will
