LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 shelf 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
/ 
 
 V 
 
 rULriT OB AT GUY. IRISH ELOQUENCE. 
 
 THREE LECTURES, 
 
 DELIVERED IN CHICAGO, 
 
 ST. PATEICK'S DAT, 1880, 
 
 Rt. Rev. JOHN HENNESSY, D.D., 
 
 BISHOP OF DUBUQUE. 
 
 Rt. Rev. JOHN JOSEPH HOGAN, D.D., 
 
 BISHOP OF ST. JOSEPH. 
 
 Rt. Rev. JOHN LANCASTER SPALDING, D.D., 
 
 BISHOP OF PEORIA. 
 
 BY BEQUEST OF 
 
 THE IRISH-AMERICAI COUNCIL OF CHICAGO, 
 
 IN AID OF 
 
 THE IRISH RELIEF FUND. 
 
 P. T. SHERLOCK, PUBLISHER, 
 CHICAGO. 
 
 1880. 
 
 ON 
 
-^h^ 
 
 ^^1 
 
 €\ 
 
 THE LIBRARY I 
 OF CONGRESS; 
 
 WASHlNGTOKt' 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by 
 
 P. T. SHERLOCK. 
 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED 
 
 BY 
 
 THE CHICAGO LEGAL NEWS COMPANY. 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 On p. 13, line 29, for Sillartin read St. Martin. 
 
 On p. 14, 4th line from bottom, for Levins read Lerins. 
 
 On p. 32, line 20, for annealed read sealed. 
 
 From the 2d line of p 39 to the i8th line of p. 40, in- 
 clusive, should be read following p 37, as it is a continua- 
 tion of the same idea. Its omission will connect p. 38 
 and the rest of p. 40. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 THE EVER FAITHFUL ISLAND. 
 
 ^^Rt. Rev. John Hennesst, D.D., 
 
 Bishop of Dubuque, Iowa. 
 
 THE SORROWS OF THE OLD LAND. 
 
 Rt. Rev. John J. Hogan, D.D., 
 
 Bishop of St. Joseph, Mo. 
 
 ENGLAND'S CRIME. 
 Rt. Rev. J. L. Spalding, D.D,, 
 
 Bishop of Peoria, Ilia. 
 
INTKODUCTOEY 
 
 In the fulfilment of a promise made in the preface 
 to The Case of Ireland Stated, viz: "should cir- 
 cumstances justify it, that work would be followed by 
 a series of other books of such sterling material as will 
 enable not only Irishmen in America, but also Hhose 
 of the manor born ' to learn something of a People and 
 a Land, who, though victims of the most adverse cir- 
 cumstances for centuries, have nevertheless filled no 
 small space in the world's history." 
 
 It is deeply to be regretted that more of such mate- 
 rial, as is herevvdth presented, has not been preserved 
 in permanent form. The cause is not very difiicult to 
 discover: Eloquence is the purest native gem Ireland 
 possesses — it is what Chief Baron "Woulfe said public 
 opinion in Ireland should be, "Racy of the Soil." 
 
 It loses much by transplanting from its native 
 tongue, yet will compare favorably with the best in 
 any language. Its striking peculiarities are that it is 
 spontaneous and extemporaneous, so that to preserve 
 and transmit the true utterances of an Irish orator, he 
 must be followed bv a faithful short-hand reporter. 
 
 (5) 
 
INTRODTJCTOEY. 
 
 'No written desk-essays would fill the place of a pul- 
 pit orator to the satisfaction of his Irish congregation, 
 and were it attempted, doubt would spread itself over 
 the minds of his hearers as to his nativity, if not even 
 as to his very" priesthood. 
 
 Eloquence was a quality ir'nirent in the natives of 
 Ireland even before the advent of St. Patrick. By the 
 study of the Gospels, the writings of the Fathers— 
 the ancient languages, and the inspiration of Christian- 
 ity, it was improved and extended; and — when the days 
 of Persecution and Penal Laws came — it was intensi- 
 fied by prescription, suffering and danger. It was in 
 those times when a liushed whisper went round the vil- 
 lage that the foot- sore and wearied man who had arrived 
 after dark [was the beloved "Soggartli;" — that he 
 would remain two days and nights in the neighbor- 
 hood to shrive them of their sins, and that at a certain 
 hour and place — then named — he would offer for them 
 the holy sacrifice of the Mass, in some dense wood, 
 deep glen, or mountain-pass, guarded by a faithful 
 sentinel on the hill-top to report the approach of the 
 British soldiery, or the still more merciless Protestant 
 yeomanry, who were wont to massacre them while at 
 their simple devotions. Here it was, in such scenes 
 as this, that the eloquence of the Irish church was nur- 
 tured and preserved — a rock or simple eminence serv- 
 ing for a pulpit — the only architecture the trees of the 
 forest — the only canopy that of the blue vault of 
 heaven; thus were the humble devotees of a persecu- 
 ted race admonished in the sweet accents of true Irish 
 
INTKODUCTOKT. 7 
 
 eloquence to " hold fast to the faith once delivered to 
 the saints," 
 
 "And look from Nature up to Nature's God." 
 
 It was during these dark and tronbled days, hiding 
 in the mountain fastnesses, sheltered in the deep de- 
 files, or wandering over the almost impenetrable bogs 
 of the island, that these devoted servants of God — 
 with a price upon their heads and a scaffold darkly 
 looming before their visions — while faithfully preach- 
 ing the faith they also preserved the native language, 
 its Poetry, and its Music, and transmitted it from 
 generation to generation with the God-like gift of elo- 
 quence, which to-day, after centuries of disaster and 
 gloom, are the living testimonies of a culture and civ- 
 ilization that ante-dates Christianity itself. 
 
 The Irish- American Council, representing the Irish 
 Societies of Chicago, with a most praiseworthy nna- 
 nimity, resolved to forego the gratification their mem- 
 bers and friends always have experienced in the mag- 
 nificent parade with which they have been wont to do 
 honor to Ireland's anniversary. It was instead deter- 
 mined to invite a distinguished Prelate of Irish na- 
 tionality to deliver a discourse in each of the tliree 
 divisions of the city, respectively. The resolve of the 
 Societies being communicated to the Right Rev. John 
 Hennessy, Bishop of Dubnqne; the Right Rev. J. J. 
 Hogan, Bishop of St. Joseph, Missouri, and the Right 
 Rev. J. L. Spalding, Bishop of Peoria, accompanying 
 an invitation to each of them to deliver a discourse on 
 St. Patrick's Day, the proceeds to be applied to the 
 
8 ' INTEODIJCTOKY. 
 
 relief of distress in Ireland, tlie project met the cor- 
 dial assent of eacli of the learned and patriotic prelates. 
 
 It is, to the Publisher, one of the most gratifying 
 actions of his life, that he has been partially instru- 
 mental in rescuing these noble discourses from oblivion, 
 and presenting them to the people in a shape that tliey 
 can preserve and hand their children to study as grand 
 lessons in Irish history; also as affording a lasting 
 memento to the members of the various Irlbh Societiea 
 in Chicago, of the self-abnegation they exhibited in 
 their noble efforts to relieve the distress of their breth- 
 ren " at home." 
 
 The Publisher. 
 
 Chicago, March, 1880. 
 
THE EVEE FAITHFUL ISLAND. 
 
 THE RT. EEV. JOHN HENNESSY,D. D. , 
 
 BISHOP OP DUBUQUE, 
 
 Delivered tlie following- discourse before an immense congrega- 
 tion, at the Church of the Holy Family, on West Twelfth Street, 
 near Blue Island Avenue. The Bishop spoke as follows: 
 
 My dear Brethren: The occasion that has brought 
 us together this evening is sad indeed. Ireland's suffer- 
 ing has touched your hearts, and you are here to do some- 
 thing to relieve it. Our national festival is robed in. 
 mourning; the grand processions are abandoned; the fes- 
 tive halls deserted; and our people are seeking comfort 
 in prayer around their altars. 
 
 1 am not here to depress your spirits more. I would 
 rather cheer you, and make you feel a pride in the Island 
 of Sorrow by pointing out to you her record of enduring 
 fame. 
 
 The first nation in God's Church is the land you love 
 so well. In fidelity to God and attachment to her faith, 
 she is without an equal among the nations of the earth. 
 Her services, her suffering, her sacrifices in the cause of 
 religion, amply attest this. 
 
 HER EECEPTIOIS' OF THE FAITH 
 
 and the development it received at her hands, are unex- 
 ampled in history. When the heavenly message was pro- 
 posed to her she listened attentively and respectfullv, 
 
 (9) 
 
10 LECTURE BY 
 
 and when satisfied of its origin, she received it at once 
 with gratefid reverence and gave it a home in her heart 
 of hearts. So far from offering violence to those who pro- 
 posed it, asother nations did, she could never do enough 
 to make known to them the depth of her veneration and 
 love of them. They were to her " Ministers of Christ and 
 dispensers of God's mysteries. " Her conversion is the 
 work of one man in sixty years. It is complete and 
 unstained by blood. Contrast the conduct of her Kings 
 and Chiefs and Clansmen with that of Rome's Rulers, their 
 officers and subjects throughout the empire, where 
 after the labors of the Apostles and Apostolic men con- 
 tinued without interruption for three centuries under the 
 very eye of Christ's Vicar on earth, the faith they would 
 plant is supposed to be so thoroughly washed out in the 
 blood of its professors that a medal is struck by Imperial 
 command to commemorate the extinction of the Christian 
 
 HER DEVELOPMENT OF THE FAITH 
 
 is as remarkable and exceptional as her reception of it. 
 Whatever head and heart, ample possessions, untiring 
 labor and great austerity could do for the growth and 
 grandeur of God's kingdom on earth, was done in holy 
 Ireland by all classes of her people with the most marked 
 success from the time of her Apostle's death to that of 
 her invasion by the Dane. Her many monasteries by 
 lake and river with their thousands of monks and rich en- 
 dowments in land and money; her famous free schools 
 scattered all over, to which foreigners flocked in ship-loads 
 from all parts of Europe, emigrants to Christ; her un- 
 doubted intellectual pre-eminence among her sister na- 
 tions for two hundred years and more, together with the 
 countless and signal testimonies of strangers to her wond- 
 rous learning and virtue, seem to justify the title of Is- 
 land of Saints and Doctors, which* her pupils from afar 
 gave her, amid the acclamations of Christendom. To be 
 a saint and doctor is to be on the very pinnacle of Fame's 
 temple; but one nation ever reached that eminence. 
 Let us next see what she did and suffered for the faith 
 
BISHOP HENNESSY. 11 
 
 of Christ during three great storms which assailed God's 
 church at different times with unusual fury, and threaten- 
 ed its destruction, namely : 
 
 EAEBAKISM, MOHAMMEDANISM, AND PEOTESTANTISM. 
 
 When Ireland commenced to send out to the continent 
 her missionaries and her scholars, and long before that the 
 country east of the Rhine, north and east of the Danube to 
 the Volga, and the White Sea, swarmed with countless 
 nations of savages, differing but little from our Indians 
 under many aspects. From this they pushed south and 
 west in their mission of ruin towards France and Spain 
 and Italy. They represented brute force, and were utter- 
 ly destitute of the first elements of civilization. They were 
 its deadly enemies wherever they encountered it. It was 
 to be feared that the Church could not escape the doom 
 of the State. 
 
 In the providence of God the barbarians were not only 
 to tear down the old Roman Empire, but were to form new 
 governments on its ruins. They were to take the place 
 of the effete society which they were destined to break 
 up — they were to be the rulers and peoples of a time that 
 was near at hand. If the Church were to survive in Eu- 
 rope, they mast not only be restrained in their hostility 
 to it, but must be made members of it. These consider- 
 ations and the danger of the arrival of the Mohammedan, 
 while society was yet chaotic, after the passage of the 
 barbarian, will greatly enhance the value of missionary 
 labor among these herce, untutored men. For three 
 hundred years no nation in Europe possessed a tithe of 
 Ireland's ability to serve God in this important field, she 
 enjoyed peace and prosperty — was as full of zeal as of 
 learning, and had twenty ecclesiastics for the one she 
 needed at home. 
 
 Not so the other countries of Europe. They were 
 unable to meet local wants. Spain was Arian till the 
 beginning of the seventh century, the north of Italy was 
 Arian, the south of Italy was not rid of Arians and Pagans 
 in the time of St. Benedict. Rome was in a state of 
 anarchy and a prey to factions in the days of St. Gregory. 
 
12 LECTUEE BY 
 
 The best elements of the Church in France were the 
 barbarian Franks and Burgundians, recent converts from 
 Fas:anism and Arianism. 
 
 ENGLAND WAS STILL PAGAN 
 
 in the beginning of the seventh century, and when she 
 ceased to be so it was chiefly through the labors of Irish 
 missionaries. If Ireland did nothing more for religion 
 among the barbarians than educate freely and thoroughly 
 in science and sanctity, the tens of thousands that came 
 annually to her hospitable shores out of the countries 
 infested by these savages, she would be richly entitled to 
 the first place among the great servants of God's Church 
 in this hour of peril. 
 
 But she did much more. She sent her holy monks, as 
 remarkable for zeal and austerity as for learning, in such 
 countless multitudes that Germany numbers among her 
 patron saints one hundred and fifteen (115) of them, 
 France forty-five (45), Belgium thirty (30), and England 
 (44). How suggestive are these statistics of Ireland's 
 stupendous work — what other nation can point to any- 
 thing at all like to them? And yet, surprising as are 
 these figures, and apparently extravagant, Father O'Han- 
 lon, of Dublin, at present engaged in writing the lives of 
 the Irish Saints, says they are an under-statement, and 
 that his work will prove them to be such. 
 
 What ! Nearly two hundred Patron Saints in Belgium, 
 France and Germ.any alone, all Irish, no account made 
 of their tens of thousands of scholars and converts — and 
 this an understatement! Pause, reflect. Look at the 
 young giant church of the United States. How many 
 noble men, priests and bishops of spotless lives and varied 
 virtues have labored for the past eighty years amid trials 
 and privations to raise up to God's honor this magnificent 
 structure. Many of them were voluntary exiles through 
 their love for souls. And yet not even one of these is authori- 
 tativeiy declared a saint, or perhaps ever will be, much less 
 a patron of a church or diocese. Consider this, and then 
 realize as best you can the number and character of these 
 Irish missionaries, whose lives were so holy, and virtues 
 
BISHOP HENNESST. 13 
 
 SO great that in spite of the prejudices of race, the rava- 
 ges of time, and our imperfect knowledge of their history, 
 we still find not less than one hundred and ninety (190) of 
 them chosen and honored as patrons by Germans, Bel- 
 gians and Gauls. Is it not clear then that no people in 
 Europe could labor among the barbarians as the Irish did, 
 and that were it not for their services, brute force un- 
 controlled would have ruined religion so completely and 
 made that ruin sufficiently permanent to open a highway 
 for the Mohammedan in his circuit of the earth. 
 
 Set down England's labors on the continent to Ireland's 
 credit; for the conversion of more than two-thirds of the 
 heptarchy was the work of her sainted sons. What lona 
 was to Scotland and the islands around it, that its colony 
 in Lindisfarne was to the greater part of England. 
 
 THE CKESCENT AND THE CROSS. 
 
 In one hundred years after the death of Mohammed, 
 his followers swept in victory over all the countries from 
 Arabia to France. They trampled down the Greek, the 
 Vandal, the Visigoth in Asia, in Africa and in Spain, 
 Arian barbarians offered them no more eifective resist- 
 ance than did Greek or Latin Catholics. If any power 
 on earth can withstand them, it will be the might and 
 valor of the Frank developed and animated by Catholic 
 faith. It is 732, and the soldiers of the Crescent, flushed 
 w^ith success, and holding, as it were, a prescriptive right 
 to victory, stand four hundred thousand strong in the 
 very heart of France. 
 
