Chapter XX: Introduction (14)

The veteran was quickly in the field of operations, soon at the head of a division. It was while in this command he encountered the renowned Stonewall Jackson, inflicting on this hitherto invincible confederate general a defeat which sent him “whirling up the valley.” The tidings of this remarkable victory caused great rejoicing throughout the North and gained great applause and commendations for General Shields. The army of Virginia up to this time had suffered a succession of disasters. The government was in a dilemma.

The command of the Army of the Potomac was at this juncture offered to General Shields. I make this statement on the authority of General Shields himself. Following his victory at Winchester, he said, a member of the cabinet arrived in his camp and on the part of the President proposed to him the command of the Army of the Potomac. The reasons suggested for this tender appeared to be, as I recall them, the necessity for a change of leaders owing to previous ill success; Shields’ established capacity for high command, as shown by his career in Mexico, his recent campaign and the enthusiasm and confidence his appointment would arouse in the ranks of the army, but the controlling motive appeared to be a political consideration—that Shields, because of his foreign birth, could not in the event of his success become a political factor or rival in the field of national politics—that is to say, in no event would it be possible to make of Shields a candidate for the presidency.

* * * * *

The suggestion appears to have been given to Shields in this same interview that the President was then contemplating and preparing to issue the emancipation proclamation. This latter determined Shields’ decision. He rejected the proposal made to him. This, in substance, is my recollection of the statement made by the general during one of his visits to Chicago late in the 70’s. Others besides the writer heard General Shields make this statement at the time.

The President sent Shields’ name to the Senate for confirmation as major general, and as the appointment was not ratified by that body Shields resigned and withdrew from the army. Likely this may have been partly in protest against the threatened emancipation policy. At all events, Shields returned to California. From there he shortly afterward removed to Missouri, settling on a farm near Carrollton in that state and devoting himself to the labors and duties of farm life. In 1877 he was elected member of the general assembly of Missouri, and the same year appointed adjutant general of the state militia. The death of Senator Bogg the next year caused a vacancy in the representation of Missouri in the United States Senate, and General Shields was appointed, thus giving him the distinction of having served in the United States Senate from three different states.

The term was short, and with its termination may be said ended General Shields’ public service as a legislator and statesman. He nevertheless continued an interesting figure before the public, appearing on many occasions in different cities as a lecturer and for addresses on various subjects of general interest. It was while engaged in a lecturing tour that the end came. He died suddenly while visiting a convent in Ottumwa, Iowa, June 1, 1879.

* * * * *

Few men in public life have filled so many and so various offices and employments. He had been school teacher, lawyer, legislator, jurist, state auditor, land commissioner, general in the Mexican and Civil wars, United States senator, adjutant general, farmer and lecturer. He might have been governor of Oregon, commander of the papal army and of the army of the Potomac (possibly), and he could have led the Fenians in their foolish raid on Canada had not his good common sense rejected the offer and condemned the project.

General Shields was warm and earnest in his Irish sympathies, and he showed this on many public occasions. It is to his honor that he lived and died a poor man. He never profited or sought to profit by the multiplied opportunities for personal gain which must have been open to him during his public career. In his old age, after all his notable services, he was receiving a pension of only $34 per month, and when he died all that he left his family was the farm, the swords voted to him by Illinois and South Carolina—and an untarnished name.

Illinois has since honored the memory of her one-time senator and general by causing his statue to be placed in the National Capitol. This was due largely to the active efforts and enthusiasm of a well-known Chicago attorney, William H. Condon, since dead, who also published the life of General James Shields.

THE FRENCH-IRISH BRIGADES IN THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.

The signal and important services of the French-Irish regiments in the American revolutionary war have scarcely ever found adequate recognition and acknowledgement at the hands of historical writers. Indeed, the same may be said of the great part France had in that war.

Of course, every school boy has read of the exploits of the youthful and enthusiastic Lafayette, and knows that Rochambeau with his army and De Grasse with his fleet were conspicuous in bringing about the surrender of Cornwallis and his forces at Yorktown. Only by the powerful co-operation of the French army and navy at the siege was the crowning victory of the war achieved, and that victory forced from the English king and his ministers the recognition of American independence. All this is well known, but the magnitude of the French aid all through the war is less familiar to the general reader.

HON. HENRY GROVES CONNOR,

of Raleigh, N. C.

An Eminent Jurist and Learned Historian.

Member of the Society.
]

The army and navy registers in the French archives show that sixty-three ships of war, mounting 3,668 guns, manned by 32,600 officers and seamen, were employed in the naval operations on the American seaboard, and upward of 12,000 land forces. The financial cost to France of the fleets and armies and the loans and gifts in money to the colonies have been computed by a competent authority at $50,000,000.

My present design in this sketch is to emphasize the part the Irish brigades in the French army had in the American war. I do not need to recall to mind the historic renown of the Irish Brigade.

Almost every battlefield in Europe during the seventeenth century was flamed by their valor and crimsoned with their blood. In France, in Italy, in Spain and in the Low Countries these exiled soldiers fought with such furious impetuosity that even the bitterest enemies of their race were forced to pay them the reluctant tribute of their admiration.

