Irish society

“ After the lapse of half a century we can still trace the same spirit—so powerful have been the hindrances to serious and impartial enquiry—so slow has been the decline of racial prejudice and political complacency. But in these latter days a great change has silently passed over the peoples. The difficulties of historical research and instruction do indeed remain as great as ever; but in the new society which we see shaping itself in Ireland on natural and no longer on purely artificial lines, there is no reason to fear truth as dangerous or to neglect it as unnecessary. ”

“ With characteristic zeal and industry begotten of their love of justice and fair play, “that the world may know” a Murray, a Linehan, a Roache, a Gargan and hosts of others of beloved memory have shed lustre on Ireland not only as men of Irish blood but as disseminators of historical truths as to the priceless part taken by men of Irish blood from the earliest days of the country’s history until the present time for the permanency of American institutions and government. In no man’s heart do the Stars and Stripes awake a more sincere and ardent patriotism than the Irish-American. ”

“ It is nearly a year since I opened to this Society the design of inducing young Irishmen of the present generation to take up anew a task which famine and political disaster interrupted among their predecessors—the task of teaching the Irish people to understand their own country. The Irish people have never ceased to love their country, they have never shrunk from any labour or sacrifice to serve her, but they do not understand Ireland as the Swiss understand Switzerland ”

“ The purpose of our Society is not to attribute all our splendid traits and achievements alone to the Irish element in our composition. Unlike our Anglomaniac brethren, who contend that everything great and good must be Anglo-Saxon, we merely claim credit for a just share in the upbuilding of the nation. ”

“ The economist can provide the daily bread, but that bread of the coming day which Christ wished his followers to aspire to must come otherwise. That should be the labor of the poets, artists, musicians, and of the heroic and aristocratic characters who provide by their life an image to which life can be modeled. Therefore I beseech audience not only of the churches, but of the poets, writers, and thinkers of Ireland for their aid in this labor. They alone can create in wide commonalty the ideals which can dominate society. ”

“ Now we have an affectionate feeling towards our Motherland because she much needs the help of her children. If Ireland were a great and powerful country, like Germany, rich with an army and navy of its own, with its ambassadors and representatives in every land and with its great universities spreading German ideas among the people; if Ireland had all those accessories she would have made her claims felt in the history of the United States without the need of societies like this ”

“ We are willing to give the present to duty and trust the future to Providence, but never give the past to oblivion; not until, at least, every true American knows the Irish chapter in American history. And it is such a body as this that will hasten that glad day for the Irish race, when men will know that we have as much right to these shores as any race that ever landed here. That starry flag, with its red for love and its white for law and its blue for the hope that our fathers saw in a larger liberty, has been consecrated with the blood of the liberty-loving sons of the sod. ”

“ Among other statements, the call recited that a number of gentlemen, interested in the part taken in American history by people of Irish birth or lineage, are about to organize themselves into an historical society for the purpose of investigating and recording the influence of that element in the upbuilding of the nation; also to place the Irish element in its true light in American history. To secure its correct perspective in relation to historic events on this soil is the final aim of the new Society. ”

“ The time has come when men who are of more than ordinary culture, and interested in the history of America and the British empire, are beginning to understand that the political and social development of these two immense 98aggregations of mankind cannot be studied in a satisfactory and scientific way without a thorough knowledge of the Celtic race. But, as I understand, the Society is occupied specially at present in showing the part which the Irish have taken in the United States both in winning independence for the republic and afterward in building it up ”

“ At the present day men of the Irish race and Irish ancestry are at the forefront in many lines of human endeavor, as might easily be shown by the quotation of names and achievements. I feel that in this glorious land of promise we have our eyes on the ideal and are ever improving, ever growing, doing our duty as we go, and leaving the world better, not only by deeds done and tasks performed, but better still by the cheering word and hearty sympathy, by the shedding of radiant happiness and buoyancy of spirit about us as the Irishman has been wont to do in all times and in all climes. ”

“ It is within the memory of many like myself that to be Irish has taken on a substantial social consideration but grudgingly accorded thirty or forty years ago. So many have arrived at fortune, have done great public service, have attained social heights that it becomes a matter of social self-defense with them to see that no child of their race shall lack for the incentive and something of the opportunity to enter and carry on the battle of life under inspiring conditions. ”

“ Down-trodden and oppressed in the land of their birth, whether Roman Catholic or Non-conformist, by unjust and tyrannical laws passed by a government that had no sympathy with the suffering Irish, every possible means of culture were denied them, until life in the land they loved became unbearable; so those who were able to muster enough money and courage crossed the briny deep, with many sad farewells and heartbreaking partings. ”

“ People of this race—men and women born on Irish soil—have been here from the first, prompted in their flight by the motives common to all immigration, dissatisfaction with the old order of things and the resolve to obtain a freer and better life in the new land under new conditions.
And so we have come together—natives of Ireland, American sons of Irish immigrants, and descendants of immigrants even unto the seventh, eighth and ninth American generations—to duly set forth and perpetuate a knowledge of these things. ”

“ Yet during all the centuries of the persecution made possible by the weakness caused by this division, the Normans failed to dominate Ireland. The free Irish spirit outlived those centuries of “warfare and famine and prison.” Throughout the greater part of that beleaguered land Irish princes and Irish laws ruled. The soul of the nation was nurtured and sustained by the continued use of the mother tongue. To the ranks of the native Irish who were rendered disloyal to their country by Norman influences, the religious schism of the Reformation added many more. ”