 The shrine of Sillartin, the richest in the country and 
 the dearest to the people, is marked out for plunder. 
 The face of the invader is northward ; the Straits of Do- 
 ver are not distant, and England can become an easy 
 prey. The Rhine is to the right and not very far off; it 
 leads up towards the Danube, and the Danube towards 
 the city of Constantine, for which Christian and Saracen 
 were to contend so long, as being the key to the West 
 and the bulwark of Christendom. Who shall stop these 
 proud and powerful conquerors, and how did Ireland con- 
 tribute to make them wheel around? Whatever Irish 
 
14 LECTUEE BY 
 
 missionaries and Ireland's pupils and converts did for re- 
 ligion in two hundred years among the barbarians, pagans 
 or converts, especially in France and Germany, where so 
 many of their saints are honored, to that extent is Ire- 
 land entitled to credit for the check given the Mohamme- 
 dans on the left bank of the Loire, as she Avould be to 
 any further resistance offered from the same source. This 
 of itself is a strong claim, such as no other nation can ad- 
 vance, and it becomes all the stronger if Catholic valor 
 were the need of the hour. But there is another stronger 
 still, more precise, more definite, founded on facts tliat 
 cannot be questioned, which I shall now very briefly state. 
 Remember, the battle of Tours was fought in 732. By 
 the victory gained there Charles Martel was regarded as 
 the savior of Christendom. Observe, also, that in the 
 early part of the seventh century the condition of the 
 Church in France was wretched in the extreme. Aus- 
 trasia and Neustria were contending for the mastery; 
 horrid crimes were of daily occurrence; the morals of the 
 people were dissolute, and, to crown these miseries, there 
 was simony in the sanctuary, and notorious laxity in the 
 monastic institutions. There was a deep moral wound 
 growing worse daily, and no physician at hand to cure it. 
 A reformation of the Catholic body there from head to 
 foot was sorely needed. The reformer came in the nick 
 of time in the person of 
 
 THE IRISH SAINT COLUMBAN, 
 
 who founded in the Black Forest of Sequania, not far 
 from the Jura, the famous monastery of Luxien, which 
 was destined to change the whole face of France. 
 
 Of this Abbey, Montalembert says that "it was the Mon- 
 astic Capital of all the countries under Frank government; 
 that the other Monasteries into which laxness and the sec- 
 ular spirit had but too rapidly found their way, yielded one 
 after another to its happy influence; that Abbots went to 
 it for the strength and light they needed, and that among 
 these was Conon, of the famous Monastery of Levius; 
 that the great Abbey became a nursery of bishops and 
 abbots, preachers and reformers for the whole church of 
 
BISHOP HENNESSY. 15 
 
 these vast countries, Kwdi principally for the two countries 
 oi Austrasia 2lM^ Burgundy; that it owed its influence 
 chiefly to the flourishing school established there by Saint 
 Columban; that it was 
 
 THE MOST CELEBRATED SCHOOL OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 during the seventh century, and the most frequented; 
 that it was the source of secular as well as sacred learn- 
 ing, and that monks and clerks, Franks and Burgundians, 
 old and young, crowded to it; that from the banks of lake 
 Geneva to the coast of the North Sea, every year saw the 
 rise of some monastery peopled and founded b}/ the child- 
 ren of Luxien, and that as a great center of Christian vir- 
 tues, light and life shone forth from it, brightening all 
 around with irresistible energy. 
 
 Observe well that the bishops, abbots, preachers and 
 reformers from the.abbey of Sequania, who labored for 
 the whole Church of the vast countries under the Frank, 
 labored chiefly for the two countries of Austrasia and 
 Burgundy. Now it happens that the handful of heroes 
 whom Charles Martel led to the Loire to meet the Mo- 
 hammedan, were Austrasians, nurtured between the 
 Meuse and Rhine; the very men among whom, for gen- 
 erations, the monks of Luxien labored most, and most 
 effectively — men who were indebted to the influence of 
 that monastery, not alone for all the learning they pos- 
 sessed, secular and sacred, but for their virtues as well, 
 as their fathers were before them. That institution was 
 the mould in which the souls of the Austrasians were cast 
 and tempered. They were Catholic to the core; they 
 were heroes in heart and hand, these graduates of Lux- 
 ien, and S23iritual children of St. Columban's sons. 
 
 These were the men that followed Martel to Tours, not 
 without chaplains, and who, near the shrine of St. Martin, 
 and the home for years of St. Patrick, amid memories that 
 were dear to them, though outnumbered ten to one, 
 dealt an insolent foe^who deemed himself invincible — 
 that tremendous blow which was justly believed to have 
 saved Christendom. The fame of the i^ustrasian is as 
 deathless as God's Church. Had the Irish St. Columban 
 
16 LECTUEE BY 
 
 no share in securing it? If the soul be the seat of valor 
 and the home of every virtue that nourishes it ; if teach- 
 ers of secular and sacred learning have aught of influence 
 in the growth and development of head and heart, and in 
 the formation of the character of the youths under their 
 care; if religion and its ministers can plant in the sor 
 the seeds of heavenly virtues, and among them that of 
 courage to defend one's faith, which animated by love 
 would bloom into heroism when a great occasion presents 
 itself — if its gifted chaplains can fire a noble heart on the 
 eve of a great struggle for Faith and Fatherland — then, 
 the monks of Luxien were on the field of Tours, and Irish 
 saints are not without a claim to the honor, and the fruit 
 of that day's victory. 
 
 Take away the Abbey of Luxien and its influence on 
 France as Montalembert describes it, and the fame of 
 Tours fades away from history. Do this and the Moham- 
 medan marches on through x\ustrasia and Neustria, and 
 whither-soever he lists with even less difficulty than he did 
 through Aquatania. Close Ireland's free schools for two 
 hundred years; let her monks stay at home during that 
 dark period, and then say how would religion fare be- 
 tween the Arian, the barbarian and the Mohammedan? 
 
 ENGLISH PERFIDY AND IRISH FAITH. 
 
 We now come to consider Ireland's lov^e of faith as 
 manifested in her long and wasting struggle against Pro- 
 testantism. When that great rebellion broke out it 
 swept victorious over Europe in fifty years. The Apos- 
 tacy of Henry the VIII of England, and its cause or occa- 
 sion, are too notorious to need comment. The nation that 
 he ruled bowed to his stubborn will and followed him in 
 his fail. He would have Ireland do the same. His jur- 
 isdiction there was confined to the Pale, a small cres- 
 cent hardly thirty miles square in area, in the vicinity of 
 Dublin. 
 
 A title to royalty, resting on a spurious Bull attributed 
 
 to Pope Adrian, could not be satisfactory to one who 
 
 " had repudiated the authority of Adrian's successor. He 
 
 desired a better one. Cunning agents and false prom- 
 
BISHOP HENNESSY. IT 
 
 ises secured it. Some Anglo-Irish noblemen and second- 
 rate Milesian chieftains, in a great court held in Dublin, 
 elected him King of Ireland and sent" to him to England 
 the ancient crown. The Chiefs, the Clans, the Lands, 
 the Church, were to enjoy as before all their rights, fran- 
 chises and privileges. Though all these rights were 
 guaranteed by Henry, and were to be made the basis of 
 a new code of laws for the government of Ireland, if his 
 promises were to be relied on, yet the faithless deceiver 
 was at that very time studying out Ireland's resources 
 and her geography, with a view to perfect his plans for 
 the plunder of her church and the confiscation of her 
 property. 
 
 Protestantism and Plunder are close relations in his- 
 tory, and nowhere nearer than in the biography of Henry 
 and his worthy successors. The chief means relied on by 
 Henry to make Ireland obey his will were 
 
 ROBBERY, C0XFISCATI0:N', AI^D THEIR ATTENDANT HORRORS. 
 
 His first step was to appoint heretical Bishops to Irish 
 Sees. If the Sees were outside the Pale they were es- 
 corted to them by soldiers who were to install and pro- 
 tect them. This was a wise precaution. To some of 
 those appointed even it did not seem sufficiently secure. 
 They thought it more prudent to govern their flocks at a 
 respectful distance. 
 
 The next step was to give up Ireland's church to whole- 
 sale plunder. That portion of it that lay outside the 
 Pale was distributed among adventurers and corporations, 
 let them take their portions when and as they could. Be- 
 sides colleges, pilgrimages and shrines, there were fifty 
 cathedrals and six hundred religious foundations to tempt 
 and whet the cupidity of these sacrilegious robbers. It 
 took them one hundred years to do their wicked work. 
 There was of course desperate resistance at every step, 
 and all the bloodshed and misery which such struggles 
 imply. Simultaneously with this went on the work of 
 confiscation or seizure of the land. This was preceded 
 by war, fierce and merciless, often by famine, pestilence 
 and all the savage cruelties and treacheries that could in 
 2 
 
18 LECTUEE BY 
 
 any way subserve tlie end in view, and was invariably 
 followed hy the most bitter religious persecution, by test- 
 oaths, oaths of supremacy, abjuration and conformity, and 
 by severe penal enactments. The fear of this persecution 
 which was sure to follow defeat, more than that of the 
 loss of his lands, made the Irish Catholic ever fight with 
 a valor born of desperation, and disposed him to bear any 
 hardships rather than submit to such a fate. 
 
 The work of Confiscation, twin-sister of Protestantism, 
 went with her hand in hand. In the time of Edward the 
 Sixth, son of Henry and Jane Seymour, King's and Queen's 
 Counties were wrested from the O'Mores and O'Con- 
 nors for having resisted the intrusion of a heretical 
 bishop, named Lancaster. This was the first extension 
 of the Pale. In the reign of Elizabeth the Earl of Des- 
 mond, after a long and bloody war, and a most dreadful 
 famine, produced by cutting down with the sword the 
 green crops, and driving off the cattle that the hated pa- 
 pist might be starved as well as sabred, cost a quarter of 
 a million acres of the best lands in Kerry, Cork, Water- 
 ford and Limerick, and this for having given hospitality 
 to Dr. Leverus, the recusant Bishop of Kildare. 
 
 THIS WAS BUT THE PRETEXT THE LAND AVAS THE OBJECT. 
 
 When it was won it was covered with carcasses and 
 ashes. 
 
 In the days of James the First six counties of Ulster, 
 containing over a million acres, were taken from the 
 O'Neils, the O'Donnells, the O'Dohertys, the McGuires 
 and O'Reillys, on the ground that they were intriguing 
 with Spain for an invasion of the country. And this land 
 was parceled out to Scotch adv^enturers, Presbyterians in 
 religion. Charles the First, son and successor of James, 
 stood in need of money. His viceroy, Wentworth, set 
 about procuring it for him. In the King's name and by 
 his authority he promised the Catholics who still held 
 property, certain graces for a consideration of one hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand pounds sterling. One of these gra- 
 ces was a confirmation by the crown of all titles that bad 
 been undisturbed for sixty years previous. This would 
 
BISHOP HENNESSY. 19 
 
 have secured to Catholics all their estates in a great part 
 of Leinster and throiio-hout Connauo-ht. 
 
 The money was paid; the graces were not given. On 
 the contrary, a standing army was raised. A packed 
 Parliament introduced a bill entitled "An act to inquire 
 into defective titles," and passed it. The inquiry was made 
 before judge and jury. The jurors who did not find for 
 the crown were fined and imprisoned. The judges re- 
 ceived four shillings on the pound of the value of the land 
 adjudged to the King. By this process Roscommon, 
 Mayo, and Sligo were very soon declared crown lands. 
 The King in a fair way, of course^ by act of Parliament 
 and legal process, got the people's lands after Went- 
 worth had given him their money. For refusing to per- 
 jure themselves by finding for the crown, the jurors of 
 Galway were fined four hundred pounds each, and the 
 sheriff who empanelled them w^as fined one thousand. 
 These are some of the ways that the lands changed hands 
 in Ireland — and the Scotch and English adventurers, pau- 
 pers at home, but thorough Protestants, became estated 
 gentlemen and landlords there. 
 
 Before the insurrection of 1641, organized chiefly by 
 Rory O'More, the grandfather of the gallant Sarsfield, 
 385,000 acres in Leinster, belonging to Lords of the Pale, 
 were confiscated because these gentlemen were suspected 
 of disloyalty. It is then that Rory said to the possessors 
 of his ancestral estates, who feared their loss as a conse- 
 quence of the rising, " keep my lands, but help me to 
 guard our ancient faith," and the people seeing his en- 
 ergy, determination and disinterestedness, cried out 
 
 "our teust is in god and our lady, and rory o'more." 
 
 The Cromwellians got eight million acres as a reward 
 for treachery, and butcheries like those of Drogheda and 
 Wexford. Attila and Genghis-Kahn were angels of 
 mercy compared with Cromwell and his subalterns, Coote, 
 Ireton, Jones, Waller, and the rabid dogs of v/ar they 
 hounded on so fiercely to tear the flesh of Irish Catholics, 
 and then take their property as the fruit of that sport. 
 
 More than a million acres of land were confiscated after 
 
20 LECTUEE BY 
 
 the fall of Limerick, in 1691, and given to German Pro- 
 testants called Palatines. This notorious robbery was in 
 open and shameless violation of the famous treaty of 
 Limerick. Patrick Sarsfield, sword in hand, surrounded 
 by near thirty thousand of the heroes who afterwards 
 made themselves an undying name in the service of 
 France, maddened at the thought of defeat, and anxious 
 to prolong the struggle, dictated carefully in Ireland's in- 
 terest the terms of that memorable treaty. Among other 
 stipulations he secured pardon and protection for all who 
 had fought for James or espoused his cause, and the full- 
 est freedom for Catholics in the practice of their religion; 
 religious liberty for Catholics and full amnesty for the 
 past were carefully secured by a studied phraseology in 
 that instrument which the hero of Limerick left his peo- 
 ple to shield them when he was gone. 
 
 THE SUREENDER OP LIMERICK 
 
 was joyful news to William, and the General who secured 
 it was" well rewarded. The treaty was welcome, too; it 
 closed a bitter war; brought a needed peace, and would 
 save men and money that would be found useful else- 
 where. Before the city was delivered a French fleet for 
 the Jacobite cause, anchored in the Shannon. The 
 fight might have been renewed and the enemy defeated, 
 but the treaty was made. 
 
 Irish faith was pledged to it, and the custody of Irish 
 honor was preferable to any victory. The honor of the 
 English nation. King, Queen, Parliament and people, was 
 pledged also to the faithful execution of every article and 
 clause of it; yet no sooner were Sarsfield and his brave 
 followers gone than it was disregarded. As soon as it 
 was safe to do so it was broken. Four thousand Catholic 
 gentlemen, for whom with the rest pardon and protection 
 had been secured, were proscribed, and more than a mill- 
 ion acres of their land given to the Palatines, of whom I 
 have already spoken. Perfidy and perjury did not stop 
 here. Savage hate was not yet sated. The Irish Parlia- 
 ment, which by the terms of the treaty was bound to rati- 
 fy the articles and increase Catholic privileges, did the 
 
BISHOP HENNESSY. 21 
 
 very contrary, by mutilating and changing the one and 
 manufacturing new oaths of abjuration as a substitute for 
 the other. Parliament after Parliament continued this 
 system of perfidy till in the first year of the reign of Anne, 
 1703, a bill was introduced entitled "An Act to pre- 
 vent the further growth of Popery," and notwithstanding 
 the powerful remonstrance of Sir Toby Butler against it, 
 his appeals to Royal and National honor and to the sanc- 
 tity of treaties, held sacred always and everywhere, and 
 respected even by savages, it passed. An act to prevent 
 the further growth of Popery, bristling with disabilities, 
 was English law for Irish Catholics twelve years af- 
 ter the treaty of Limerick. How well does the history 
 of that contract illustrate the character of the two peoples! 
 It is at once a witness to the highest honor and the basest 
 perfidy. 
 
 Pause here at the surrender of this old city. The year 
 is 1691 — more than a hundred years before O'Connell's 
 admission to the bar, and more than eighty before the 
 Declaration of American Independence. The sword that 
 guarded the rights and faith of the Irish Church for a 
 century and a half, is thrust into its scabbard by Patrick 
 Sarsfield, and fighting for the faith ends at Limerick. 
 Catholic Barristers as well as Catholic Soldiers will soon 
 be gone, till O'Connell's day, and the voice of Sir Tobey 
 Butler, one of the signers of the treaty, will be among 
 the last to plead passionately for the rights of his fellow 
 Catholics, or protest vehemently and indignantly against 
 any further oppression of them. 
 
 But pleadings and protests for a prostrate people never 
 received the attention of England. 
 
 INIQUITOUS LEGISLATION CONTINUED. 
 