King George II. is said to have exclaimed after witnessing the bravery of the Irish brigade at the battle of Dettingen: “Cursed be the laws that deprive me of such subjects.”

When the colonies had declared their independence of Great Britain and the aid of France was eagerly invoked the Irish troops in the French army pressed their request on the war office in Paris that they should be sent to America to fight the British, who were, they declared, their hereditary enemies. A copy of the French original of this document may be seen in the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin. In 1779 several Irish regiments were embarked in the French fleets for service against the English forces in the West Indies and on the American coast. Included in this contingent were the regiments of Dillon, Walsh, Berwick and Fermoy. These regiments being so designated in compliment to the colonel in command as the “Colonel Proprietaire.” In the fleet of the Count d’Estaing there was carried a considerable land force—mostly of the Irish brigade. Count Dillon was second in command to the admiral and at the siege of Savannah, then held by the British, he led his own regiment in the attack on the defenses.

* * * * *

There was, also, on the land side, an American co-operating force commanded by General Lincoln. The assault ended disastrously for both the French and Americans with severe loss in killed and wounded. Upward of 1,200 of the assaulting columns fell in the space of fifty minutes; of these 821 were of the French forces and the rest of the American. The utmost bravery was shown, both in the attack and in the defense, but the storming column, led by Count d’Estaing and Dillon, could not withstand the terrific fire of the batteries and were forced to abandon the assault.

D’Estaing was wounded and carried off the field. The gallant Pole, Count Pulaski, who served with the American forces, was killed. He was in command of a small force of regular cavalry of lancers. Among the list of the killed and wounded of the French attacking column I find the names of Brow, major in Dillon’s regiment; Moran and O’Neill, captains; Tauffe, lieutenant, and many other familiar Irish names; officers and subofficers of the brigade. The names of the rank and file are not given, but it is not difficult to surmise what must have been the gallantry of the assault when we see the heavy list of the killed and wounded.

* * * * *

The particulars of the memorable attack on Savannah are given with great fullness in a publication issued many years ago by the Georgia Historical Society, compiled from original sources. The gallantry of Sergeant Jasper, an Irishman, at the siege and his heroic death on the battlements while attempting to raise thereon the flag of his regiment, has immortalized his name and his bravery. A statue of Jasper in one of the public squares of Savannah fittingly commemorates the deed and memory of the gallant patriot.

Following the abandonment of the siege the French fleet withdrew and undertook the reduction of several of the English possessions in the West Indies. It is not my purpose to follow the subsequent career and fortunes of the fleet and forces under d’Estaing except to remark that the diversion made by these attacks on the islands under the British flag were naturally important aids to the cause of the colonies, since the English forces employed in their defense would otherwise have been in service, doubtless, in the attempt to subdue the colonies.

* * * * *

I am tempted to relate another incident in Count Dillon’s career of glory in the expeditions that followed the failure at Savannah. He had part in the attempts made by the French fleet and forces on several of the English possessions, notably in the attack made on the Island of St. Eustache.

The frigates being unable to approach sufficiently near to the fortifications to land aid, Dillon, with only 377 men, landed and in person led the assault. The Irish were at the head of the column, and such was the impetuosity of the attacking force that 840 regular troops of the English army laid down their arms and were made prisoners of war by less than half their number! Later on the Dillon regiment was employed in the siege of the important fortress and Island of St. Christopher, and the place was finally carried, Count Dillon remaining in command of the island as governor.

After the treaty of peace with France and the colonies, the island, under the terms of the treaty, was yielded back to Great Britain. Shortly afterward Dillon paid a visit to London in the train of the French embassy.

He was presented at the court and, having paid his respects to the king, George III., the lord chancellor, Loughborough, who was in attendance, crossed over to Dillon and said to him, after some preliminary compliments: “I must thank you for the equity and fairness of your decisions given whilst you were acting as governor of the island. My court has had occasion to pass on some of the cases you decided and we found no occasion to dissent from your judgments.”

* * * * *

Sad to say, this gallant soldier met his death on the scaffold, at the hands of the ruffians who were in the ascendance during the French revolution, as did so many thousands of the noblest and best of French men and women.

At the last moment, as he stood at the foot of the fatal guillotine, a lady who preceded him and who, like Dillon, was to meet her doom by the order of the same furies, turned to the count, saying: “Would you not oblige me by going first?”

“Certainly, madam,” was the answer of the chivalric Irishman, and ascending before the lady, in a moment the horrible instrument had ended the career of the heroic Count Arthur Dillon.

A namesake, Colonel Theobald Dillon, who had been with Rochambeau at Yorktown, was another of the victims of the French Revolution, under circumstances even more revolting. But I must stay my pen on this subject.

* * * * *

The erection of the monument or statue of Lafayette in Paris a few years back, as a token and testimony of America’s gratitude to France, has since then been supplemented by the installation of a fine statue of Rochambeau in Washington—a like tribute to the value and importance of the aid given by France in the critical period of the Revolutionary War.

