The Irish Race in the Past and the Present

perseverance, constancy, and true heroism, unequalled by any other nation of modern times.

And this it is which has preserved to them that intense spirit of nationality, so strong after every means had been adopted to crush it out. The hundred years which followed the penal code were an age of gloom for them. They were mere slaves, and seemed to have lost all courage, all desire even of improving their condition. After so many heroic struggles, they appeared to surrender all claim, not only to independence, but to a condition barely supportable. They were forgotten by Europe, and might have been considered as wiped out of existence. Who at that time would have dreamed of their resurrection at any future day?

Yet they lived. They had, it is true, only one token of nationality, but this was enough to preserve unquenched the sacred fire of true patriotism: they had the wooden altars of their glens, of their morasses, of their mountain-fastnesses; they had a few hunted priests officiating for them in the darkness of the night, beneath the canopy of heaven, or in the gloom of forests. There, before a rude crucifix, they knelt, one standing sentinel on some projecting rock, or at the entrance of the woods, to give the alarm if he saw the "wolf" coming to devour them.

This alone saved them as a nation, and prepared the era of their success which is now nearly complete. For, have they not at last obtained almost all they ever fought for? Have they not at last freedom of religion, freedom of education, the full right of acquiring property, some political influence, liberty of speaking aloud to their would-be oppressors, and of calling on Europe to witness the justice of their claims? Are they not, perhaps, on the point of recovering "home rule?" And how long will their soil remain in possession of absentee landlords, who take to themselves the fat of the land, and abandon the inhabitants of the country to the periodical devastation of famine and the constant degradation of pauperism?

Several attempts have been made to introduce among them the modern revolutionary spirit. A few individuals have been inoculated with it; the mass of the people have remained intact, owing to their religious steadfastness, and to their intimate conviction that the hierarchy of the Church and the priesthood are now, as ever, the true leaders of the people. May they continue firm in that holy conviction!

Hence, what is now passing in Ireland ought not to be considered as having any thing to do with the general upheaval of European passions, and with the Continental convulsions of society. The object of the Irish has never been, and cannot now be, to shake the foundation-stones of the social fabric. They want to replace their national status on the basis of true order

according to the eternal laws which God gave to mankind. Nothing else is in their mind; they are pursuing no guilty and shadowy Utopia. Who knows, then, whether their small island may not yet become the beacon-light which, guiding other nations, shall at a future day save Europe from the universal shipwreck which threatens her? The providential mission of Ireland is far from being accomplished, and men may yet see that not in vain has she been tried so long in the crucible of affliction.

Another part of the providential plan as affecting her will show itself, and excite our admiration, in the latter portion of the work we undertake.

The Irish are no longer confined to the small island which gave them birth. From the beginning of their great woes, they have known the bitterness of exile. Their nobility were the first to leave in a body a land wherein they could no longer exist; and, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they made the Irish name illustrious on all the battle-fields of Europe. At the same time, many of their priests and monks, unable longer to labor among their countrymen, spent their lives in the libraries of Italy, Belgium, and Spain, and gave to the world those immense works so precious now to the antiquarian and historian. Every one knows what Montalembert, in particular, found in them. They may be said to have preserved the annals of their nation from total ruin; and the names of the O'Clearys, of Ward and Wadding, of Colgan and Lynch, are becoming better known and appreciated every day, as their voluminous works are more studied and better understood.

But much more remarkable still is the immense spread of the people itself during the present age, so fruitful in happy results for the Church of Christ and the good of mankind. We may say that the labors of the Irish missionaries during the seventh and eighth centuries are to-day eclipsed by the truly missionary work of a whole nation spread now over North America, the West India Islands, the East Indies, and the wilds of Australia; in a word, wherever the English language is spoken. Whatever may have been the visible causes of that strange "exodus," there is an invisible cause clear enough to any one who meditates on the designs of God over his Church. There is no presumption in attributing to God himself what could only come from Him. The catholicity of the Church was to be spread and preserved through and in all those vast regions colonized now by the adventurous English nation; and no better, no more simple way of effecting this could be conceived than the one whose workings we see in those colonies so distant from the mothercountry.

This, for the time being, is the chief providential mission of

Ireland, and it is truly a noble one, undertaken and executed in a noble manner by so many thousands, nay millions, of men and women-poor, indeed, in worldly goods when they start on their career, but rich in faith; and it is as true now as it has ever been from the beginning of Christianity, that hæc est victoria nostra, fides vestra.

non.

These few words of our Preface would not suffice to prepare the reader for the high importance of this stupendous phenomeWe purpose, therefore, devoting our second chapter to the subject, as a preparation for the very interesting details we shall furnish subsequently, as it is proper that, from the very threshold, an idea may be formed of the edifice, and of the entire proportions it is destined to assume.

We have so far sketched, as briefly as possible, what the following pages will develop; and the reader may now begin to understand what we said at starting, that no other nation in Europe offers so interesting an object of study and reflection.

Plato has said that the most meritorious spectacle in the eyes of God was that of "a just man struggling with adversity." What must it be when a whole nation, during nine long ages, offers to Heaven the most sublime virtues in the midst of the extremest trials? Are not the great lessons which such a contest_presents worthy of study and admiration?

We purpose studying them, although we cannot pretend to render full justice to such a theme. And, returning for a moment to the considerations with which we started, we can truly say that, in the whole range of modern history, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a national life to compare with that of poor, despised Ireland. Neither do we pretend to write the history itself; our object is more humble: we merely pen some considerations suggested naturally by the facts which we suppose to be already known, with the purpose of arriving at a true appreciation of the character of the people. For it is the people itself we study; the reader will meet with comparatively few individual names.

We shall find, moreover, that the nation has never varied. Its history is an unbroken series of the same heroic facts, the same terrible misfortunes. The actors change continually; the outward circumstances at every moment present new aspects, so that the interest never flags; but the spirit of the struggle is ever the same, and the latest descendants of the first O'Neills and O'Donnells burn with the same sacred fire, and are inspired by the same heroic aspirations, as their fathers.

Happily, the gloom is at length lighted up by returning day. The contest has lost its ferocity, and we are no longer surrounded by the deadly shade which obscured the sky a hundred years ago. Then it was hard to believe that the nation could

ever rise; her final success seemed almost an impossibility. We now see that those who then despaired sinned against Providence, which waited for its own time to arrive and vindicate its ways. And it is chiefly on account of the bright hope which begins to dawn that our subject should possess for all a lively interest, and fill the Catholic heart with glowing sympathy and ardent thankfulness to God.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

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CHAPTER I. The Celtic Race.

II. The World under the Lead of European Races.-Mission

of the Irish Race in the Movement

III. The Irish better prepared to receive Christianity than