 What is known as the Penal Code, was of slow growth; 
 it was the aggregate of enactments made during several 
 reigns, running through many generations. While Ire- 
 land had a sword it could be but partially and locally en- 
 forced; but now, that the Catholics were without land, 
 without a sword, without even a tribune to give voice to 
 their woes, it began to assume all the fearful proportions 
 
22 LECTURE BY 
 
 of its horrid character, or as Burke phrases it, to acquire 
 that vicious perfection so admirably adapted to impoverish, 
 degrade, and to even brutify, and there was no impedi- 
 ment to its thorough enforcement. Through its debar- 
 ing influence, in its most perfect form, three helpless gen- 
 erations w^ill have to pass. It will proscribe bishop, priest 
 and teacher, and leave the catholics destitute of all rights 
 whatever. To be a bishop or a priest in Ireland was a 
 crime in the eyes of the law, punishable by transportation 
 for life. To return was treason, the penalty for which was 
 hanging, disemboweling while yet alive, and quartering, 
 these quarters to be publicly exhibited for the edification 
 of all who may aspire to the ministry by which popery 
 was to be preserved. 
 
 So numerous were the disabilities, and so inveterate 
 the prejudices against the Catholics, that they not only 
 were without rights, civil, political, or religious, but their 
 children could not even learn a trade. Huguenots would 
 not have them as apprentices. The spirit of hate went so 
 far that complaint was lodged before the authorities in 
 Dublin against two of them ; one for being a drayman, and 
 the other a hack-driver. They would not have the right 
 to live — they would be utterly destroyed if their oppress- 
 ors did not need their services. 
 
 They were mere hewers of wood and drawers of water. 
 They were as helpless as women and children, and Swift 
 says that in his day you could tell a Catholic at a glance 
 by his forlorn appearance and his marked servility. 
 
 They were made poor by law, for their property was 
 confiscated and could not be regained — they were made 
 helpless by laio^ for they could neither acquire any rights 
 or hold any office — they were made ignorant by law, for 
 their teachers, secular and religious, were proscribed and 
 hunted. And yet poor and weak and ignorant, they will 
 have to preserve that faith that comes by hearing, is de- 
 veloped by teaching, and nourished by the grace of the 
 sacraments during that black night of eighty years that 
 fell on Erin with the fall of Limerick, and do that in spite 
 of that terrible code that had for the execution of its work 
 a vicious perfection. 
 
BISHOP HENNESSY. 23 
 
 All this is but rooting out an old religion. A new one 
 is to be planted. Protestantism must be rooted in the 
 soil out of which Catholicity has been so violently and so 
 cruelly torn. 
 
 THIS IS THE SYSTEM OF PLAXTIXG IT 
 
 that w^as adopted in Ulster. The land was divided into 
 parishes — some containing two thousand (2,000) acres, 
 some fifteen hundred (1,500) acres, and the rest one 
 thousand (1,000) acres. The minister presiding over 
 each parish received 120, 90 or 60 acres, according to its 
 extent — that is, six per cent, of the land was glebe. Be- 
 sides these lands, he received the tithes, accompanied by 
 the obligation of providing schools for the children. I need 
 not say that the schools were to be denominational; they 
 were to preserve the spirit of John Knox, and, perchance, 
 to improve it, as the religion was one of progress. Pres- 
 byterians and Puritans, tluguenots and Palatines, Brown - 
 ists, Methodists, Independents, etc., etc., were planted 
 well in the confiscated lands of Catholics. This was good 
 Protestant seed; it was the best that could be found any- 
 where; it was sought far and near; it was carefully 
 chosen; it was imported from Germany and France, 
 England and Scotland. 
 
 The Palatine, the Huguenot, the Presbyterian and 
 Puritan were the best article of the kind these countries 
 could produce. It would, indeed, be difficult to improve 
 on them. Among these were the men who under pressure 
 of conscience entered into a solemn league and covenant 
 to never cease till they would extirpate Popery in Ireland, 
 and theirs were the preachers who, with the whites of 
 their eyes towards heaven, fanatically invoked its blight- 
 ing curse on the head of the man who would not, in this 
 war of extermination, make his sword drunk with Irish 
 blood. To help the plantation of Protestantism in the 
 land, there were colleges like Trinity, which was itself the 
 offspring of confiscation, to educate ministers, to turn out 
 learned ^Dreachers like Usher and Ware, who would prove 
 to Catholics, if they had brains to understand the proof, 
 that the faith of their fathers was Episcopalian ism, that 
 
24: LECTUKE BY 
 
 the churcli of St. Patrick was tlie same as that of Henry, 
 and translate for them the Bible, the new rule of faith, 
 from the original Hebrew into the Irish language. 
 
 The best invention of all was a system of schools to 
 proselyte the children. 
 
 THERE WERE SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND FOR HOSTAGES, 
 
 children of Irish chieftains, to make them anti-Catho- 
 lic and anti-Irish. An O'Neil and a Desmond passed 
 through them. 
 
 There were Schools of Wards to take charge of Catho- 
 lic orphans, heirs to property, and of the estates com- 
 ing to them ; they were perverted. The females among 
 them given in marriage to poor adventurers who had in 
 some signal way shown their zeal for religion. There 
 were Charter Schools; Blue Coat Schools; Hibernian 
 Schools; Hibernian Marine Schools; schools for all classes 
 of children. All were richly endowed in land and money, 
 and supported out of the treasury whenever it became 
 necessary to do so. These schools were for Catholic chil- 
 dren exclusively, and no other schools for them were toler- 
 ated. Parliament knew their value; it was interested in 
 their success. To promote their efficiency it passed an 
 act incorporating a society, whose duty it would be to 
 superintend and inspect these schools, and see to it that 
 they did their work thoroughly; that is, proselyte Catho- 
 lic children. This, says Dr. Boulter, who procured the 
 Act of Incorporation, is one of the best methods we can 
 think of to convert, if possible, the young generation. It 
 surely was all that he claimed for it, and the wonder of 
 wonders is how it could fail to succeed. 
 
 Picture to yourself the contest between the two relig- 
 ions. On the side of Protestantism are the Crown, the 
 two Parliaments of Ireland and England, the army, the 
 navy, the bench, the jury, the powerful corporations, all 
 the offices, the landed interests, the universities, the 
 preachers, the proselyting school system, England and 
 Scotland, and, behind all, the treasury of the nations. 
 On the side of Catholicity, you see absolutely nothing but 
 a species of social Lazarus, writhing in agony, and, ap- 
 
BISHOP HENNESSY. 25 
 
 parently, expiring under the terrible torture of that Penal 
 Code. The Protestants have all the forces you can name, 
 while the Catholics are without any; they have been made 
 poor and ignorant by law, abject by oppression; without 
 land, without money, without rights of any kind, with- 
 out office, not only without a sword since Sarsfield's was 
 sheathed, or the voice of a tribune since Butler went to 
 his rest, but, worst of all, without a priest to baptize them, 
 or any one to teach them their prayers or a chapter of 
 the catechism, as far, at least, as law could effect it. 
 
 It is not easy to see how these poor people, fallen and 
 trodden down, could have preserved their faith genera- 
 tion after generation for eighty years, when all its de- 
 fenses were gone, and everything that could nourish or 
 produce it was outlawed. It would seem utterly incredi- 
 ble that they could have done so, if the fact were not be- 
 fore us. You will ask me, 
 
 HOW UNDER HEAVEN DID THEY SUCCEED IN HOLDING IT? 
 
 I shall try to tell you. Their faith was precious, and 
 their fidelity was famous; their faith to them was the 
 equivalent of heaven's happiness; it was the pledge of a 
 royalty and freedom that none could take away; whereas, 
 its loss would entail a misery and a slavery such as Eng- 
 land and her code, had they been ten thousand times 
 more cruel, covdd never have inflicted. These truths had 
 been burned into the nation's heart by the teaching of 
 St. Patrick, and the long years that had since elapsed 
 served but to deepen the impression. They prized their 
 faith then and loved it proportionately, and they had 
 from heaven free wills to hold it that no tyranny could 
 coerce. Its surrender would be apostacy, that is, infidel- 
 ity to Him who made them free indeed, and loyalty, es- 
 pecially to God, was the natural offspring of their honest 
 hearts, and the glorious heritage of their spotless history. 
 Under heaven, after these considerations, the faith was 
 saved in Ireland by the aid and influence of the Irish 
 abroad. Priests and soldiers, who never for a moment 
 lost sight of the terrible struggle in which they, whom, 
 they had left behind, were engaged. 
 
26 LECTURE BY 
 
 The wars in Ireland, and penal enactments, made these 
 men exiles. Every war closed with proscrij^tions and 
 persecution, as well as with confiscation, and the conse- 
 quence of these was a constant 
 
 EXODUS OP PRIESTS AND SOLDIERS. 
 
 Nineteen thousand soldiers left for France after the fall 
 of Limerick, commanded by their own officers. They 
 were known afterwards as the Irish Brio;ade. In three 
 years, from 1G96 to 1699, one thousand priests, secular 
 and regular, left Ireland, hunted by the laws that shot up 
 fierce and fast, when the soldier was gone, over the ruins 
 of the broken contract. The continent of Europe was 
 full of these men. They loved their country with intense 
 passion; they loved her all the more for her sorrow, and 
 their compulsory exile. To help her as best they could, 
 to make friends who might some day or other aid them 
 in their cherished project, to try to preserve from utter 
 extinction the ancient faith which the Arch- Apostate was 
 crushing out, seemed to be the sole purpose of the after- 
 lives of these exiles far away. 
 
 Let me speak first of 
 
 THE EXILED IRISH SOLDIER. 
 
 Abroad as at home, as a kind Providence would have 
 it, his sword was ever drawn in the cause of his religion. 
 
 The Protestant Reformation, as Burke observes, intro- 
 duced new interests into European politics. From the 
 time of that religious rebellion to the French Revolution, 
 its natural consequence, Europe was divided into two 
 camps — one Protestant, the other Catholic. On the Prot- 
 estant side were England, Holland, Prussia, Sweden ; on 
 the Catholic, Spain, Austria and the Italian States. 
 France and Bavaria were sometimes swayed by other in- 
 terests, from constantly adhering to the cause they should 
 have always advanced. It is no wonder, then, to find the 
 Irish soldiers in the service of those countries that repre- 
 sented the Catholic cause ; the}^ would be out of place 
 elsewhere. They fought for Poland under Field Marshal 
 Kavanagh, and protested with their blood against its in- 
 
BISHOP HENNESST. 27 
 
 iquitous partition. It was in Spain and France and Aus- 
 tria, tliey served principally. "Writing from Spain to 
 Dean Swift, Sir Charles Wogan, himself a general in the 
 Spanish service, complainingly says : " These southern 
 governments are very slow in advancing foreigners to 
 gainful preferments, and they never receive half the 
 distinction to which they are entitled. " 
 
 Yet such was the character of the Irish soldier, such 
 his innate sterling worth, that with his trusty sword and 
 gallant heart, he cut his way to the heights of fame, and 
 won even from prejudice the first honors in the gift of 
 kings. It would be bad policy not to recognize and re- 
 ward his merits. The O'SuUivans of Kerry, the O'Neils, 
 O'Donnells, O'Reillys of Ulster, theBlakes and O'Connors 
 of Connaught, stood high in Spain in the Army, Navy and 
 Civil Service. They were Admirals, Field-mashals, Gen- 
 erals, Governors of Islands, Ambassadors, Counsellors of 
 State, and were in the first ranks of the nobility as 
 grandees of Spain. The Browns of Limerick, the Kava- 
 naghs of Carlow, the Nugents of Meath, held similar ex- 
 alted positions in the service of Austria. What need I 
 speak of the honors they won in France, where in fifty 
 years, from the fall of Limerick to the day at Fonteno}^, 
 four hundred and fifty thousand of them laid dow^n their 
 lives to advance her cause. 
 
 Blenheim, Ramilies, Almanza, Namur, Enghien, as 
 well as Landen and Fontenoy, recall memories dear to 
 Ireland. Two thoughts were ever present to the mind 
 of the Irish soldier abroad: these were the agony of his 
 country and the cruelty of her torturer, and these served 
 not a little to call out his bravery, especially when he was 
 directed against the British ranks. Then the perfidy of 
 England came up before him, with all its base concomi- 
 tants. Remember Limerick ! was the cry it elicited. 
 Remember the broken treaty, the four thousand proscrip- 
 tions, the million acres, that ought to be sacred, given to 
 the Palatines, and the act to prevent the further growth 
 of Popery, that quickly followed. 
 
28 LECTUEE BY 
 
 REMEMBER LIMERICK ! WAS THE WILD CRY 
 
 of Sarsfield, as he chased the hated foe on the fatal field 
 of Lariden ; it was Lord Clare's, as he rushed at him up 
 the slopes of Fontenoy. 
 
 To humble haughty England, be it ever so little, to 
 weaken her power; to break but one finger of the iron- 
 hand that was pressing the life out of Ireland's heart; to 
 avenge in some way her cruel wrongs; to preserve the 
 manhood of those at home, who were mere hewers of wood 
 and drawers of water, and were day by day sinking into 
 servility; to perform deeds which the poet-priest would set 
 to numbers, and the wandering minstrel would proudly 
 sing for them in the fields and at the fire-side, and thus 
 keep alive their ambition by feeding it with their own glory 
 — "for one in name and one in fame are the sea-divided 
 Gael" — to win fame, and honor, and position for Ireland's 
 sake — for her use and benefit; to merit the esteem of 
 those who could and ought, and some day might, assist 
 her — these, and such as these, were the desires that filled 
 and fired the Irish soldier's heart, especially if the old 
 foe was before him; called out all the grand energies of 
 his nature, and gave to hereditary valor that sublime dar- 
 ing — that magnificent, irresistible dash, which shed 
 around the Irish brigade that halo of glory that has made 
 its name the equivalent of all that is gallant on battle's 
 bloody field. 
 
 They fought for faith, they fought against its ene- 
 mies, they were Crusaders, more than those who, putting 
 a red cross on their breast, went out to Palestine at the 
 bidding of St. Bernard. 
 
 If Ireland was to have priests they must be educated 
 abroad. The soldier felt this, and as he gave his sword 
 to the Church he lov^d, he gave of his pay, also, to secure 
 burses for her children. The exiled bishops felt it espe- 
 cially, and with the aid of Kings and Princes and Popes 
 they established Irish colleges all over Europe. There 
 were three such colleges connected with the great Uni- 
 versity of Lou vain e. 
 
 In these were congregated very many of the exiled 
 
BISHOP HENNESSY. 29 
 
 priests; they were places of refuge for new arrivals. In 
 them gifted pens and loving hearts left those famous 
 Irish manuscripts which are found scattered to-day- 
 through the great libraries of Europe, and without which 
 Ireland's history could not now be written. The annals 
 of the four Masters were written in Louvaine in the Irish 
 college of St. Anthony. 
 
 What brilliant names, and ripe scholarship, and sublime 
 patriotism these old colleges recall! What grand pupils 
 they sent forth; out of them came such men as Luke 
 Wadding, Oliver Plunket, Dominic O'Daly, Dr. Doyle, 
 and hosts of others. As Oliver Plunket, Primate of Ire- 
 land, who, on account of his religion and his position, for 
 there was no other cause, was hanged, quartered and em- 
 boweled alive on Tyburn Green, who on hearing his cruel, 
 causeless sentence, exclaimed, "thanks be to God," and 
 to the heartless judge who pronounced it, for a very small 
 favor granted him, said, " may God bless your Lordship." 
 One of these had endowments amounting to seventy 
 thousand (70,000) florins, equal to a million dollars to- 
 day, the pious, generous donations of the Irish abroad. 
 Priests, merchants, soldiers — they who had consecrated 
 life to the cause that was dear to them — thought but little 
 of the gift of money. There was an Irish college in Ant- 
 werp. Irish colleges vrere all over France, in Paris, 
 Rouen, Bordeaux, as well as in Douay and St. Omers. 
 Alcala, Seville, Salamanca, in Spain, had Irish colleges. 
 So had Lisbon and Coimbra, in Portugal. There were 
 two in Rome, the Irish house and St. Isidor's. They 
 were not alone seminaries for Ireland's priests. They 
 were points of re-union for the scattered race, centers of 
 organization and of concert of action. They were the 
 senate houses of the two divisions of the grand army 
 abroad. Here priest and soldier met to take thought to- 
 gether in regard to the next step in behalf of Ireland's 
 faith. 
 