The inauguration of the Rochambeau statue, which is one of the finest and most impressive in the nation’s capital, was made the occasion of ceremonies and exercises of the highest dignity and importance. Of course, these were reported with great fullness at the time, and I have no need to dwell on the details now.

The government, by the action of Congress, has since published a large volume in which is given, I may say, not only a full narrative of all the proceedings in connection with the statue, but also a comprehensive story of French aid and services in the war for colonial independence.

The volume includes the “roster” of the French naval and military forces. The Irish regiments to which I have referred, of course, are given due notice, like the others; that is to say, the name of the regiment, together with the list of the chief officers, etc. Count Dillon’s regiment was present at the surrender of Cornwallis and the British army at Yorktown. The count himself was not there, being occupied at his post as governor of the island already referred to. His cousin, Colonel Theobald Dillon, was there, and many other French-Irish officers of the brigade.

* * * * *

It will be of interest to many to learn that efforts have been made to obtain from the French war office a full list of the officers and soldiers of the Irish brigades who served in the war of the American revolution. I am happy to state that a volume will soon be issued by the French government containing these names. The search for the necessary data was instituted at the request of M. Jusserand, the learned and accomplished French ambassador at Washington.

I trust I am not betraying a secret in stating that the initiative in the task of Irish historic interest has been due to Archbishop Ireland, who was himself a conspicuous figure in the ceremonies attending the celebration for Lafayette in Paris, and in the Rochambeau exercises at Washington and New York.

BISHOP BERKELEY AND HIS PLANS FOR A GREAT AMERICAN UNIVERSITY.

The records of Yale College bear testimony to the beneficence and liberality of an Irish bishop who, early in the eighteenth century, gave proof of his zeal for learning by bestowing on that institution, then lately founded—its charter is dated 1701—the dwelling house and farm in Rhode Island which he had purchased and occupied during his strange visit and sojourn in America.

The bishop likewise gave to the college on his departure the best and largest collection of books—nearly one thousand volumes—that had ever up to that time been brought over. The catalogue, or list of these works, is preserved in the Yale College library. Harvard is likewise indebted to the same benefactor for a collection of textbooks.

* * * * *

Bishop George Berkeley was a remarkable character in his day. An account of his career cannot but possess a certain interest for the general reader. He was the friend and associate of many of the literary celebrities of the time, Dean Swift, Addison and Steele, who esteemed his friendship and appreciated his amiable character and qualities.

Berkeley was born in the County Kilkenny, Ireland, the same year that James II. succeeded to the British crown. His early education was acquired in the same school in Kilkenny which Dean Swift had attended, and his subsequent studies were pursued at Trinity College, Dublin. It was said of him while at college that he was regarded by some of his fellow students as the greatest dunce in the institution, while others thought him a prodigy of learning and goodness, but all agreed that he was full of simplicity and enthusiasm—indeed, these latter characteristics remained with him through life. The results of his application to study is shown by his college record. He was elected “scholar” in 1702, a B. A. in 1704, and obtained his master’s degree in 1707, and the same year was admitted to a fellowship. The drift of his mind and of his studies was shown in the formation of a college society “to promote investigations in the new philosophy of Boyle, Newton and Locke,” a subject upon which he wrote many papers.

* * * * *

Before leaving college to enter on his career in London, Berkeley had already acquired some reputation as a writer on philosophical subjects. It was Dean Swift who introduced his fellow countryman to the circles of influence in the British capital. In the “Journal to Stella,” the dean jots down under date of April 12, 1713: “I went to court today on purpose to present Mr. Berkeley, one of our fellows of Trinity College. This Mr. Berkeley is a very ingenious man and great philosopher, and I have mentioned him to all the ministers, and have given them some of his writings, and I will favor him as much as I can. This, I think, I am bound to—in honor and conscience to use all my little credit toward helping forward men of worth in the world.”

* * * * *

Swift introduced Berkeley to the Earl of Peterborough, then one of the most extraordinary characters in Europe. He had amazed the country a few years before by his wonderful achievements in Spain, during the war of the succession. Soldier, scholar and diplomatist, this singular man was eccentric in all his movements and actions—indeed, his career and character is still a favorite study and an enigma for the historian and biographer. The introduction obtained for Berkeley, the post of the chaplain and secretary to Peterborough, who had been appointed ambassador to the King of Sicily. It was little use the eccentric earl had for a chaplain, since he was himself a well-known skeptic and freethinker!

The post to which he had been appointed gave Berkeley the opportunity of making acquaintance with the continent—he had taken “orders” before Trinity College—and he now saw France and Italy for the first time. His letters describing his experience and observations in these countries are exceedingly interesting, but my limits will not admit of quotations. The death of Queen Anne during his sojourn abroad and the accession of George I. caused a change in his prospects and position. Peterborough was recalled by the new administration, and consequently Berkeley returned to England in August, 1714.