“ The causes and ideals for which Irishmen have lived, fought, suffered and died, need no apologist or vindicator, ancient, mediæval or modern, since St. Patrick’s time, at least. These causes have been mainly God, country, truth and freedom. It was Ireland’s devotion to her ideals and her sacrificial tenacity to her causes which, of course, led to England’s merciless, wholesale confiscation of Irish lands and estates, when she had gained sufficient mastery there by her Norman intrigues. During the reign of James I., Irish commerce and about all Irish industries were destroyed in like manner. ”

“ It is also true that the social condition of the Irish stock is bettering every day. Other European races, broadly speaking, are doing the laborers’ work of the country as well as the city. The Irish millionaire, the Irish captain of industry, the Irish leader in thought and education is largely represented here. We produce great laymen as well as great clerics, and it becomes daily more incumbent on the prosperous to turn with the open purse and the hand of uplift to the less favored by fortune, in order that they may make hereafter for the fame and condition of the race in America. ”

“ Now our great American historians, from Bancroft and Motley and Parkman down to Henry Cabot Lodge, have quietly ignored the Irish in America, or have given all the credit for their achievements to this myth, the “Scotch-Irishman.” It is a singular thing, when you read the things this Society puts before you, the absolute facts of history, that no American historian of Anglo-American ancestry has had the fairness and the courage and the sense of justice to do for Ireland what so many of them have done for other nationalities. ”

“ We are proving our claim, not by appeals to race prejudice or bigotry, but by incontrovertible evidence. In the words of the American-Irish Historical Society, we are laboring “that the world may know.”
There is a very erroneous impression in the minds of many, even in this enlightened age, that the struggle for liberty in Ireland has been a religious struggle, a struggle for the principles of Catholicity and for these principles alone. Our fight is not a religious fight. It is the fight for the liberties of a race, not a religion ”

“ To quicken the intellect and imagination of Ireland, to co-ordinate our economic life for the general good, should be the objects of national policy, and will subserve the evolutionary purpose. The free imagination and the aspiring mind alone climb into the higher spheres and deflect for us the ethereal currents. It is the multitude of aristocratic thinkers who give glory to a people and make them of service to other nations, and it is by the character of the social order and the quality of brotherhood in it our civilization will endure. Without love we are nothing. ”

“ No people have ever surpassed them in exaltation or intensity of spiritual life. The sun has risen and set in that land on lives of courage, honour, and beauty. The seasons have watched the undying effort to make Ireland the honoured home of a united people. Not a field that has not drunk in the blood of men and women poured out for the homes of their fathers. Why should not we, the sons and daughters of Ireland, take our rich inheritance? ”

“ We in Ireland are in quest of a civilization. It is a great adventure, the building up of a civilization—the noblest which could be undertaken by any persons. It is at once the noblest and the most practical of all enterprises, and I can conceive of no greater exaltation for the spirit of man than the feeling that his race is acting nobly; and that all together are performing a service, not only to each other, but to humanity and those who come after them, and that their deeds will be remembered. ”

“ The aristocratic classes with traditions of government, the manufacturing classes with economic experience, will alike be secondary in Ireland to the small farmers and the wage-earners in the towns. We must rely on the ideas common among our people, and on their power to discern among their countrymen the aristocracy of character and intellect.
Civilizations are externalizations of the soul and character of races. They are majestic or mean according to the treasure of beauty, imagination, will, and thought laid up in the soul of the people. ”

“ To sift and discriminate every paper, sketch, document bearing on the Society’s line of work before the same is accepted and given official sanction in order that its publication may be a guarantee of historical accuracy; to do its work without passion or prejudice, to view accomplished facts in the true scientific historical spirit and having reached the truth to give it to the world. ”

“ No trace of age, no fear to die. If Emerson had dedicated this sentiment to Ireland and her patriotic sons, he could not more fittingly have described her relations to the implacable foe whose mood, after centuries of oppression and warfare, has not been able to dim the lustre of that patient Star of Hope which will shine on continuously to illumine space, without shading, but with the scars of memory to make more radiant the valor and virtue of her people who carry on their brow no trace of age, and in their hearts no fear to die in the cause of human freedom. ”

“ There can be no mention of the five hundred years of Irishmen’s fame in Europe as classical scholars, philosophers, saints, merchants, or travellers. The centuries of Ireland’s history as a free and independent country are blotted out, and he may catch no glimpse of his people save in the various phases of their material subjugation. During his entire course he can turn [47] no wandering eye on an Ireland that had any art, literature, or industry of its own—a place where anything may have happened on its own account, or where any interest may lie detached from an English book of chronology. ”

“ Splendid feuds, thoroughly made, solid, and without a crack into which any importunate dove could insert so much as an olive-leaf.
Ireland was, in those days, a forcing bed for individuality. Men and women, of the upper classes, were what is usually described as “a law unto themselves,” which is another way of saying that they broke those of all other authorities. That the larger landowners were, as a class, honourable, reasonably fair-minded, and generous, as is not, on the whole, disputed, is a credit to their native kindliness and good breeding. ”

“ The reform of Irish history must begin in our own country, among our own people. Since it is public opinion that at the last decides what our people shall learn of their father-land, we ourselves must be the keepers of our fame and the makers of our history. Let us in Ireland therefore remember that we have an ancestry on which there is no need for us to cry shame. Chivalry, learning, patriotism, poetry, have been found there, even “in huts to which an Englishman [62] would have hesitated to give the name of a house.” ”