 Luke Wadding, the famous Franciscan, the great patriot, 
 the virtual founder of the two Irish Houses in Rome, whom 
 Innocent, 10th, on account of his learning and virtues, 
 deemed worthy of the highest honor in his gift, the hat of a 
 
30 LECTURE BY 
 
 Cardinal. Dominic O'Daly, who, amid many other great 
 honors, was at the time of his death Bishop-elect of Coim- 
 bra, the primatial See of Portugal. Dr. Doyle, the illustri- 
 ous Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, the first name in learn- 
 ing, eloquence and patriotism among Ireland's prelates in 
 this century. These w^ere men of gigantic stature, intel- 
 lectually and morally. They would be great men in any 
 age of the Church, in any country. Any nation might 
 well be proud of them. They were poor Ireland's glory. 
 In their noon of fame they fondly called her mother and 
 honored her as such. In her deepest degradation she 
 lifted her head and pointed to them as her devoted chil- 
 dren. They were her staff in the hour of her need, a 
 light to her feet in the midnight of her ignorance; she 
 can never forget them. 
 
 Deep down in her heart of hearts she cherishes their 
 fondly precious memories. Cardinals in Rome, Primates 
 in Portugal, counsellors and royal chaplains in Spain and 
 elsewhere ; the Irish priests, like the Irish soldiers, rose to 
 the first ranks in their profession, and notwithstanding 
 the prejudice that always and everywhere exists, more 
 or less, against foreigners, yet so eminent was their merit 
 that there was no honor in the gift of Pope or King or 
 nation of which they were not deemed worthy. In the 
 lecture hall, amid a thousand inspiring recollections, with 
 what genuine eloquence did they labor to fill w4th their 
 own zeal and fire with their own spirit the young clerics 
 they were educating, who as priests would to-morrow or 
 the next day be smuggled into Ireland, sure to meet 
 there misery, and perhaps martyrdom. In the pulpit, 
 with Irish soldiers before them, blazing with the deco- 
 rations they had won on many a famous field, and the 
 native nobility around them, whose pity or indignation 
 might be worth something to the cause they loved, these 
 Irish preachers and professors, amid scenes like this, told 
 again and again Ireland's story, with a power and a pathos 
 that made strangers weep. 
 
 In their national celebrations, such as that of St. Pat- 
 rick's Day, which were religiously kept, and which were 
 ever honored, as they are still in Rome and Paris, by the 
 
BISHOP IIENNESSY. 31 
 
 presence of cardinals, bishops, the higher clergy and all 
 ranks of the nobility, Ireland's cause was still the theme. 
 With pen and tongue, in public and in private, at court 
 and in the college, they were ever recommending it. 
 Time and again, they persuaded the kings of France and 
 Spain, and the sovereign Pontiffs to contribute men and 
 money, and fit out expeditions to uphold it — expeditions 
 w^iich they themselves invariably accompanied. By their 
 eloquence and their writings and their personal influ- 
 ence, which was always great — for they were esteemed 
 wherever they were known — they made friends for Ire- 
 land, won sympathy for her, and created a public opinion 
 in her favor so strong that England's representatives 
 encountered it in the Catholic Courts of Europe, and 
 complained of it bitterly. They wrote prayer-books and 
 catechisms for Ireland's use which they had printed in 
 their colleges. Smugglers from the Channel Islands ran 
 into Ireland's bays with priests and vestments, chalices, 
 mass-books and catechisms, and shot back again as speed- 
 ily as possible with cargoes of young recruits, candidates 
 for fame in the service of benefactors. 
 
 These were the men — these Irish abroad — priests and 
 soldiers, who, in the providence of God, saved Ireland 
 from heresy and her people from the condition of the 
 savage, and preserved their faith pure and strong during 
 that black night of bondage, of more than eighty years 
 duration — from the fall of Limerick to that ever memor- 
 able day when Burgoyne surrendered, and the news from 
 Saratoga took a leaf from the penal code and loosed for 
 ever the binding of that execrable volume. 
 
 With a mission similar to that of these men — would 
 we had their spirit to fulfill it. Heirs of their fame, proud 
 of their career, let us keep before our eyes the bright 
 example they set us. They saved their brothers' souls 
 and counted not the cost ; let us at least nourish their 
 bodies. We should do more. 
 
 If our relations to Ireland differ not from theirs, neither 
 do our duties. If any nation on earth deserves our grati- 
 tude and the best services we can render, consistent with 
 our duties here, that nation is Ireland. If any people on 
 
32 ' LECTIJKE BY 
 
 earth should aid her in a just cause, we are they pre- 
 eminently; for it is to her invincible a.ttachment to truth 
 we owe our faith and all that it implies. She might have 
 left us a different legacy, and the wonder is that she did 
 not. It is no exaggeration to say in the light of history 
 that she is probably the only nation in God's church that 
 would have passed faithfully through the terrible trial to 
 which she was put. 
 
 We have better opportunities and greater facilities of 
 aiding her than our brethren of the eighteenth century 
 had. We live in a land baptized into freedom, under a 
 government where 
 
 FREEDOM FOR ALL IS THE PEOPLE's FAITH, 
 
 and where any other teaching would be deemed heretical, 
 we are millions; we are proprietors; we are citizens hav- 
 ing rights as well as duties; we are not foreigners; we 
 are'at home here; we are of the people; we have grown 
 into them by birth and marriage; we breathe their spirit; 
 we stand by them in the day of sacrifice; our common 
 devotion to this government has been annealed in blood. 
 Let the pen of malice write as it will, we are part and 
 parcel of the great republic, loyal to it even unto death. 
 We have here the ear of freemen; we can tell them 
 Ireland's story, which they know yet but very imperfect- 
 ly; we can make known to them her wrongs, her suifer- 
 ings in the cause of liberty; we can contradict falsehood; 
 we can counteract the influence of bribery; w^e can 
 scourge calumny; we can prevent the free press of a free 
 people from espousing the cause of despotism, or being- 
 made its hirelings; we can make friends for Ireland; we 
 can make converts to her cause; we can create and direct 
 public opinion in her favor and nourish it into strength, 
 till it speaks with a voice that must be respected; we can 
 make the enemies of freedom unpopular here by the 
 mere exposure of their wicked schemes; we can assert 
 Ireland's rights, and help her in many ways to win them 
 back without injury to any one, and with much honor to 
 ourselves. Young generations of Ireland's grandchildren 
 are growing up in millions around us; w^e can bring them 
 
BISHOP HENNESSY. 33 
 
 up in the love of liberty, impart to them our spirit, and 
 make them proud of their forefathers; we can leave them 
 our traditions as a most precious legacy to be carefully 
 preserved and faithfully transmitted. In acting thus we 
 trench on no right and violate no principle. 
 
 If we do not these things, and more than these, we are 
 ungrateful and degenerate, and the Irish abroad of the 
 eighteenth century, bishops, priests and soldiers, whom 
 we so much admire and to whom we look with pride, 
 would, were they here, stigmatize our recreancy and in- 
 dignantly disown us. 
 
 Hitherto we have not deserved this censure, and judg- 
 ing from the movement now going on amongst us, and 
 the spirit that pervades it, and the confidence with which 
 Ireland looks to us, and the thanks and blessings she is 
 daily sending us, it is not likely that we will deserve it 
 soon. 
 
 Packed Parliaments and the confiscation of the lands 
 gave birth and vigor to penal enactments in Ireland — 
 these preceded and produced the total loss of liberty. 
 The recovery of these lands by her people, and a parlia- 
 ment in which they will be fully represented, are indis- 
 pensable to her complete emancipation. Till she has 
 these she will not and ought not to be satisfied, for free- 
 dom will not be secure. Till she has the sources of lib- 
 erty and whatever is required to protect them, agitation 
 will and ought to continue. 
 
 Let me very briefly direct your attention to one more 
 point in Ireland's religious history. 
 
 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THIS COUNTRY 
 
 is in a very prosperous condition. Its growth in the last 
 two generations is unprecedented. Take away from this 
 Church for the last fifty years the sons and daughters of 
 Ireland, and their descendants, their constant and gener- 
 ous contributions, the influence of their sturdy faith and 
 rare virtues, and what would be left to us? What would 
 become of our grand cathedrals, colleges, convents, great 
 parochial churches and their congregations? It would be 
 easy to make our directory, to number our Bishops and 
 3 
 
34: LECTURE BY 
 
 institutions, and estimate the wealth of the Catholic 
 Church in the country. Go back forty years and draw a 
 line around Chicago. Drive outside it all the Catholics of 
 Irish birth or descent then in the city. Destroy old St. 
 Patrick's, and St. Mary's, and all the monuments of their 
 faith and zeal till not a trace remains. Forbid the chil- 
 dren of that race to ever after pass that line. Shut them 
 out completely. Keep them out, every one. Let no in- 
 fluence of theirs, material or spiritual, have aught to do 
 with the growth and character of your city since, and 
 then let me ask you what would the Catholic Church in 
 Chicago be to-day? 
 
 It is quite probable, no such institution worth speak- 
 ing of would be within its limits. Chicago, as regards 
 Catholicity, might be a blank, or very nearly so, destitute 
 as well of German, Bohemian, French, as of English- 
 speaking catholics. What may be said of Chicago may 
 be said also of other cities, and of states, teo — of Illinois, 
 of Iowa. The conclusion to which these reflections tend 
 is this : The Church in the TJnited States is in great 
 part at least the work of Catholic Ireland. Take away 
 her services, remove her hand, and the beautiful structure 
 on which we look with pleasure crumbles or disappears. 
 
 I know that catholics of other nationalities have settled 
 here, labored here, and made great progress, especially 
 the Germans ; but I may be allowed to doubt if, in the 
 supposition I have made, they could have stood their 
 ground and kept their faith against all the opposing in- 
 fluences in a nation of forty or fifty millions. Suppose 
 they did succeed — which is not possible — then their 
 church would be a foreign element, devoid of influence 
 on the nation. I know missionaries of other countries, 
 natives and foreigners, have labored here with great zeal, 
 ability and success. I could name many such. Some of 
 them the most remarkable missionaries of this genera- 
 tion in any country ; but I would confidently ask these 
 what they, with all their zeal and all their talent, could 
 have achieved here for the church without the Irish 
 element and its influences. Is it not that element that 
 brought most of them out to do missionary duty; stood 
 
BISHOP HENNESSY. 35 
 
 around them in faith and love; made them zealous and 
 eloquent, and gave effect to their preaching- by being 
 present at it and practising it? What progress has the 
 church made, in the Southern States for instance, where 
 Irish immigration was only a rivulet ? The smaller that 
 stream is in any part of the country, the more puny and 
 unprogressive is the church. 
 
 What can be said of the United States may be said also 
 of Canada West, Australia, Scotland, and even of England. 
 There are not to-day within the fold of Christ more zeal- 
 ous, hard-working Bishops and priests, or more devout and 
 edifying people than are to be found in these countries. 
 The churches in them are full of life and vigor and bud- 
 ding promise. They are oar pride to-day and our hope 
 for the morrow. Ireland can claim all these as her chil- 
 dren or her converts. She can claim that portion of the 
 Catholic Church wherever found that uses the English 
 language, and make good her title to a share in its fame 
 and services. 
 
 THAT ENGLISH LA:N^GUAGE IS A MIGHTY PC WEE. 
 
 England's unbounded empire, her commercial enter- 
 prise, the intellectual vigor and activity of her people, the 
 immense wealth that works her printing-presses, might 
 alone suffice to have made it such. Three hundred years 
 ago that great language became the messenger of heresy 
 and the maligner of Catholicity. Proud and powerful 
 England in the zenith of her fame as an apostate nation, 
 and in the fury of her fanaticism might be supposed to 
 have said, "Behold my language, how grand its destiny 
 and glorious its mission. My merchants, my soldiers, my 
 sailors, my colonists, my missionaries, my tourists will 
 carry it to the ends of the earth, and with it my religion, 
 the religion of intellectual freedom, of emancipated hu- 
 manity, which is evermore indissolubly united to it; I will 
 plant it everj'where and water it in the interest of human 
 liberty and progress. 
 
 " My literature, my history, my works on science, my 
 theologies, every print issuing from my press shall ex- 
 pose the hideousness of Popery, and make it abhorred 
 
36 LECTURE BY 
 
 everywliere as it is here at home. My language will be 
 spoken not only in my colonies, in Asia, Australia, and 
 America, but throughout Europe. The interests of trade 
 and the requirements of travel will give it currency in 
 Paris, in Rome, in Madrid, and Vienna. The young na- 
 tions that will have made it their own will add to its 
 vigor — they will help to diffuse it. Sustained and im- 
 pelled by all these forces and the interests they beget, 
 and the influences they embody, it will and must ad- 
 vance from conquest to conquest, from one point to an- 
 other, till in its victorious and irresistible course it shall 
 not in time leave the Papacy a foot of undisputed terri- 
 tory even in Italy. In that happy day oaths of suprem- 
 acy and abjuration will be required no longer. The Eng- 
 lish language and its religion. Protestantism, will have 
 peaceable possession everywhere." 
 
 This bold prophecy did not seem rash — it has been 
 partly verified, and to all appearances it might have been 
 fulfilled to the letter, had not God's word been pledged 
 to the contrary. He promised that the gates of hell, and 
 consequently England's power, should not prevail against 
 His Church. But how shall His promise be verified? 
 How will His word be made good? How will the influ- 
 ence of that language for error and against truth be 
 checked or counteracted? Who will contradict in the 
 English languao;e the falsehoods and calumnies uttered 
 and published in that language for the benefit of those 
 who understand no other? 
 
 Who will propose the truth to English audiences and 
 write it for English readers, and who will chastise Eng- 
 land's misrepresentations and calumnies with her own 
 weapon? Who will break up the unholy alliance of a 
 great language with foul heresy, pronounce their union 
 invalid and dissolve it? Not France, nor Spain, nor 
 Italy. They cannot. England or Scotland will not. 
 What visible means are there on earth to make God's 
 promise to his church good? Who shall rise up and serve 
 Him against the powers of darkness? In His chu^-ch 
 there is but one nation whose language is English, but 
 one nation that can champion truth and combat error in 
 
BISHOP HENNESSY. 37 
 
 it, and that nation is Ireland. But what can she do 
 against England? England is rich, and powerful, and 
 learned. She has colleges, and universities, and printing 
 presses. She has legislatures and armies, and the empire 
 of half the earth. 
 
 IRELAND IS BUT A WRETCHED PROVINCE OF HERS, 
 
 under her iron heel — weak, broken, poor, illiterate- 
 Against England she would be Lazarus against Dives — 
 David with his sling going to meet Goliath — as a fisher- 
 man against the Caesars. Grant it; these are encouraging, 
 prophetic comparisons. Ireland is the very Nazareth of 
 the promised land. Can any good come out of it? She 
 is poor, weak, illiterate. Be it so. So were the Apostles. 
 These reproaches are but so many reasons why God should 
 choose her for a great work, why He should call her out 
 to redeem His promise. It has entered into the Divine 
 plan of redemption to show strength in infirmity, to 
 choose the weak in order to confound the strong. The 
 weaker the force employed the more Divine becomes the 
 victory. Ireland is poor, weak, illiterate; yes, but she is 
 honest, she is true, she is grateful, she is faithful, she 
 has moreover a will that no tyranny can bend; an attach- 
 ment to truth, to God, that no sword can destroy and no 
 bribe can sever. Neither in her regenerated nature nor in 
 her Catholic history, is there to be found any element of 
 apostacy. She has the patience that can bear all things. 
 She has graduated with distinguished honors in the 
 first university of sufi'ering this world has ever seen — 
 that which England built for her and over which she so 
 ably presided. She is chaste, she is fruitful; where her 
 children fall, there they are multiplied. Obedient as 
 Abraham, and ready for any sacrifice, she has inherited his 
 blessing. These are the qualities that God regarded when 
 He called her, and left Himself no choice besides her. 
 She obeyed the call, made no complaint or remonstrance, 
 relied on Him who gave it. She undertook to break 
 down England's monopoly of the English language in the 
 service of error. She exorcised that language, emanci- 
 pated it in part, wedded it to faith, divided its service 
 with error, and made it a messenger of truth as well. 
 
38 LEOTCJKE BY 
 
 Now glance at her career from the day of her conver- 
 sion to the present time. 
 
 SHE EECEIYED THE FAITH AS NO I^ATION EVER DID, 
 
 quickly, generously, as became a noble people, without 
 shedding one drop of the blood of those who brought it 
 to her. For 300 years she consecrated to its service her 
 wealth of intelligence and love and her other possessions, 
 so abundantly that she gave it an expression in her fam- 
 ous free schools and monasteries such as it received no- 
 where else. She became the seminary of Europe ; the 
 garden of God's church, the nursery of Apostolic men, 
 the Island of Saints and Scholars. 
 