* * * * *

The change of administration in England blighted for a time Berkeley’s prospects of preferment. His friend, Dean Swift, was no longer in the ascendant, and his late patron, the Earl of Peterborough, had been deprived of place and influence. He was, nevertheless, a welcome guest and visitor in literary circles and in general society. He possessed a charm of address and manners that won friends to him on all sides. He shortly had the opportunity again to revisit the continent—this time as companion and tutor to the son of Sir George Ashe. While in Paris he had an interview and carried on a discussion with the celebrated Malebranche on points of philosophy and metaphysics which, it is said, became so animated and exciting that the Frenchman brought on himself a violent disorder which prostrated him and resulted in his death within a few days.

After an absence this time of five years Berkeley returned to England in 1720. He found the country in turmoil over the collapse of the South Sea bubble. The speculative mania which had spread widely in England led as usual to an era of extravagance and corruption. The disorders of society consequent on these conditions was general. Berkeley gave vent to his feelings on the situation by an essay that attracted wide attention, in which he sought to point out a remedy for the prevailing evils.

* * * * *

His suggestions may be briefly quoted as bearing equally on certain conditions not altogether unfamiliar to us in the United States. He argued that the persons who compose society must become individually industrious, frugal, public-spirited and religious. Sumptuary laws, he thought, might do something toward mitigating existing distress, and public amusements might be regulated, and masquerades prohibited. The drama, too, should be reformed. But the prime necessity was that sensuality must give way to religious love and reverence. “Let us be industrious, frugal and religious, if we are to be saved at all,” was his counsel.

In 1721 he returned to Ireland, from which he had been so long absent. He had retained all along his post in Trinity College, and was now shortly installed as chaplain to the Duke of Trafton, the viceroy.

There occurred in 1723 a curious and romantic incident in which Swift was concerned, or rather “Vanessa”—one of the two unhappy women whose passion for and devotion to the cynical dean have become familiar to all readers. Vanessa, like Stella, the other victim of unrequited affection, followed the dean to Dublin, and there learned of Swift’s connection with Stella—to whom he had been secretly married. Heart-crushed by the revelation, she revoked a will she had made in favor of the man she loved, and substituted Berkeley as the beneficiary and legatee. This is all the more curious and unaccountable as Vanessa (Esther Vanhumrigh) seems to have met Berkeley but once, and that only by chance. At all events he was the gainer by some 4,000 pounds.

* * * * *

Fortune had begun to favor him. He was appointed dean of Derry (Londonderry), an important ecclesiastical dignity in the Irish church, said to be worth £1,100 a year. While in possession of this lucrative position the project of the great university in the new world seems to have taken root in his mind, and quickly became a passionate enthusiasm. This is the project which links Berkeley’s name with America—indeed it was to recall his romantic initiative and devotion to this early scheme for higher education that I venture on this sketch.

Swift says the design had been long in Berkeley’s mind. His generous aim involved the surrender of his opulent position as dean, and the employment of his means, including the Vanessa legacy, in promoting this project, on which he had evidently set his heart, and it also necessitated other sacrifices as we shall see. Of course, it was not possible for him unaided to carry out or even to begin his undertaking. He relied on obtaining aid from sympathizers, and an indispensable charter from the king, George I.

* * * * *

It is a curious fact that he was indebted to a Catholic—the Abbe Gualteri, whom he had met in Italy—for the opportunity of making his application to the king under favorable conditions. The abbe was a distinguished Venetian scientist, who had the ear of court circles, and he interested himself warmly in Berkeley’s behalf, with the result that a charter was granted in June, 1725, for a college in the Island of Bermuda, and constituting “Dr. Berkeley, Dean of Londonderry, principal of said college.”

Berkeley’s enthusiasm and persuasive eloquence enlisted promise of support in other powerful quarters. The prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, promised a grant of £20,000; the private subscriptions seem to have aggregated about £5,000.

All this took time and extensive preparation. The doctor or dean had secured the co-operation of several of the Trinity College fellows, who agreed to go out with him, and there was to be another addition to the party who was to intimately share the principal’s life and fortunes thenceforth—Mrs. Berkeley!

He had married during the progress of his negotiations for the university scheme, a daughter of the speaker of the Irish house of commons. The marriage took place August 1, 1728. It was said of Mrs. Berkeley that “she shared his fortune when he was about to engage in one of the most romantic moral movements of modern times, and when, in love with an ideal academic life in the Bermudas, he prepared to surrender preferment and social position at home in order to devote the remainder of his life to the great continent of the West.”

* * * * *

In the fullest confidence that he would be able to carry out successfully his favorite designs, Berkeley, with his wife and college companions, set sail for the sunny isle in the golden West, of which he had so long dreamed. He was then in his forty-fourth year. The voyage occupied four months, and the landing was made at Newport, R. I., where he had planned to sojourn until he should receive from England the promised grant from the government. It was necessary also that the good will and practical interest of the New England colonies should be enlisted in his efforts.