 During this time she sentout her missionaries, Bishops, 
 Priests, Monks, Scholars. She threw out her lines along 
 the Rhine and Danube. She massed her forces where 
 they were most needed — in the wildest districts, where 
 they would the more readily encounter the barbarian, to 
 shear him of that savageness that threatened destruction 
 to the Church, as well as to the Empire. 
 
 Of the services then of her own children alone and 
 their exalted virtues, three hundred patron saints are the 
 testimony of the barbarian and the enduring monument. 
 
 Her son, St. Columban, and his companions, founded a 
 monastery in Luxien, which changed the face of France 
 and formed the souls of that warrior band, that felled 
 Mohammedanism on the field of Tours. The victory of 
 that day and the eloquence of Montalembert have made 
 famous forever that monk and his monastery. For two 
 hundred years and more of bloody struggle against the 
 fierce Scandinavians, her children fought for Faith as 
 well as for Fatherland, and at length saved themselves 
 from that horrid Danish Paganism by their memorable 
 victory on the plains of Clontarf. 
 
 For 400 years she fought almost incessantly the Anglo- 
 Norman invader, and in spite of his bravery, cupidity, 
 and the support of England, she held her lands, except 
 the Pale, and even there she collected tribute. She held 
 her laws, her language, and her usages, and by doing so 
 preserved her grand old Qeltic character, which by its 
 
BISHOP HENNESST. 39 
 
 sincerity and fidelity, made her proof against Protestant- 
 ism. She gave it a Divine mission on the lips of her 
 children. She saw the ruin the English language was 
 making in God's church. She saw it with sword and 
 bible advance from conquest to conquest, sweeping over 
 the earth like Mohammed. Ireland's children went out 
 with the English-speaking churches, to meet and check 
 them, if possible. They went into England and Scotland 
 as day laborers, and settled there. They came as steer- 
 age passengers, in crowded ships where fever was raging, 
 to the United States, and the survivors made homes here. 
 They went in convict ships, to Australia, branded as crim- 
 inals; their crime in most cases being the same as that of 
 Oliver Plunket — a religion worse than any form of Pagan- 
 ism. 
 
 Everywhere they built churches, and schools, and col- 
 leges, and seminaries; they multiplied priests and sup- 
 ported them, regardless of their nationality; they gave 
 the most promising of their own children to the service 
 of the sanctuary, and thanked God for having accepted 
 them; they dotted the lands on which they dwelt with 
 seminaries as the Irish exiles of an earlier day did the 
 countries of Europe; they made education for the priest- 
 hood free as it was on the brighest days of their young 
 church, and in the wildest hour of barbaric fury they 
 shared their last dollar and last shilling with God's Church, 
 no matter how much they needed it or how hard they 
 earned it; yea, they often give it entire, and put their 
 trust in Providence. For fifty years or more they have 
 contended thus in defense of truth in the English lan- 
 guage against the arch-apostate of the nations and its co- 
 adjutors, and the result of that unequal contest is under 
 the world's eye — ^yes, it stands before its astonished gaze 
 to-day in Europe, Australia and America. We are yet 
 but in the morning of the battle, and behold, the ranks 
 of the enemies are breaking, and their leaders are every- 
 where deserting the bad cause. The children of Ireland 
 have held their ground, they have multiplied, they have 
 been re-enforced from the enemy, and the grand army of 
 which they were the nucleus — compact, well-organized, 
 
40 LECTURE BY 
 
 officered — having but one mind and one heart, one par- 
 pose, is now evidently moving to new and greater con- 
 quests or victories. 
 
 If St. Patrick has any claim to the fame and services of 
 the Irish people in the cause of religion for having con- 
 verted them; if, after 1400 years the Catholic Irish are 
 still called his children, then is Catholic Ireland entitled 
 to a share in the glory of every conquest made and to be 
 made in the cause of truth by the English language, for 
 it was she in latter times converted that language from 
 heresy — exercised, emancipated it, sanctified it, made it 
 the messenger of truth united to Catholicity, gave it a 
 Catholic character and a Catholic organism — that is an 
 Irish Catholic body through which it could speak and 
 work at a time when no other nation in the Church of 
 God could have done so — then, too, should the Catholics 
 speaking that language now and in time to come be called 
 her spiritual children. 
 
 When that storm came, had she lost her character 
 and the possessions which secured it? What could have 
 saved her from the elasticity of the Norman, who could 
 tear down images for Edward, go to confession with 
 Mary, and fall on bended knees to take the oath of su- 
 premacy at the feet of Elizabeth? 
 
 During 150 years of famine and pestilence, cruelty and 
 treachery, confiscation and plunder, and all the miseries 
 of relentless war, she defended the faith, sword in hand, 
 against Protestant England; fought for it up and down 
 from Kinsale to Derry, and from Derry to Limerick, till 
 nothing was left her but that dripping blade, and even 
 that she put up in victory. 
 
 For 80 years after the surrender of Limerick, bound 
 hand and foot with penal chains as the veriest malefactor, 
 she lay as helpless as a culprit pinioned for execution, 
 while the priest-hunter sought and the gibbet awaited 
 those who would assist her. Even then she was true as 
 ever. More true, if possible, to Him she so much resem- 
 bled. During a century and a half, until the French revo- 
 lution, her gallant brigades fought for Holy Church on 
 fields of fame all over Europe against the representatives 
 
BISHOP nENNESSY. 41 
 
 of heresy, — England, Holland, Prussia, — and whilst they 
 were doing so, her Bishops and Priests, poor exiles also, 
 were dotting the continent with colleges, and sending 
 priests and martyrs to the church at home. 
 
 Look at her career from the beginning to the end of it. 
 Examine her record at every period of it in all the countries 
 through which she has passed; consider also her new mis- 
 sion in the nineteenth century, to which I have a little 
 before alluded, her fidelity to it, and the success that has 
 crow^ned her labors, and then say whether she is or not 
 entitled to the proud distinction I have claimed for her, 
 of being the most faithful nation that ever entered the 
 Church of God. 
 
 As a memorial of their services in the cause of France, 
 Louis the Sixteenth gave the Irish Brigade, before dis- 
 banding it, a banner with this inscription: 
 
 1692-1792. 
 Sem.2)er et uhiqueJideJis. 
 
 Such a testimony to her services has Ireland merited 
 from the King of Kings. 
 
SOREOWS OF THE OLD LAND. 
 
 LECTURE 
 
 IJJ" BEHALF OF THE POOR OF IRELAND, AND ON THE 
 CAUSES OF THEIR POVERTY. 
 
 Delivered in St. John's Church, Chicago, March 17, 1880, 
 
 By the right REVEREND JOHN JOSEPH HOGAN, D. D., 
 
 BISHOP OF ST. JOSEPH, MO. 
 
 I TVAS hungry, and you gave rae to eat; I was thirsty, and you 
 gave me to drink; naked, and you clothed me; sick, and you came 
 to me. — St. Matthew, xxv, 85. 
 
 I have come a long way to address you on this occa- 
 sion, and must confess that before setting- out I hesitated 
 much whether to come or not. In the first place, I feared, 
 as I do now fear, that I might disappoint you somewhat 
 in the matter or manner of my discourse, and for this 
 reason I wished that somebody else might have been 
 chosen to address you. In the second place, it was not 
 easy for me to think of leaving home to celebrate else- 
 where the festival of St. Patrick, which my own people, 
 wdio are for the most part Irish people, regard as their own 
 festival, and claim that I ought to celebrate it with them. 
 Now, however, that I have come in answer to your kind 
 invitation, and as I know with the good will of my own 
 flock, who heartily join you in whatever you do to honor 
 St. Patrick, may I not hope, as you honor me so much by 
 your presence, that you will also favor me with your kind 
 attention and your generous indulgence for whatever I 
 may say to you? 
 
 i will remark at the outset that I have noticed to-day 
 (42) 
 
LECTUKE BY BISHOP nOGAN. 4:3 
 
 THE ABSENCE OF MUCH OF THE DISPLAY 
 
 usual on the celebration of St. Patrick's festival. I have 
 not seen the long lines of men on parade, wearing 
 regalia, and carrying banners of green and gold emblaz- 
 oned with cross, and shamrock, and harp, and sunburst; 
 the steady tread of the men keeping time to the beat of 
 drum and sound of music. For my part, I could wish 
 that the festival of St. Patrick, while never wanting any 
 solemnity due to its religious character, should also be 
 never wanting some public demonstration of joy of a na- 
 tionpj character, in order to do just honor to the great 
 hero and the great patriot, as well as the great saint, who 
 conquered a nation to the cross of Jesus Christ, and im- 
 bued that nation with a love of justice, a spirit of liberty, 
 and a strength of faith that shall never die so long as the 
 knell of time remains unsounded. 
 
 But we cannot be always rejoicing. It is not easy, 
 even if it were becoming, to attempt to be joyful and sad 
 at the same time. There is a time for everything. And 
 the present has more for us than a tinge of sadness. There- 
 fore it will be pardoned us if on the present occasion there 
 be more tears than smiles. But in truth we have no time 
 for tears or smiles. What we have to do is work — work 
 of an earnest character. The work before us is to help 
 the poor. We will think of what they suffer, and why 
 they suff"er, that we may help them the better. We will 
 think what charity is, and why we should do charity, in 
 order to be the more liberal. Charity is my theme, and 
 the wrongs that in this case make charity necessary. 
 
 The Bishop having here explained the duty of Christ- 
 ian Charity, and the accountability on the Great Judg- 
 ment Day of those who refused to do charity, proceeded 
 as follows: What would you have to say for yourselves 
 if reminded that you were on one occasion in affluent 
 circumstances, that you were possessed of money and 
 wealth, that you lived in a country where plenty 
 abounded, that you had whereof to eat and drink and 
 wear, and be comfortable and enjoy yourselves, and that 
 in the midst of that plenty and enjoyment there came to 
 you 
 
4:4: LECTURE BY 
 
 A WAIL ACROSS THE SEA, 
 
 from another land, and that land not a strange land to 
 you, where the people, who were your own people, were 
 hungry, and cold, and naked; without employment, with- 
 out money, without means of support — a million of 
 them on the verge of starvation; they called out to you 
 for help, they stretched their hands toward you implor- 
 ingly, and you did not hear their cry; you closed your 
 ears to their appeal; you turned your back upon them 
 in the hour of need. Oh, if this be to be said of you, 
 how can you hope to escape the terrible penalty which 
 x\lmighty God has already, in His justice, pronounced 
 against such unmerciful doing? 
 
 You know that, speaking of the poor who are your own 
 poor, and in alluding to that country beyond the sea 
 which is not a strange country to you, I am directing 
 your attention to that which I may call our mother-coun- 
 try, which gave most of us birth, and where were born 
 many whose descendants are scattered far and wide 
 throughout this country and every country under the sun. 
 "We are pleased to call that mother-country of ours by a 
 name that distinguishes it very appropriately from all 
 other countries, — that name is the Emerald Isle. And, 
 taking emerald for what it is admitted to be, as the most 
 beautiful and pleasing of colors, there is no country so 
 beautiful and pleasing to see as Ireland, which is perpet- 
 ually clothed in the brightest and most unfading of green. 
 Look where you will in that country, in any season of 
 the year; along the valleys and meadows; over the hills 
 and knolls; up the sloping sides of the mountain, where 
 the breezes play, and where the flying clouds overhead 
 reflect the moving shadows as things of life; everywhere, 
 even to the tops of these mist-covered mountains, is 
 spread out before you the thick, velvety surface of moss 
 and grass, and shamrocks and daisies. Everywhere, over 
 the pointed rocks, the towering clifl"s, the beetling steeps, 
 the castellated walls, the tall round towers, the abbey 
 ruins, the weird cromlechs, this soft mantle of green is 
 spread, covering sharp edges, clothing bare surfaces with 
 
BISHOP HOGAN. 45 
 
 moss, and. ivy, and wall flowers, over wliicli are spread in 
 Nature's wild but beautiful blending berries, of ebon and 
 red, and flosses of white, and pink, and blue. From the 
 modest daisies and sweet-smelling* primroses, with the 
 violets and blue-bells that cluster at your feet, to the 
 smiling lilacs that skirt the lawns and fringe the glades, 
 how many charming varieties of flower, and shrub, and 
 tree, meet the eye and spread their perfumes on the air. 
 The holly, the laurel, the yew, the boxwood, the bayleaf, 
 the arbutus, the laburnums, with their wealth of flowers; 
 the hawthorns of white and pink, that scatter their tiny 
 blossoms on the plain; the rich yellow furze, that deco- 
 rates the marshes, and bogs, and crags that would be 
 otherwise unsightly and bare. And where do the birds 
 sing sweeter? Where do the brooks run clearer and 
 more limpid? Where are the waters brighter that roll 
 against the beach and dance and sparkle in the bays? 
 Nowhere, indeed, in the world has Nature lavished her 
 charms more profusely. Nowhere, never again can your 
 eyes behold on earth a place to love as well. 
 
 But why is it that this country, which is so beautiful, 
 and withal so salubrious and fertile, is also so afflicted? 
 Why is it that 
 
 THE CKY OF WEONG, AND IjSTJURY, AXD SUFFERINO 
 
 reaches us so constantly from that one country, and in a 
 manner exceptional to every other country? I answer, 
 first, that in the light of God's Holy Revelation, excep- 
 tional blessings and mercies are often attached to excep- 
 tional suff'erings. Our blessed Lord has said: "Blessed 
 are the poor;" "Blessed are the meek;" "Blessed are 
 they who mourn;" " Blessed are they who suffer persecu- 
 tion." (St. Matthew, v. 3.) And His apostle tells us 
 that " Tribulations work for us above measure exceed- 
 ingly an eternal weight of glory." (II Corinthians, iv., 
 17.) God's ways are not as our ways. His ways extend 
 far beyond our narrow horizon into another life, where, 
 if we could fathom His merciful designs, we would see that 
 what we call sorrows are, in reality, but the beginning of 
 joys. He chose as His own lot in life the way of poverty and 
 
46 LECTUKE BY 
 
 sorrow, and pain. He was born poor. He had not whereon 
 to lay His head. His life may be said to have been noth- 
 ing from first to last but suiFering-. In doing the will of 
 His Heavenly Father He bore the hard conditions which 
 the wicked of this world, who were in wealth and power, 
 had imposed upon Him. And, such as liis life was, such 
 also was the life of those He specially loved and called to 
 be His own. His ever Virgin Mother, whom His heav- 
 enly grace had made blessed among women, was the one 
 He loved most. And j^et she shares. He allows her to 
 share, with Him, His suffering, his poverty. His self-denial, 
 the contempt He receives. His cruel treatment from oth- 
 ers. She suffered in her feelings what He suffered in the 
 body. As He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with 
 infirmity, so she was the Mother of Sorrows, whose soul 
 the sword did pierce. 
 
 Such, also was the life of the Apostles and Martyrs whom 
 our Lord called to share His sufferings with Him, in 
 order to share with them His reward. And if, in the won- 
 derful ways of God's love, these sufferings here below of 
 Mary and her Divine Son, and His Apostles and Martyrs 
 be connected with that higher glory above as their reward, 
 to which Jesus was, for His obedience, by His Eternal 
 Father exalted, and wherewith Mary and the Apostles 
 and Martyrs were for their patience and humility crowned, 
 surely, we cannot be wrong in attributing to nations the 
 respective meeds due to them for faithful, patient suffer- 
 ing. If it be, as indeed it is laid down in God's Word as 
 a condition, that we must suffer with Christ here in order 
 to be glorified with Him hereafter (Romans viii, 17), 
 surely there is no nation that can be the equal of that one 
 in heavenly glory which for patience and humility and 
 fidelity to Christ here below has not only maintained a 
 foremost place among nations, but has stood far above 
 the highest ranks. May we not, therefore, fully hope, 
 firmly relying upon God's Word, that to Ireland espe- 
 cially among the nations, these words have a consoling 
 application. " You now, indeed, have sorrow, but I will 
 see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy 
 no one can take from you. " (St. John, xvi, 22.) Yes, that 
 
BISHOP HOGAN. 47 
 
 faithful Rachael of ours shall not always weep. God 
 above hath heard her cry. " Thus saith the Lord : Let 
 thy voice cease from weeping, and thy eyes from tears, 
 for there is a reward for thy labor, there is hope for thy 
 last end, and thy children shall return to their own bor- 
 ders. (Jeremiah, xxxi, 16.) 
 
 No one can say that the sufferings of Ireland can be 
 attributed to her people for any want of compliance on 
 their part with the Divine command given to all people 
 to earn their bread in the sweat of their brow. This 
 American nation and every nation under heaven cannot 
 but bear honest testimony that the Irish people are 
 
 A HAED-WOEKIXG, INDUSTEIOUS PEOPLE, 
 
 who lay to heart, as much as any people in the world, the 
 good ajDOstolic injunction, " If any man will not work 
 neither let him eat." (II Thess., ii, 10.) Before I pro- 
 ceed to give you some general facts, if any be needed in 
 proof of this, let me adduce one or two examples out of 
 many that were related to me, or that came under my 
 observation during a visit of some months in Ireland last 
 summer. I met a gentleman from New York traveling 
 in Ireland, who told me, briefly, the following story: "I 
 landed in Dublin from Liverpool, and, towards nightfall, 
 as I was walking along one of the principal streets, a poor 
 man, apparently a mechanic, came up to me and asked 
 me very respectfully, but pitifully, for a little money to 
 help him to get a supper and lodging that night. He 
 told me that he came from the City of Limerick, which 
 was more than 100 miles away, where his home was, and 
 where he had left his wife and children. Failing to get 
 employment in Limerick, and finding his means dwind- 
 ling down to the last, he left with his wife and children 
 one shilling and sixpence, which was all he had except 
 what was barely necessary to pay his fare to Dublin. 
 And when he arrived in Dublin he wandered up gmd 
 down in search of employment, but could get nothing to 
 do. His own sad condition, and the sad condition in 
 which he had left his wife and children, to whom he 
 could not now return or send any aid, seemed to affect 
 
48 LECTUEE BY 
 
 him very much. I gave him a little to help him for that 
 night, and at the same time took down in my note-book 
 the description of where he lived in Limerick. Next day, 
 having occasion to go to Limerick, and in order to find 
 out whether that man had told me the truth or not, I 
 went to the place as he had described it where he lived, 
 and, surely enough, I found there his wife and children 
 in the distressed circumstances he had told me of. Their 
 little stock of provisions was gone. Money they had 
 none. Whether they could get credit for one meal of 
 victuals was doubtful. Charity was all they could look 
 to for help. And the case was worse, for they were con- 
 tinually thinking of the poor man who had gone out to 
 provide for them, not knowing but he, too, was then in 
 need and without home or employment. God help the 
 honest, industrious poor of Ireland, of whom there are 
 many such there, who would be glad to work for a living 
 if they could get it to do! " 
 
 The next case I will cite came under 
 
 MY OWN OBSERVATION. 
 
 I was walking one evening along the seaside at Tra- 
 raore, in County AVaterford, when I saw a woman coming 
 toward me on the strand, her head bent down. As she 
 approached, I noticed that she had a large basket upon her 
 head, which was fastened by hay ropes across her fore- 
 head and around her shoulders. Her gait was tired-look- 
 ing and slow. Her feet were swollen from the cold and 
 flattened from walking on the sand and gravel. Her gar- 
 ments, which were coarse and worn, were dripping wet 
 from the sea and rain. I saluted her respectfully. She 
 returned the salute with equal respect, and, though load- 
 ed with the basket, made an effort at a courtesy, which 
 showed she was no stranger to good manners. In the 
 course of conversation I learned the following from her: 
 
 " I live here in Tramore, and am trying to make a liv- 
 ing by gathering cockles. I have been out all day on the 
 strand gathering these cockles you see in the basket on 
 my back, which now I am taking to town to sell if I can. 
 My husband is out of employment these five months, and 
 
BISHOP HOGAN. 49 
 
 cannot get a day's work or wages. He is now away from 
 home looking for work, and with very little chance of 
 getting it. My little children, of whom I have six to care 
 for, are at home with no one to mind them but them- 
 selves. It is at home I ought to" be minding them and 
 taking care of their clothes, to send them to school. But 
 now they have no clothes that are worth caring or mend- 
 ing. The little rags they have are not fit to go anywhere. 
 And before getting them clothes even, I must get them 
 something to eat first. I have been out all day gathering 
 these few handfuls of cockles. Other years twice as many 
 could be gathered in an hour. And now that I have a 
 few after my day's labor, I do not know, when having 
 taken them to town, whether I can sell them or not, money 
 is so scarce. Father," said she, turning towards me and 
 recognizing me as a priest, "I wish you would say a mass 
 that our blessed Lord may be pleased to send us more 
 cockles and send us better times, that the people may be 
 able to buy them. I have been here all my life," she 
 continued to say; "I was born here. I will die here. I 
 would like to stay here if I could make a living here. 
 But I cannot go elsewhere. The rich can go where they 
 please in this world at least. But the poor must stay where 
 they are, and suffer." 
 
 This good woman went on to town to sell her cockles, 
 and I continued my walk. In about an hour, when re- 
 turning, where the outskirts of the town extend towards 
 the bay, whom should I see but this same woman, her 
 basket now empty, her head now erect. As she ap- 
 proached her little house, or cabin rather, which stood on 
 the hillside just over the bay, out ran several little 
 children, barefooted' and bareheaded, with red cheeks 
 and white curly hair, their hands stretched out towards 
 their mother as they ran to meet her. And oh! think of 
 their joy ! think of her joy ! when, as she stooped down 
 to embrace them, she took from under her arm a bundle 
 of provisions, out of which she took several loaA^es of nice 
 white bread, and put these loaves into the hands of her 
 little ones, with which they ran before her into the house. 
 Thank God, said I, they have a mother — a good, faithful 
 4 
 
50 LECTUEE BY 
 
 mother who will not let them suifer ; a fond, devoted 
 mother, who, at the risk of her life, in exposure to wet 
 and cold, will work honestly and decently for her chil- 
 dren, and save them from even one pang of hunger. And 
 what at that moment were my feelings of respect for the 
 humble poor and reverence for their sacred homes. I 
 had seen Buckingham Palace and St. James' Palace and 
 the Towers of Windsor ; I had seen the Queen of Eng- 
 land escorted through the grand streets of her great city; 
 I had seen Italy's Queen Margaret in her royal gondola, 
 amid a fleet of gondolas in the Grand Canal of Venice, 
 and received in that gay city at the Palace of St. Mark, 
 where 20,000 people greeted her; I had stood before and 
 been in the fairy palaces of Versailles and the Luxembourg 
 and the Tuilleries, and was introduced there to the Em- 
 peror and Empress of the French nation in the days of 
 their greatest splendor; yet great as these personages 
 were, high in the clouds and bright as the battlements 
 and gilded domes of their palaces were, there was a pal- 
 ace, in my estimation, more sacred, a dome which, though 
 humble, lifted itself higher toward heaven and stood 
 nearer to God; it was that lowly cottage by the seaside, 
 where a grander than a queen dwelt, where the purest of 
 domestic affections abounded, where the highest of vir- 
 tues shone, — virtues and affections so often found genu- 
 ine and true in the poor whom the rich despise or forget, 
 — the poor who are the truest friends and best supports 
 of country and creed, and who, by their constant fidelity 
 to duty, do honor to religion and to human nature. 
 
 THE IRISH ARE POOR. 
 
 Alas, it is true! Let them, however, but get a fair 
 chance to work for their living, and it will be soon seen 
 that they can help themselves, and help others also. 
 They have already done manfully on every kind of pub- 
 lic improvement and private enterprise. They have ta- 
 ken a large share in building cities, digging canals, con- 
 structing railroads, bridging rivers, tunneling hills, filling 
 valleys, delving in the mines, hammering in the work- 
 shops, clearing the forests, plowing the lands. When 
 
BISHOP HOG AN. 51 
 
 they could not get work to do at home, they went to for- 
 eign countries to work. They came here to the United 
 States. They went to Canada. They have gone to Aus- 
 tralia, to New Zealand, to the Cape of Good Hope, to the 
 East and West Indies, to Caffraria, to Zululand. In 
 former times they established themselves in France and 
 Spain, in Belgium and Austria, where their descendants 
 are to this day conspicuous in ecclesiastical and social, as 
 well as in civil and military life. Even England, the na- 
 tion that has persecuted them, they have befriended to 
 the extent of countless millions of pounds sterling by the 
 labor of their strong shoulders and stout arms. England 
 called them lazy and good-for-nothing. In fact, England 
 has been always defaming them. And in reply to this 
 taunt they went quietly over to England and took pos- 
 session of the English workshops, where they have out- 
 worked the English themselves. It is a fact that at this 
 day the great sinews of labor in London, Liverpool, Bris- 
 tol, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, and Glasgow are 
 furnished by Irishmen, to say nothing at all of what Ire- 
 land has done for the ungrateful sister isle in every one 
 of her great naval engagements and her stubborn land 
 battles, in which no Irishman ever struck his colors or 
 flinched an inch before a foe. Ireland is poor, but 
 
 WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF HER POVERTY? 
 
 Oppression is the cause. Oppression makes her poor. 
 She is a conquered nation. And her conquerors have not 
 now, and never had, for her any sense or feeling of justice 
 or humanity. Oppression deprived the Irish people of 
 the right to possess and practice their religion, of the 
 right to hold property, of the right to hold office, of the 
 right to serve on juries, of the right to vote at elections, 
 of the right to receive an education, of the right to pro- 
 tection of law, of the right to sue or plead in their own 
 defense. The only right oppression allowed them for a 
 long time was the right to be shot or to be hanged. ^ And 
 there was enough of that. It cut down the population of 
 Ireland at one time to less than a million people. But, 
 thank God, the Irish people grew up again. In fact, the 
 
52 LECTUEE BY 
 
 Irish as a fresh, young, strong, vigorous, virtuous, stami- 
 nal race, will grow up and spread out as fast as any race 
 so long as there is a trace of them left. It was bad 
 enough to seek to root them out by extermination, but it 
 was worse to defame them. Oppression, to justify itself, 
 has traduced their character and falsified their history. 
 It has been always so with conquering nations. The Pa- 
 gan maxim " Vas victis," has written the history of many 
 a fallen nation, as Ireland's history has been written by 
 England. Oppression confiscated the lands of the Irish 
 people, because they would not forswear themselves to 
 God and country. How would you like it yourselves 
 were a usurper to rise up here amongst you, or an over- 
 whelming foreign power invade your country and having 
 defeated you in battle, would confiscate your lands and 
 property, giving a county to this General, and a county 
 to that General, a town or city to another General, and 
 that these, having new titles from the usurper, would de- 
 clare your titles forfeit ; would tell you that what were 
 heretofore your houses and lands were no longer your 
 houses and lands, but that they would leave you posses- 
 sion of them, provided you would pay them a certain an- 
 nual sum per acre, to be fixed by themselves, and further- 
 more, that you would say and do politically and religious- 
 ly as they would bid you, and that you would be ready at 
 all times to do any service they would require of you, 
 however menial it may be. You know that oppression 
 such as this is enough in a short time to blight the hopes 
 of any people. And the wonder is that there are any 
 Irish people left alive, or that the few of them who sur- 
 vive are not degraded to the level of the Zulus, the Hot- 
 tentots, or the Maori es. It was oppression such as this 
 that made the ex-Premier of England, the Hon. Mr. 
 Gladstone, cry out the other day at a public meeting : 
 "I cannot forget the abominable conduct of England 
 towards Ireland these many generations." 
 
 There is one abomination I cannot pass by without call- 
 ing it to your special attention. That is 
 
BISHOP HOGAN. 53 
 
 THE LAND SYSTEM OF TENANCY-AT-WILL, 
 
 whereby the tenant-farmer can be ejected at any time 
 from his holding by the landlord at his discretion, and 
 which compels the tenant-farmer to pay over to the land- 
 lord the whole fruit of his labor except so much as is 
 barely necessary for him and his family to drag out a 
 miserable existence. I do not want to wrong the land- 
 lords. I say they are entitled to nothing less than jus- 
 tice. But justice says " The laborer is worthy of his 
 hire." (St. Luke, x, 17.) The landlords do not labor. 
 As a class they do nothing for their country but to cor- 
 rupt and demoralize it. They might invest their money, 
 as the good people of other countries do, in industries 
 that would benefit themselves and give elevating employ- 
 ment to the idle. But they do no such thing. They de- 
 moralize the people by setting them the bad example of 
 idleness and dissipation. They prefer to keep hounds, 
 ride fast horses, gamble, bet, drink, and spend their time 
 at the club-houses, to say nothing at all of doings of 
 theirs of a less reputable character; all of which must be 
 paid for by their poor, hard-working tenant-farmers, who, 
 for their pay, must be content to live within the mud walls 
 and on mud floors of dirty cabins, and with such food as 
 rotten potatoes, sour milk, cabbage-leaves, and the bones 
 of old cows, too old to sell, or infected with distemper. I 
 conscientiously declare, in the name of God, from this 
 sacred pulpit, and by virtue of my sacred duty as preacher 
 of the Word of God, that, in the interest of justice, relig- 
 ion, and humanity, the high lords of the British Empire 
 ought to let go some of their wealth in order to raise up 
 somewhat the poor of that Empire from starvation and 
 degradation. Must it be said, or may it not be otherwise 
 than this, that 
 
 THE MAINTEXAlSrCE OF LOEDS NECESSAEILY MEANS THE 
 CEEATION OF BEGGAES? 
 
 I have a few words more to say yet on the particular 
 injustice under discussion. When the tenant-farmer im- 
 proves his land, as he occasionally tries to do, by drain- 
 
54: LECTUEE BY 
 
 ing, leveling, manuring, and sub-soiling, and by building 
 houses, erecting fences, and planting trees on it, the land- 
 lord or his agent hears this, and comes to the tenant and 
 says to him: "This is very good land you have here, — 
 much better than I thought it was, — and you have a bet- 
 ter house to live in than you formerly had ; but this land 
 is too cheap; I have let it to you too cheap; I must raise 
 the rent." And up the rent goes, so that the poor farmer 
 has now to pay not only for the value of the land as he 
 got it, but also for the value of the improvements he him- 
 self made on it. Evidently he wrongs and punishes him- 
 self by working, and it would have paid him better to 
 have remained idle. Or, suppose a tenant-farmer keeps 
 a horse for himself to ride, or that he has something bet- 
 ter than a common dirt-cart for his wife and children to 
 ride in to mass on Sunday, or that he sends his son to 
 school to prepare him for a profession in life; the land- 
 lord or his agent hears this, and comes down from the 
 "great house" to the poor man's cabin, and says to the 
 poor man: "You have a nice horse to ride, and your wife 
 and children dress very well; and your son is going to 
 become a great scholar; but, you see, your rent is too 
 low. I see that I can get a great deal more rent out of 
 the land." And up the land goes, to the last penny it is 
 able to pay. And now the poor man sees he had better, 
 from the beginning, remain in rags, and dirt, and igno- 
 rance, since this is what he and his posterity are doomed 
 to by the laws of the country they live in. Or, suppose 
 election day is coming, that the tenant farmer has a vote, 
 and that the landlord, wanting a man elected to office 
 who is no friend to the tenant, sends down his agent to 
 the tenant with commands to vote for that man, which, if 
 the tenant fails to do, or if he vote for another man, and 
 that the landlord hears it, out the tenant goes from his 
 holding, with full permission to go to the poor-house, or 
 to Zululand, or to Van Dieman's Land, as he chooses. 
 