The population of Newport at this time is said to have been curiously cosmopolitan. As religious freedom prevailed there, thanks to the Quaker, Roger Williams, and was unknown in the other New England colonies, religious refugees found an asylum, as they did in the Catholic colony of Maryland under Lord Baltimore. The merchants of Newport appear to have been active and successful in the slave trade, so we shall be less surprised at the statement that Berkeley purchased several for service on the farm which he speedily acquired and settled on for the time being.

* * * * *

Berkeley was quite in demand for sermons. He preached in Trinity Church, Newport, three days after his arrival, and many times afterward. The Rhode Island aristocracy of those days maintained, according to accounts, a good deal of the style and manner of life of the English gentry, and we can read of fox hunting, and races, and festivities of various kinds as commonly indulged in. The delays reported from London, in carrying out the promises of aid gave Berkeley many anxious hours in his new world home. He found it expedient to build a house on the farm in the interior, at Whitehall, which he continued to occupy with his family until he sailed back to England. His house became the resort of the ministers and gentry of Rhode Island, who delighted in the society and conversation of the accomplished Irish dean.

Nearly three years passed in waiting and in expectation of the promised means which never materialized, beyond the sum of private subscriptions—which he afterward scrupulously returned. Meantime two children were born to him; one of these, a girl, died and was buried in Trinity churchyard, Newport. Three of Berkeley’s slaves, according to the records of the same church—“Philip Berkeley, Anthony Berkeley and Agnes Berkeley, negroes, received into the church, June 11, 1731.”

All his plans for the utopia he had nourished in his imagination faded utterly when authoritative news from London convinced Berkeley that the project must be abandoned. The grant of £20,000 assured by Walpole, and other important concessions, could not be realized. The prime minister had given up the project, and employed the proposed grant and concessions for other purposes. So in the fall of 1731 the disappointed philanthropist bade farewell to the new world and sailed homeward.

* * * * *

Berkeley’s subsequent career must be briefly told. On his return to London he wrote a great deal on his favorite philosophical subjects. In 1734 he was appointed bishop of Cloyne, in Ireland, and there he spent the next eighteen years of his life. He gave much attention to the social condition of Ireland, attended to his episcopal duties and occasionally occupied his seat in the Irish house of lords. His benevolence to the poor in the dark days of famine and disease was said to be boundless. He certainly won the esteem and gratitude of the Catholics of Ireland by his liberality and his freedom from the spirit of cant and proselytizing, then unhappily widespread in that unfortunate country. His advocacy of tar water as a universal specific for the cure of disease will be remembered as an example of his amiable philanthropic enthusiasms. He publishes a poem in praise of his panacea. He was offered further promotion in the Irish church—even the primacy; but he put these allurements aside and refused. “For doing good to the world,” he declared, “I may upon the whole do as much in a lower station.”

* * * * *

In 1752 he decided to resign his bishopric and seek retirement at Oxford. The unusual proposal excited the curiosity of the King, George II., who declared, when the application was made to him, that Berkeley might live where he pleased but that he should die a bishop! So he was permitted to retire from his see, still retaining his Episcopal rank.

He did not long enjoy the change. He died in Oxford the 14th of January, 1753, and was buried in the university chapel of Christ Church. His widow survived him thirty-three years, dying in her 86th year. A son and a daughter were living at the time of his death. In his will he provided among other items—“that the expense of my funeral do not exceed £20, and that as much more be given to the poor of the parish where I die.” He left a very small estate. The well-known lines of his poem, in which he sought to depict the prospects of his utopian project, may fitly close this sketch of the amiable and benevolent Irish dean and bishop:

Westward, the course of empire takes its way,
The four first acts already past;
A fifth shall close the drama with the day,
Time’s noblest offspring is the last.

THE RENAMING OF WOLHURST.

The following remarks were made by President Taft in renaming “Wolhurst,” the estate of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas F. Walsh, “Clonmel,” on September 22, 1909:

_Ladies and Gentlemen_:

I think our bounteous and generous and lovely hostess and our host
should have called in the clerical profession rather than a politician
to baptize this new home, for it is a part of their profession, I
think, to make sacred places that we all venerate; but I hope to be
able to prove equal to the occasion, because a politician is subject
to every sort of exigency. Because I am asked I re-baptize with great
pleasure this beautiful estate and call it “_Clonmel_.” “_Clonmel_” is
a beautiful place in the County Tipperary. The determined immigrants
from Tipperary and from every part of the Emerald Isle have come to
the front as they deserved in America. There is no element and no
strain in our civilization that has manifested itself to be stronger,
more enterprising, more shrewd in business, more tenacious of its
principles than the Irishmen, from North and South, who come to this
country to make it their own.

I have the greatest pleasure in calling this place after that
beautiful town in the golden vale of Tipperary. I consecrate this the
estate of “_Clonmel_.” I wish I could connect with it in some way the
name of _Walsh_, but as that goes without saying, both in Denver and
throughout the country, it is unnecessary.

I congratulate the people of this vicinity that Mr. and Mrs. Walsh are
their neighbors. We in Washington feel delighted that they are
neighbors of ours. Their generosity and kindly courtesy are known the
country over.

HISTORICAL FALSIFICATIONS AGAINST THE IRISH.

BY CAPT. JAMES CONNOLLY, VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIETY FOR CALIFORNIA.

The beginning of Scotch and English falsification of history against the Irish dates as far back as the end of the eleventh century. Taking full advantage of the civilization and education which the Irish Monks had gratuitously carried to them over seas and spent the best of their lifetime in diffusing amongst them, they used the very power with which the Monks thus endowed them to betray and despoil their benefactors.

“Those brilliant names in the history of European scholarship, who distinguished themselves under Charlemagne, and his son and his grandson, Clemens, Ducil and Scotus Erigena, who all taught in the Court schools, Dungal, who taught in Pavia, Sedalius, who worked in Luttich, Fergual who ruled in Salzburg and Morngal, the teacher of St. Gall, were not altogether without successors,” says Douglas Hyde, in his Literary History of Ireland.

“It is true,” he goes on, “that Ireland’s great mission of instruction and conversion came to a close with the eleventh century, yet for two centuries more, driven by the innate instinct for travel and adventure which was so strong within them that it resembled a second nature, we find Irish monks new foundations on the continent, especially in Germany.” The number of monasteries which Dr. Hyde names as being founded by these Irish monks on the continent during the next half century is simply amazing. “Most of these monks who came from Ireland brought books with them which they presented to the German monasteries.” Says Dr. Hyde again:

“The century which succeeded the Battle of Clontarf, was the most flourishing period of Irish monks in Germany. Once the English had commenced the conquest of Ireland the monasteries ceased to be recruited by men of sanctity and learning but were resorted to by men who sought rather material comfort and a life of worldly freedom. The result was, that towards the end of the thirteenth century most of the Irish establishments in Germany had come to an end, being made over to the Germans, like those of Vienna and Wurzburg, or else altogether losing their monastic character like that of Vuremberg.

“As for the parent monastery of St. James of Ratisbon, its fate was most extraordinary and deserves to be told at greater length. It had, of course, always been from its foundation, inhabited by Irish monks alone, and was known as the monasterium Scotorum, or monastery of Irishmen. But when in process of time the word Scotus became ambiguous, or rather had come to be exclusively applied to what we now call Scotchmen, the Scotch prudently took advantage of it, and claimed that they and not the Irish were the real founders of Ratisbon and its kindred institutions, and that the designation monasterium Scotorum proved it, but the Irish had gradually and unlawfully intruded themselves into these institutions which did not belong to them. Accordingly it came to pass, by the very irony of fate—analogous to that which made English writers of the last century claim Irish books and Irish script as Anglo-Saxon—that the great parent monastery of St. James of Ratisbon was actually given up to the Scotch by Leo X., in 1515, and all the unfortunate Irish monks there living were driven out. The Scotch, however, do not seem to have made much of their new abode, for though the monastery contained some able men during the first century of its occupation by them, it exercised, says Zimmer, no influence worth mentioning upon the general cultivation of the German people of that region and may be considered but a small contribution towards medieval culture in general, for the only share the Scotch monks can really claim in a monument like that of the church of St. James of Ratisbon is the fact of their having collected the gold for its erection from the pockets of the Germans. In comparison with these, how noble appear to us those apostles from Ireland of whom we find so many traces in different parts of the kingdom, of the monks from the beginning of the seventh to the end of the tenth century.”

How well Germany remembers her debt of gratitude to those early Irish monks was most eloquently expressed at the great German Catholic Congress at Dusseldorf, less than a year ago. A pilgrimage of the delegates to Keiserswerth to visit the grave of St. Suitbertus, the first Irish monk who spread the light of faith and learning in that land. During this pilgrimage Cardinal Fischer delivered an eloquent discourse on the brotherhood of nations in faith and spoke feelingly on the debt of Catholic Germany to the missionary monks of Ireland.

The one egregious thing which the reading of English history teaches is the English historian’s palpable inability to be candid and unbiased when he comes to deal with Ireland and the Irish. With the true-born Englishman this innate prejudice against his neighboring island and her people comes to him as a heritage of many ages. It is deep-rooted in his very nature and is nourished and fructified by his inordinate vanity and super-consciousness of his own real or imaginary superiority. The average Englishman believes himself and his little islanders to be divinely endowed with prerogatives and powers to govern the rest of the world in their own way. He goes about it in a supercilious, patronizing sort of fashion as though he were conferring an unspeakable kindness on the governed, even while he is shooting or bayoneting him into submission to his law.

The very fact, unnatural as it is, that the Englishman believes himself right and just in all this inhumanity should seem at least to be some palliation of his offences. But failing utterly to make the thus governed see his treatment of them in any such “kindly light” he governs them the more.