 NOW THAT SYSTEM HAS TO BE CHANGED; 
 
 it has to be changed in the interest of humanity. Hu- 
 manity, religion, and justice denounce it is as a cruel, 
 
BISHOP HOGAN. 55 
 
 barbarous, tyrannical system. It is a system that means 
 the extermination of a people and the depopulation of a 
 country. It means that a people have no right to live 
 where they were born, and that their native country, 
 and the country of their race, is to be given up to wild 
 beasts and the fowls of the air. That system is an im- 
 possible system. How can the tenant-farmer of Ireland 
 pay £3 (that is f 15) an acre per annum for land, while 
 land equally as good is free in France, in Belgium, in 
 Germany, and in the United States, and while numerous 
 railroads and ocean steamships, with tonnage of immense 
 capacity, carry the produce of one country into another 
 at prices merely nominal? If an acre of land in Ireland, 
 as side by side with the acreage of other countries where 
 land is free, has any rentable value — that is to say, if it 
 be able to do more than pay those who till it for fair 
 wages and the fair living that men of the same class get 
 in other countries — let that value be assessed, not by the 
 landlord, who is no fair judge in his own case, but by 
 sworn, impartial, disinterested valuators. And let the 
 landlord receive such rent value, giving therefor a title in 
 perpetuity to the tenant to secure him in his interest and 
 in the improvement he makes. Or, what is better and 
 fairer still for both parties, and more for the interests of 
 the country, let the landlord sell, or be compelled to sell, 
 his interest to the tenant, receiving therefor just payment, 
 in time and manner as may be in the power of the tenant 
 to do. These are 
 
 THE REMEDIES FOR IKELANd's POVERTY, 
 
 and' until they are applied there will be famine in Ire- 
 land. When they shall have been applied pauperism will 
 cease in Ireland. When they shall have been applied, 
 and not till then, will Ireland, and the world besides, 
 begin to forget what England's ex-Premier persistently 
 and remorsefully calls " England's abominable conduct 
 towards Ireland for many past generations." And is it 
 not the interest and duty of America, once herself an 
 enslaved country, to sympathize with those who are yet 
 enslaved, to aid them in their poverty, to advocate for 
 
56 LECTUEE BY 
 
 them those measures of justice and reform they need ; 
 and, if these measures be denied them, to hold out the 
 assurance that the strong-, free hand that smote tyranny 
 before will be ready again, if occasion offer, to strike for 
 Liberty, and to drag the enslaved out of the mire and 
 slough in which they are immersed? 
 
 These are the causes why there is famine in Ireland, 
 and why the people of that country are obliged to stretch 
 out their hands towards us, and to ask us for God's sake 
 to help them. They are there in regiments; in ragged, 
 famished, squalid regiments. A million and a half of 
 people are absolutely poor, and of these fully three- 
 quarters of a million are starving. The poor-houses are 
 full, the cabins by the roadside and in the lanes of the 
 cities are full, the pathways from house to house are 
 straggling full, beggars here and beggars there, crawling 
 and tottering along, crying and weeping in the cold and 
 rain, crawling into and out of their dirty cabins; their 
 bare, long hands, gaunt faces, bare feet, matted and dis- 
 heveled hair, patched and putrid garments, presenting a 
 revolting appearance. Oh, God of infinite mercy and 
 tender compassion ! why is it that so many of Thy own 
 chosen poor are so abject ? Hast Thou not become man 
 Thyself ? Why dost Thou suffer Thyself in human flesh 
 to be so weak, so vile, so abject, so trodden under foot, 
 so despised of men? Oh, Jesus, thou art there in the 
 poor. Thou lurkest in these rags. Thou art sick in this 
 cabin. Thou art hungry, and thirsty, and naked ; and 
 Thou askest us, poor as Thou art, to visit thee. Oh, the 
 day will come, my brethren, when He will say to you — 
 He who is now in these poor — " I was hungry, and you 
 gave me to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me to drink; 
 I was naked and you clothed me; I was sick, and you 
 came to me." My dear brethren, I do not ask you to 
 go to these poor of Jesus Christ. The journey would be 
 too long for you. And it would be too much, perhaps, 
 for your tender feelings of mercy and compassion to 
 bear. 
 
BISHOP HOGAN. 57 
 
 HAVE YOU EVER SEEN THESE ABODES OP THE POOR? 
 
 Look in. There is no fire on the cheerless hearth. It is 
 cold, bitterly cold. Cold the March wind blows there by 
 :^he wild seaside. The cold wind screeches through the 
 thin roof, through the rent w^all, through the broken door. 
 There is no taper to give light in that cabin — no, it 
 would reveal too much the misery and despair within. 
 But there are little children there. Weak, ragged little 
 children, crying for bread. And there is no bread for 
 them. There is no one to give them bread. The father 
 has just been taken out to the church-yard. His grave 
 is newly made there. No one save One above knows 
 how he struggled; but his struggles are now over. He 
 has left one behind him in that cabin. The mother is 
 left. She is lying on a bed of straw. The little babe is 
 at her bosom, vainly seeking there the fountain of life; 
 but that fountain is dried up; hunger has been gnawing 
 at her heart, too, and cold — the cold of death — is fast 
 creeping over her limbs; she has naugnt to give but tears, 
 and fast they are falling on that little babe and. those lit- 
 tle orphan children. But you need not go to help her. 
 There are there, good Sisters of Charity, Sisters of Mercy, 
 the Presentation Nuns, the St. Vincent de Paul's Socie- 
 ties, and the devoted clergy. They will go to the bed- 
 side of the poor for you, and, in your name, and especially 
 in the name of God, will apply your alms for you. There- 
 fore, "according to thy ability, be merciful, If thou hast 
 much, give abundantly. If thou hast little, take care 
 even so to bestow a little willingly. For thus thou stor- 
 est up to thyself a good reward for the day of necessity." 
 (Tobias, iv., 10.) Your alms will have great efficacy for 
 you Avith God. They will do more than treasures of gold 
 laid up for you. (Tobias, vii, 8.) They will deliver you 
 from all sin, and not let your soul go into darkness. 
 (Tobias, iv., 11.) They will insure that God will not let 
 you want (Prov., xxviii., 27), and that He wdll repay you 
 seven times what you gave Him. (Eccles., xxxv., 12.) 
 
ENGLAND'S CRIME. 
 
 THE RIGHT KEV. J. LANCASTER SPALDING, D. D., 
 BISHOP OF PEORIA, 
 
 lectuved at tlie Cathedral of the Holy Name, in the North Division, 
 to an immense audience, his address, as reported, was substantially 
 as follows : 
 
 My Dear Friends: The charm there is in the study 
 of events which have been consecrated by time, springs 
 from a deep and rational instinct in the human heart. It 
 is a part of thi3 desire for self-knowledge — this yearning 
 to know the past's history; for we cannot thoroughly un- 
 derstand what we are unless we know something of the 
 course of events which have shaped and molded our char- 
 acter. The past is not dead. It never dies. It is ever 
 but the fuller present; each present moment in the life 
 of a people, in the life of an individual, summing up the 
 thousand agencies and causes which through long centu- 
 ries have been working to the end that now is. Hence it 
 is not idle ceremony to have festal days consecrated to 
 the freshening of ancient memories, devoted to the reviv- 
 ing of a more thorough knowledge of the history of the 
 civilization to which w^e belong, — of the people of which 
 we are sprung. And, as the Irish race is one of the most 
 ancient of all now living in the midst of Christian and 
 civilizing influences, it is proper also that there should be 
 a more intense charm for them in the study of their past. 
 It is impossible for us to understand what they are to-day 
 unless we also know something of their struggles and tri- 
 als, of their supreme efl:brts, of their undying hope. I 
 doubt whether any one has ever been struck by 
 
 (58) 
 
LECTURE BY BISHOP SPALDING. 59 
 
 A MOEE PRONOUNCED CONTRAST 
 
 than is offered to the traveler who passes from England 
 into Ireland. Here are two islands lying west of the con- 
 tinent of Europe, separated from each other by a little 
 strip of water some fifty or sixty miles wide, alike in all 
 their physical surroundings and constituents, having sim- 
 ilar climates, similar soil, the one twice as large as the 
 other. Bound together by this close juxtaposition, it 
 would seem the very fiat of fate that they should be 
 banded together in love or in hatred, in mutual helpful- 
 ness or, for each other's woe. The contrast, in spite of 
 this similarity of climate, soil and scenery, is so startling 
 that it seems at first sight impossible to believe that man, 
 and not nature, has wrought it. 
 
 In England, we see evidences of national prosperity 
 and freedom, and an enterprising people. Wealth is ac- 
 cumulated in superabundance. From the ports of all the 
 nations great lines of ships bear the best and most costly 
 products of the earth into this mighty emporium of com- 
 merce. As you proceed northward from London, you 
 behold on every hand, signs of the busiest industrial life, 
 which is working up the raw material of the whole earth. 
 The heavens are black with the smoke of innumerable 
 chimneys, and the great manufacturing centres run into 
 one another until all the northern half of the Island looks 
 like one huge smelting furnace and factory mill. The 
 population seems almost too dense to exist upon so small 
 a spot of earth. 
 
 You pass over a little strip of. water, and land in Ire- 
 land, and at once you are in a different world. 
 
 EVERYTHING BEARS THE STAMP OF DECAY. 
 
 Everywhere you behold the monuments of tyranny. In 
 the very faces of the people you read the story of wrongs 
 and oppression. The towns are in ruins. Many of the 
 houses are uninhabited. Whole populations have been 
 banished from some of the best counties, and the castle 
 of the landlord is surrounded by immense cattle-pastures. 
 You pass through these crumbling villages and towns, 
 
60 LECTURE BY 
 
 and you see gray-haired men and women. The young 
 are not there. They are scattered over God's wide earth. 
 They have sought a refuge throughout the habitable globe. 
 They have left the old home. You see no factories, no 
 thriving towns springing up, no working of the mines of 
 ore that exist in the Island; few railways; no commerce in 
 the ports in which the ships of all the nations might cast 
 anchor. 
 
 Now, my friends, this contrast is written in the broad 
 face of Nature in these two Islands. England is the most 
 wealthy part of the earth. Ireland is the poorest. In 
 England the greatest centres of manufacture and com- 
 merce have been built up. In Ireland those which have 
 existed in past centuries have fallen to ruin. In England 
 the people have a sturdy independence. In Ireland we 
 are struck by the fact that there are two peoples there, — 
 the one, the select few, representing the Government and 
 the proprietors — and the other, the mass of the popula- 
 tion. The nobleman's castle is surrounded by hedges 
 and walls that shut it from the view of common men ; and 
 around Dublin the people are imprisoned in narrow lanes. 
 All the beauty of this choice and gifted part of Nature is 
 shut out from them. They are made to feel, at every 
 step, that they are alien there — that the island exists for 
 others — and the Irish people, and alcove all the Irish 
 Catholics, are strangers in their own country. They are 
 under a power that holds them absolutely under control. 
 They are unarmed. Those who bear arms are the hired 
 servants of their enemies, representing aii alien power. 
 Their very way of speaking to you shows that their expe- 
 rience has proven to them the necessity of caution. 
 
 WHAT IS THE EXPLANATION? 
 
 How are we to account for this contrast? Two causes 
 have been assigned, which have been accepted as satis- 
 factory by English public opinion, and which have met 
 with only contradiction wherever English literature exerts 
 its influence. These two causes are the race and their 
 faith. Englishmen have said, and spoken it by all the 
 voices which give utterance to English thought, that the 
 
BISHOP SPALDING-. 61 
 
 Irish, by virtue of their race, are inferior to the English, 
 are less fitted for liberty, are idle, are thriftless, are un- 
 stable, are, in a word, characterized by so many defects 
 that these shortcomings of character at once explain their 
 wretchedness and show that it is without a remedy. And 
 they say, added to this defect, which is inherent in the 
 Celtic character, there is a degrading power which has a 
 strong and inveterate hold upon the people, which is the 
 Catholic faith. This is a bold and a strong charge. If it 
 is true, it explains many things. If it is false, it has but 
 added boundless insult to wrongs that are unspeakable, 
 and to sorrows that can never be told. 
 
 The Bishop then answered the question: Is the Celtic 
 character one which is incompatible with liberty, with 
 progress, with industry, with economy — with all those 
 qualities which make men successful, and which make 
 them respectable? 
 
 THE QUESTION OE EACE, 
 
 as applied to European populations, is never a simple one. 
 We hear people talk of the qualities of the Anglo-Saxon, 
 but as a matter-of-fact there is no Anglo-Saxon. The 
 English are not Anglo-Saxon. Before the Anglo-Saxon 
 came to England there was its Celtic population, which 
 was not annihilated, but which remained there and con- 
 tributed a great part of its blood to the Anglo-Saxon in- 
 vaders. England again was invaded by the Danes, inva- 
 ded by the Normans. The mingling of many bloods has 
 gone to form the English character. In the same way 
 that the Englishman is not an Anglo-Saxon the Irishman 
 is not a Celt. Ireland, like all other parts of Europe, was 
 also subjected to invasions from the beginning, some of 
 which formed colonies in the Island, leaving behind them 
 population; the Danes, the Normans, the English them- 
 selves going into Ireland during different wars that Eng- 
 land made upon that country, settled there, and intermar- 
 ried with the Celtic population; so that in the veins of 
 the Irish people there is not only Norman and Danish, 
 but a vast amount of English blood. The Irish, there- 
 fore, are not pux-ely Celtic. Nevertheless, I will admit 
 
62 LECTURE BY 
 
 that they are preponderantly Celtic, while the English 
 are preponderantly Teutonic. The French are a repre- 
 presentative of the Celtic races of Europe, though they 
 are not, of course, pure Celts any more than these other 
 peoples. But the Frenchman represents more the Celt 
 than the Teuton or the Norman, and may serve, there- 
 fore, as the typical Celt under conditions not altogether 
 unfavorable. The French are considered, I believe, by 
 impartial judges, to be the most civilized people in 
 Europe to-day. The masses of the people are more in- 
 dustrious, more thrifty, more intelligent, more economi- 
 cal than the masses of the English people. If you wish 
 to know whether this is true, take the testimony of John 
 Stuart Mill. Not only is this the case, but the French- 
 man has shown himself capable of what ma}'" be consid- 
 ered 
 
 THE HIGHEST MODEEIN" CULTURE. 
 
 In France there is a vast population of thrifty, saving, 
 hard-working poor men; whereas in England the lower 
 classes are stolid, ignorant, degraded, extravagant, given 
 to all manner of coarse vices, incomparably below the 
 same class of Frenchmen. Not only is this true, but no 
 people have shown a more earnest love of liberty than 
 the French. Their political liberty has not been as great 
 as that of Englishmen, owing to accidental causes. The 
 surrounding sea has protected England from stronger 
 neighbors, and, therefore, she has not been compelled to 
 create a great standing army — has not been compelled to 
 turn all the national genius and energy toward military 
 development. She has been able to devote herself to 
 the improvement of her commerce, and the develop- 
 ment of her manufacturing interests, and the giving of 
 greater possibilities of successful enterprise to her peo- 
 ple. Whereas, the Continental nations of Europe stand 
 armed with immense bodies of trained soldiers, forced to 
 hold themselves in this warlike attitude to protect them- 
 selves against one another. I doubt not that the tyranny 
 that exists to-day in Germany and France — for, though 
 there is a Republic in France, there is a vast amount of 
 
BISHOP SPALDING. 63 
 
 political injustice, tyranny, and oppression there, also — is 
 due, in great measure, to this cause. A military state 
 tends naturally and inevitably towards tyranny. With 
 this drawback, the French are as free as the English. 
 They have shown as great love of liberty, and they have 
 proclaimed through the earth the priceless value of Lib- 
 erty more than any other people; and. I hold that the 
 modern democratic liberty which is so prized, which 
 has so developed the wonderful national prosperity of 
 this country, is more directly traceable to France and to 
 French influence than to any other one national cause. 
 Therefore, you will perceive at once that the Celtic char- 
 acter will not offer a sufficient explanation of the Irish 
 difficulty. Each race has its better endowments and its 
 feeble points. There is no reason why the Celt should 
 not develop as high a civilization as the Teuton. This 
 going back to the question of race, therefore, is intended, 
 first, to confuse the point at issue; and, secondly, it is 
 absolutely unsatisfactory. It proves nothing. It shows 
 that some other explanation must be found. 
 
 I shall not do more than allude to the other cause sa- 
 signed, viz : that it is the Catholic faith of the Irish peo- 
 ple that makes them poor and unprogressive. There are, 
 for instance, France and Belgium, Catholic nations. I 
 think there is no other people in Europe more indus- 
 trious, more thrifty, more contented, freer, better condi- 
 tioned every way, than the Belgians; and certainly there 
 is no country in Europe more Catholic than Belgium. 
 Why, then, if the Catholic religion has not had this tend- 
 ency in other countries, should it in Ireland? But, my 
 brethren, it would lead me too far to enter fully into all the 
 arguments which would show you that the very fountain- 
 head of our modern civilization, of our literature, of the 
 highest philosophy, of all that is best in our social condi- 
 tion, is to be sought for in the Catholic Church. I leave 
 this question, therefore, with this brief but sufficient ref- 
 erence to it. And I come to consider not theories, but 
 facts. I will leave out this lying and hypocritical pre- 
 tense stamped upon all English Protestant literature, and 
 consider things as they are. 
 
64 LECTUEE BY 
 
 England is twice as large as Ireland. Its population lias 
 never been less than twice as great. It naturally, there- 
 fore, had it in its power to conquer the weaker Island, 
 and it came to pass that England made the conquest of 
 Ireland in the latter half of the twelfth century — 700 
 years ago and more. For 700 years, then, Ireland has 
 been under the dominion, some way or other, of England. 
 
 Let us examine into this history and see whether or not 
 it in itself is 
 
 AN ALL-SUFFICIENT EXPLANATION 
 
 of the contrast which I have pointed out to you. 
 
 When England conquered Ireland both countries 
 were Catholic. How were the Irish people treated 
 by the Anglo-Normans when both were Catholic? 
 They were treated as outlaws, and driven beyond the 
 pale of law and of human rights. The Irishman was 
 looked upon as an enemy. That is the standard expres- 
 sion in English history. The Irish Catholic was hunted 
 down like a wild beast. He Avas driven into the bogs 
 and mountains; raids made upon his fields; his cattle 
 carried off; his corn burned; his houses destroyed. His 
 only defense became that of warfare. He armed him- 
 self; and the whole Irish people turned themselves into 
 bands of warriors, so that there began a feud the bitterest 
 that can be imagined. All the strong and warlike pop- 
 ulation of England were sent into Ireland to drive its 
 people to desperation and starvation. 
 
 This is true history. It is not oratory. It is not strong 
 speech for effect. It is the history of those three hun- 
 dred jeB,rs of Anglo-Norman oppression in Ireland. 
 
 The Irish people during this time were reduced not 
 only to utter misery and wretchedness, but they lost 
 much of their former civilization; for they were a civil- 
 ized people when St. Patrick went to Ireland in the fifth 
 centurv. Their country was divided into provinces. 
 They had a high King and provincial Kings. They had 
 many of the qualities of an enlightened civilization. AU 
 this was lost during these bloody wars. Their churches 
 Avere burned. They were left without any instruction. 
 
BISHOP SPALDI^'G. ,65 
 
 They became desperate. Their land had been confis- 
 cated, and given to Earls, and Dukes, and all sorts of 
 Norman noblemen. 
 
 Now, my friends, upon this came 
 
 A NEW AND A MORE TERRIBLE OPrRESSION. 
 
 After the Catholic Anglo-Normans had done all that it 
 Tvas possible to do to degrade the Irish people, to reduce 
 them to abject poverty, there came a religious schism. 
 In the sixteenth century the English became Protestant, 
 and the Irish remained Catholic; so that to the bitter- 
 ness of race-hate was added the fanaticism of religious 
 hatred. The Irish enemy now became the Popish idola- 
 ter, and for a double reason he was to be exterminated. 
 The Englishman has never been able to understand or to 
 deal honestly and justly by those who are of a different 
 blood and a different religion from his own. English 
 rule over aliens — over men of other blood and other race, 
 — is the most disgraceful, and most infamous, and most 
 inhuman that has ever stamped a mark of infamy upon 
 national character. Wherever he has gone, famine, star- 
 vation, the perishing of whole races have shown that he 
 knows no other way of governing men but to reduce 
 them to slavery. To this inherent incapacity for ruling 
 an alien race was added 
 
 A DEEP HATRED OF THE CATHOLIC RELIGION, 
 
 when once he had apostatized from it. There was in 
 Anglicanism a more absolute and unmitigated hatred 
 for the Catholic religion than in any Protestant sect, ex- 
 cept, possibly, the Presbyterians. 
 
 Now began this effort of Protestant England to de- 
 stroy Ireland. The English Protestant accusation is, 
 they are Irish and they are Catholics, therefore they are 
 poor, and wretched, and feeble. We shall see whether 
 it is Catholicity and Celtic blood that explains this inde- 
 scribable misery. To the wrongs of a past oppression 
 there was added a new suffering. Under Elizabeth, 
 under James I, under Cromwell and under William III, 
 the Irish people were slaughtered, butchered, driven 
 5 
 
6Q LECTURE BY 
 
 from cities and towns, and reduced almost, absolutely to 
 the verge of total destruction. Every foot of Irish soil 
 was taken out of the hands of Irish Catholics. The 
 whole Island, consequently, was literally turned over to 
 Protestants and Englishmen. The people were made 
 has hardly ever disappeared from Ireland. From the day 
 that Protestant England and English Protestants began to 
 homeless in their own land. From that day to this, famine 
 rule over Irish Catholics, famine has been chronic in the 
 land. In the reign of Elizabeth they lived on grass and 
 roots. Sometimes they dug up the dead bodies and de- 
 voured them. They perished in multitudes, and whilst 
 they were dying the young English soldiers went hunt- 
 ing for them as people go hunting foxes or wolves, and 
 if they killed two or three Irishmen it was as fine sport 
 as if they had run down wild animals; and, coming back 
 they would give the most glowing accounts of how they 
 had hunted down these poor people. And when they 
 failed to find the men, they burned or hanged the women 
 and children in their houses. It is not I who say this, 
 but you will find it in English histories. So it is not 
 surprising that they should tell us that the population of 
 the Island was reduced to half a million, — probably less — 
 God only knows. 
 
 It seems miraculous that an Irish Catholic should be 
 left in the world. And so it went on, war after war, not 
 only under PJlizabeth and James, but under Cromwell, 
 who was still more blood-thirsty and cruel. It was his 
 downright purpose to 
 
 DRIVE THE lEISII PEOPLE INTO CONNAUGHT OR HELL 
 
 either to take their Popish idolatry out of their souls, or 
 take their souls out of their bodies. He meant honestly 
 to do this, and he strove manfully to do it. The most 
 atrocious massacres known to civilized warfare occurred. 
 His troopers hunted priests, and got the same reward for 
 their heads as for wolves. So it went on. Without a 
 foot of land, without any commerce or manufactures, 
 without any schools, the Irish Catholic was not allowed to 
 have any profession, or enter any walk by which a man 
 
BISHOP SPALDING. 6T 
 
 can gain a livelihood. They were driven away from the 
 towns, and forbidden to come within a certain distance 
 of them under grave penalties; forbidden to own any- 
 thing above a low price, and if any one owned more than 
 this, it could be taken away from him upon simple demon- 
 stration of the fact. It was made a crime for them to go 
 to any school except one built expressly for the purpose 
 of destroying their faith. After they had taken away the 
 last foot of land, the English introduced that fiendish and 
 horrid penal system, which was relaxed only when the 
 French Revolution began to flare up and to threaten to 
 turn over every throne and topple every crown from every 
 royal head in Europe. Only when the wild shout of Lib- 
 erty from America was echoed across the ocean, England, 
 in the midst of troubles and wars, saw at last that there 
 was an absolute necessity for relaxing her hold. Never, 
 — and I am in my inmost soul convinced of what I say — 
 
 NEVER HAS ENGLAND DONE AN ACT OP JUSTICE 
 
 or of reparation to Ireland from noble or humane motives. 
 Never! I don't, in my heart, believe now that the aver- 
 age English public opinion holds that the Irish are 
 worthy of justice, or mercy, or leniency. 
 
 There came into existence that penal code which made 
 ignorance, poverty, and slavery inevitable. The Irish 
 people were bound by Protestant England with a triple 
 chain, and they were held fast for two centuries — let us 
 say down to '98. That penal code drove every Irish 
 Catholic from all sorts of trades and liberal professions, 
 from the owning of a house or field, from any possible 
 way of making a living, except by becoming a tenant-at- 
 will of the English landlords. Thus they were made by 
 law subject to the whims of those aristocrats who were 
 their traditional enemies, who are the worst class of ty- 
 rants that ever cursed the human race. This state of 
 things became fixed and chronic in Ireland. The people, 
 in order not to starve outright, settled upon little patches 
 of land. They became the most rural population in 
 Europe. The poorest land was given to them. What 
 was the necessary result? It was that the Irish Catholics 
 
68 LECTURE BY 
 
 REMAINED IN IGNORANCE AND BEGGARY 
 
 remained in slavery — there, was an Irish Parliament, but 
 no Catholic Irishman was there ; no man was there who 
 had received a Catholic vote. There were juries, but no 
 Catholic ever sat upon the jury. The Lords were secure 
 in putting to death, or murdering, or outraging any Cath- 
 olic man or woman. They were without law or protec- 
 tion. Now there was in this state of things no hope of 
 progress. Their tyrants made it a crime for a Catholic 
 to know anvthing, and then they turned around and said : 
 Why, these ignorant Catholics! Great God, is it possible 
 to understand the blighting and degrading influence of 
 prejudice ; how it warps the judgment, and hardens the 
 heart? The English Protestants say: " These Irish are 
 poor; they are in rags; they are ignorant. See how 
 the Catholic Church degrades the people. See what the 
 poor Celt is." Hypocrisy deeper than hell. All that the 
 Irish Catholic could do was to keep from starvation. He 
 was not allowed to improve his surroundings. He would 
 be turned out upon the road at once, or his rent so raised 
 that it would be a warning not to again undertake any- 
 thing of the kind. 
 
 Since this was the condition of the whole population 
 except the Protestant oligarchy, do you not at once 
 understand why famine is chronic in Ireland ? To be 
 above danger of starvation a man must be able to save 
 something. Otherwise, if the crop fails, or any misfor- 
 tune befalls him, he is at the mercy of hunger. Hence, 
 from the day of Elizabeth, famine has rarely been ab- 
 sent from Ireland. 
 
 All through the eighteenth century the piteous cry 
 of starving multitudes is heard. In 1727 thousands of 
 families were driven from their homes by hunger. In 
 1734 the mass of the people were slowly dying. In 
 1741 the graveyards were too small to hold the bodies of 
 those who had been destroyed by the famine fever. In 
 1778 Lord Nugent declared in the House of Commons, 
 that the Irish people were suffering all the destitution 
 and misery which it is possible for human beings to 
 
BISHOP SPALDING. 69 
 
 suffer. Nine-tenths of the population had no other 
 nourishment than potatoes and water. In 1817 the 
 famine fever attacked one million five hundred thousand 
 persons — nearly one-half of the population of the Island. 
 In 1825, 1826, 1830, 1832, 1838, 1843, 1846, 1850, 1860, 
 1861, 1862, and now again in 1880, there is famine in 
 Ireland; the people are dying of hunger that the land- 
 lords may live in luxury. Great God ! if some Catholic 
 nation were doing this — if Italy, or Spain, or France, or 
 Belgium, or any Catholic nation on God's earth were 
 driving a whole people into famine century after century, 
 and decade after decade; a literature more lurid and 
 ghastly than the flames of the abyss would grow out of it. 
 
 THE VERY HEAVENS WOULD RESOUND WITH INDIGNATION. 
 
 It would be impossible for that nation to exist; and yet, 
 there it is, stamped in blood — stamped as in outlines as 
 marked as the gaunt, bony finger of a starving man — upon 
 English Protestant history. And they talk of liberty, 
 and talk of fair play, and bring up their make- shifts of 
 arguments. They say it is the intemperance of the peo- 
 ple. Great God ! suppose it was — which is a lie, for the 
 Irish are not more intemperate than the English — sup- 
 pose it was, who has made them so? Does not modern 
 science teach that drunkenness is often a disease; if you 
 bring a man to live on starvation food, if you cut off his 
 allowance, and reduce his nerve power, he will be driven 
 to drink. 
 
 England began to do some slight justice to Ireland at 
 the end of the last century; and it would be very easy 
 for me to show you how she came to do this justice, just 
 when she herself was most straitened and alarmed, and 
 was compelled to this good deed. From the day she be- 
 gan to strike off the first link of the infamous penal chain 
 there has been a little progress made now and again. 
 The people have never gone back, but they have gone 
 forward greatly. The Catholics have been emancipated 
 before the law. All the common rights and privileges 
 of citizens have been made theirs. This, of course, is a 
 vast gain. It gives them the opportunity of education, 
 
70 LECTURE BY 
 
 of acquiring an independence, other things being favora- 
 ble. The emancipation of '29 is to Irish Catholics what 
 the victory of Constantine at the Milvian Bridge was to 
 the early Christians. Little by little other improvements 
 have been made. 
 
 The abolition of the Established Church in Ireland 
 was undoubtedly a great and beneficent measure. A 
 more odious sham cannot be imagined than this estab- 
 lishment of a Church which had no members; this levy- 
 ing of tithes from a Catholic people to support Protes- 
 tant ministers who had no flocks. 
 
 The plague spot in the social condition of the Irish 
 people to-day, is the system of land-tenure, which is 
 founded upon confiscation and perpetuates the fatal an- 
 tagonism between the proprietors and the tillers of the 
 soil. English legislation on this subject, during the last 
 few years, has served hardly any other purpose 
 than to show more clearly the urgent necessity of 
 finding some remedy for this radical evil. Irishmen can 
 never be contented or happy so long as the national 
 prosperity is blighted by a state of things which leaves 
 the land in the hands of men who are the enemies of 
 the people, and who, while they enjoy the most excep- 
 tional privileges, shirk all the duties and responsibilities 
 of their position. Tenancy-at-will, it is true, no longer 
 exists ; but rack-renting, which is hardly a less evil, still 
 remains as an insuperable obstacle to the improvement 
 of the condition of the tenant-farmers; and so long as the 
 present state of things continues, periodical famines will 
 decimate the people and fill the world with clamor 
 against English heartlessness and tyranny. 
 
 It is easy to suggest remedies, but it is still easier to 
 find objections to all suggestions which conflict with our 
 interests and desires; and it is simjDly a matter of course 
 that English statesmen should not lack reasons for con- 
 tinuing the present nefarious Irish land-system. That 
 it is possible to effectively change this system without 
 doing injustice to the landlords, is admitted; that until 
 something of this kind is done, Ireland will neither be 
 tranquil nor prosperous, is manifest. And yet, since I 
 
BISHOP SPALDING. 71 
 
 have no desire to cherish a delusion, I must say frankly 
 that I have no hope that other than palliative measures 
 will be adopted, for a longtime yet to come. 
 
 Callous as Englishmen are to the opinions of foreign- 
 ers, they cannot but feel the deep disgrace which has fal- 
 len upon the English name, in consequence of the un- 
 speakable wrongs which their heartless and stupid tyr- 
 anny has inflicted upon the people of Ireland; and if 
 Ireland alone was concerned in this question of land re- 
 form, an effective remedy, I believe, would, at last, be 
 applied. There is, however, an obstacle, which, at pres- 
 ent, forbids ue to hope that Irish grievances will be re- 
 dressed; and it is this — the English land-system and the 
 Irish land-system are but different forms of the same in- 
 stitution, and must stand or fall together. A radical 
 change in the land-tenure of Ireland would be the great- 
 est possible blow to the power of the English aristocracy, 
 for it would inevitably drive the liberal and popular 
 party into agitations for similar reforms in England; and 
 thus precipitate, in an alarming manner, that double 
 question, which England will one day have to meet — and, 
 sooner or later, solve, but which she is resolved to ad- 
 journ to the latest possible hour — the radical reform of 
 her land-system and the dis-establishment of the Angli- 
 can Church. 
 
 I believe Ireland's struggles and conflicts, her undying 
 hope, her patient belief in a better future, is destined to 
 bring these reforms about gradually, and thereby the 
 Irish people will confer the greatest benefit upon the peo- 
 ple of England, — will heap upon their heads burning 
 coals of fire by returning good for evil, by giving them in 
 blessings what they have received in curses. 
 
 In the meantime, my friends, it is our duty to do all 
 that is possible to save from death those who are now 
 famishing, and certainly it is most consoling to all of us 
 to witness here in the United States, irrespective of race, 
 or nationality, or religious faith, such an outburst of char- 
 ity. I know nothing more beautiful or more reassuring 
 in American social life than this immense and inexhaust- 
 ible charity. It seems that no calamit}^ can burst forth 
 
72 LECTUEE BY 
 
 anywhere in the wide world but American hearts are 
 touched with sympathy, and American hands are open to 
 deal out liberally what God has so generously bestowed 
 upon them. I cannot believe that a race in which there 
 is such a spirit of love is not a people destined by God to 
 go higher and higher, and to approach nearer and nearer 
 to the ideals, which should be the common aim of all 
 nations. 
 
PULPIT ORATORY and IRISH ElOpENCE. 
 
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 St. Patrick's Day, 1880, 
 
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