John Bull is, in fact, about the only ruler in the governing business who seems not to have yet learned that a people who are least governed are best governed. He has exploited his monarchical powers on about every continent and ocean of the globe with more or less success. The more heroic and manly was the resistance of a smaller country and weaker people to his invasions the more he misrepresented and traduced them in his press and on his platforms. England’s main purpose in this has even been to lower, even abase the countries and peoples which she has thus assailed, in the estimation of other nations. Nothing can be more offensive to the delicate sensibilities of truth and justice than the false show of benevolent unselfishness with which England has embarked upon her campaigns of conquest. She has ever been conspicuously, unmercifully cruel to her Irish subjects in their protests against her oppression. There is scarcely any limit to the extremes into which an individual or a nation’s vanity may lead them. England’s claiming Irishmen of great distinction in arts, arms, statesmanship, and the like to be real Englishmen is probably the most absurd case in point.

But it was left to the Scotch historian, David Hume, to most falsely and malevolently chronicle the dominant characteristics of the Irish people. He was, of course, writing English history from the then English standard viewpoint, at the time when the American colonists were about to rebel against the intolerable tyranny of George III. The Sons and Daughters of Liberty were, in fact, holding their meetings under the old Liberty tree in Boston at the very time Hume was writing his most false annals of Ireland and the Irish. Hearing of Jerry O’Brien’s capture of the British schooner Margaretta, in Machias Bay, several months before the Battle of Bunker Hill, no doubt intensified Hume’s dislike of the Irish. Nor does that “flavor of the old classical culture of Scotland,” pervading his work extenuate in the least the enormity of his falsehood. Nay, the very fact that he must have known better—he to whom was given as a historian “first rank among English writers,”—makes his offence against intellectual integrity all the more despicable. And yet it has been by just such means as this that England has, throughout the past ten centuries, succeeded in keeping the greater part of the rest of the world more or less ignorant of the real characteristics and acquirements of the Irish.

On page 99, Vol. 1, of Hume’s History of England, writing of the “State of Ireland—1172,” he says: “The Irish from the beginning of time had been buried in the most profound _barbarism_ and _ignorance_....”

Now, with Hume’s wide knowledge of the civilized world, it can scarcely be believed that he wrote in real ignorance of the general status of the Irish people. His classical culture and profound erudition must certainly have enabled him to know the real facts in the case. He could not have so closely surveyed and studied the past history of “the Irish” without knowing that for centuries before the time of which he wrote, Ireland had excelled England in culture “to a very marked degree.” It had, indeed, been the custom for ages for the better class of Englishmen to not only send their sons to Ireland but to go themselves for their education, that they might learn Irish Gaelic, so that by means of it they might study Greek and Latin. “The fame of these early Irish schools,” says Dr. Douglas Hyde in his Literary History of Ireland, page 220, “attracted students in the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries from all quarters to Ireland, which had now become a veritable land of schools and scholars.” English, French and German princes flocked to Ireland to reap the benefits of the better educational advantages there than were to be had in their own countries. King Alfred of Northumbria, who was educated in Ireland, had been so pleased with the Irish ways that he ever after “aided and abetted the Irish in England in opposition to Wilfred, who opposed them.”

HONORABLE JOHN B. O’MEARA,

Of St. Louis.

Ex-Lieutenant-Governor of Missouri, and
Vice-President of the Society for Missouri.
]

But the brilliant Irish scholar, Johannas Scotus Erigend, finally went over to England for the sole purpose of establishing at Oxford University the beginning of classical learning on English soil. He was also summoned to France by King Charles the Bold to lay the foundation of the classics in his kingdom. Yet for more than a century after the classics had been established at Oxford, well-born Englishmen continued to send their sons to Ireland, where the older seats of such learning offered more effective advantages for such studies. Nor was it for the study of the Humanities alone that they were sent. The arts of writing, illuminating and music were also taught with the success that is made possible only by centuries of cultured experience.

Speaking of King Edward’s last visit to Ireland at that time, Harper’s Weekly recently said, editorially, after relating in detail the many other ways in which “Ireland was England’s superior in culture” ... “the Harp, which is the National symbol of Ireland, is really the record of centuries of Musical culture.”

Knowing, as King Alfred certainly must have known, that as early as the beginning of the sixth century the heathen classics were taught by learned Irish monks in their schools of theology, it is easily understood how he came to have such admiration for the Irish and Ireland. Their skill in Greek and Latin poetry as well as in Irish appealed to him so that on leaving Ireland he wrote a poem of sixty lines in the Irish bardic manner. In this poem he compliments the five provinces for their several hospitalities and courtesies to himself. It breathes the spirit of thankful gratitude to the whole nation for all it had done for him.

No people buried in barbarism and ignorance “from the beginning of time” could have evoked such a tribute to their culture and hospitality as that, from an English King whom they had educated. (Pardon the hyperbole.)

But it had not yet become the well established custom and purpose of the writers of English history to pervert their chronicles so as to traduce the Irish people all that their subject matter would bear without seeming to be deliberate untruth. There was, in fact, no English historian at all at the time Ireland’s scholars were thus laying the foundations of classical learning over a great part of Europe. The crowds of strangers that were meantime flocking to Ireland to receive the classical educations which could not be had in their own countries were not only warmly welcomed but were entertained and fed every day free of cost. Free books were furnished them and they were given gratuitous instructions by the Irish masters.

In this atmosphere of culture, hospitality and true Christian refinement was fostered that love of learning and of the unselfish characters of the men who imparted it to those strange princes and kings, which they took home with them to their own countries. Englishmen, especially, had long looked upon Ireland as “the land of scholars and the nurse of arms.”

This marvelous educational activity and open-handed generosity of the Irish had, in fact, become the wonder and admiration of the nations whose sons were being most benefited thereby. “This outburst of religious zeal, glorious and enduring as it was,” says Dr. Hyde, “carried with it, like all sudden and powerful movements, an element of danger.” The danger to which he here refers was that of a clash between the civil and religious authorities on some minor points of the administration of justice at home. Such obstacles in the way of human and spiritual amity seem to have never been for long inseparable from the lives of nations. They spring up suddenly. They are balked at for a time, and it often seems as if such barriers were destined to be the stumbling blocks over which kingdoms would fall.

But it was not until the Norman invasion and complete subjugation of England, and Norman laws, customs and ideals had completely dominated that country and the semi-Latin tongue now known as English had taken the place of the Anglo-Saxon spoken till the Normans came, that the real breach of amity between the English and Irish happened.

It was against the aggressive spirit of this Anglo-Norman power that Ireland first rebelled and rebels to this day. The Normans found the conquest of Ireland a far more difficult undertaking. They were, it is true, by their under-handed system of parceling out portions of the conquered sections to the traitor native chiefs, successful in dividing Ireland against herself. 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. Cromwell’s disastrous invasion nearly a century later cut still wider gaps in the loyal ranks of the Irish. In addition to those who were starved or persecuted into submission to Cromwellian rule, many more who could not be tortured into such submission fled the country. Those were “the wild geese,” that flew hither and yonder, lighting, like birds of passage, where instinct or destiny led them.

But wherever they found refuge from the iniquitous powers, that thus made them exiles, they remained true to the ideals for which they were banished. In many instances they became in time honored acquisitions to the countries where they found homes, fitting in as leaders in arts, arms and statecraft. All this is, of course, no more than must be expected of men possessing heritages of many centuries of freedom, based on the American elective system of choosing their governing officials. From her very earliest colonial days down to the present, America derived more of her strength from Ireland, numerically as well as otherwise, than from any other single source. However, much of the fact of Irishmen’s numbers and achievements, in the upbuilding of this nation may have been omitted from our histories purposely or knowingly the facts remain. These mistakes the future historian must see corrected. Nor this alone. The Hume spirit and atmosphere must be forever eliminated from our history. It was the Hume falsehoods which half a century or more ago created in the youthful American mind such false impressions of the Irish character. Bancroft had not yet been introduced in the public schools during my early school days, so it was from Hume that as a twelve-year lad I first learned this false lesson of my native land. Nor can we wonder that Bancroft, with all his learning, has signally failed in many instances to give renowned historical characters their due. This fact came home to me quite recently, while canvassing for a petition to a certain congressman, urging him to press the passage of the bill for an appropriation to erect a monument in Washington to Commodore Jack Barry, Father of the American Navy. On presenting the petition the second time to this “representative and influential citizen,” he demurred, saying: “I don’t find much of anything about this Barry, in Bancroft’s History of the United States entitling him to any such honor as you folks are aiming to give him. So I don’t see how I can sign your petition.”

Such mistakes, or intentional omissions, of our country’s history, mischievous as they may otherwise appear, are here recurred to only to show the great need of a true history of the nation. It is no reflection upon the intellectual integrity of Bancroft to infer that he may have, in some ways been influenced by Hume, nay, is it not very probable that he was in dealing with the Irish heroes of our Army and Navy?

But in the light of modern research and scholarly devotion to truth such old world falsehoods and misrepresentations are being doomed to the oblivion that awaits all such evil doing. 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. The Irish schools in which English princes and kings had received their first lessons in classical learning were leveled to the ground, and the schoolmasters forced to teach under hawthornes and hedges. But even this did not, as was intended by the destroyer, quite destroy the love of culture in the Irish heart. Nor did the English soldiers’ desecration of the sanctuaries and the banishment of the priests in the least hinder the continuance of God’s eternal truth. Men died manfully for it. But the truth lived on and became more true because of their martyrdom.

In every land to which these “wild geese” bore their messages of those eternal verities for which they were banished from their own country, their Irish ideals have, under a more human tolerance than that from which they flew, been steadily extending and exerting more beneficent influences over the lives of men and nations. This could not have been otherwise. Here, where they came more numerously for a century or more than was the emigration from nearly all the rest of Europe together, Irish ideals of the form of the modern elective system of government have been more dominantly interwoven into the web of our national life, more obvious still is the heritage of ancient Celtic culture to be seen in American art, literature and hospitality. Too faintly, perhaps, is it felt in poetry or heard in music, as if, as in Goldsmith’s time, “they wept their own decline.” Yet, as the old art spirit seems now to be steadily regaining its wonted power, it may shortly overcome the evil commercial craze which now infests the earth.