The Irish Race in the Past and the Present Part 47

A contract was signed on September 14, 1653, by the Com missioners of Ireland and Messrs. Sellick and Leader, "to supply them (the merchants) with two hundred and fifty women of the Irish nation, above twelve years and under the age, of forty- five."

The fate reserved for the human cattle, as they must have been looked upon by the G.o.dly gentlemen who bartered over them, may be well imagined. It is calculated that, in four years, those English firms of slave-dealers had s.h.i.+pped six thousand and four hundred Irish men and women, boys and maidens, to the British colonies of North America.

The age requisite for the females who were thus s.h.i.+pped off may be noted; the boys and men were not to be under twelve or over fifty. These latter were condemned to the task of tilling the soil in a climate where the negro only can work and live. As all the cost to their masters was summed up in the expense of transportation, they were not induced to spare them, even by the consideration of the high price which, it is said, caused the modern slave-owners of America to treat their slaves with what might be called a commercial humanity. It is easy to imagine, then, the life led by so many young men forced to work in the open fields, under a tropical sun. How long that life lasted, we do not know; as their masters, on whom they entirely depended, were interested in keeping the knowledge of their fate a secret.

It is well understood that, when the unfortunate victims, had once left the Irish harbor from which they set sail, no one ever heard of them again; and, if the parents still lived in the old country, they were left to their conjectures as to the probable situation of their children in the new.

Sir William Petty says that "of boys and girls alone "-exclusive, consequently, of men and women-" six thousand were thus transplanted; but the total number of Irish sent to perish in the tobacco-islands, as they were called, was estimated in some Irish accounts at one hundred thousand."

The "Irish accounts" may have been exaggerated, but the English atoned for this by certainly falling below the mark, as is clear from the fact that, according to them, the Commissioners of Ireland required the "supply" for New England alone to come from "the country within twenty miles of Cork, Youghall, Kinsale, Waterford, and Wexford;" that "the hunt lasted four years," and was carried on with such ardor by the agents of many English firms that those men-catchers employed persons "to delude poor people by false pretenses into by-places, and thence they forced them on board their s.h.i.+ps; that for money sake they were found to have enticed and forced women from their husbands, and children from their parents, who maintained them at school; and they had not only dealt so with the Irish, but also with the English." For this reason, the order was revoked, and the "hunt"

forbidden.

When agents were reduced to such straits after the government had used force, as Henry Cromwell acknowledged, the large extent of country mentioned above must have been well scoured and depopulated; and certainly a far greater number of victims must have been secured by all those means combined than is given in the English accounts. We believe the Irish.

One other source of supply deserves mention. Not only women and children, but priests also, were hunted down and s.h.i.+pped off to the same American plantations; so that persons of every cla.s.s which is held sacred in the eyes of G.o.d and man for its character and helplessness, were compelled to emigrate, or rather to undergo the worst possible fate that the imagination of man can conceive.

In 1656 a general battue for priests took place all over Ireland.

The prisons seem to have been filled to overflowing. "On the 3d of May, the governors of the respective precincts were ordered to send them with sufficient guards, from garrison to garrison, to Carrickfergus, to be there put on board of such s.h.i.+ps as should sail with the first opportunity to the Barbadoes. One may imagine the sufferings of this toilsome journey by the pet.i.tion of one of them. Paul Cas.h.i.+n, an aged priest, apprehended at Maryborough, and sent to Philipstown, on the way to Carrickfergus, there fell desperately sick; and, being also extremely aged, was in danger of peris.h.i.+ng in restraint from want of friends and means of relief. On the 27th of August, the commissioners having ascertained the truth of his pet.i.tion, they ordered him sixpence a day during his sickness, and (in answer, probably, to this poor prisoner's prayer to be saved from transplantation) their order directed that the sixpence should be continued to him in his travel thence (after his recovery) to Carrickfergus, in order to his transplantation to the Barbadoes.

"-- (Cromwellian Settlement.)

In that burning island of the West Indies, deprived of all means, not only of exercising their ministry among others, but even of practising their religion themselves, of fulfilling their holy obligation of prayer and sacrifice, these victims of such an atrocious persecution were employed as laborers in the fields: their transplantation had cost money, and the money had to be repaid a hundred-fold by the sweat of their brow.

s.h.i.+p-loads of them had been discharged on the inhospitable sh.o.r.e of that island; each with a high calling which he could no longer carry out; each, therefore, tortured in his soul, with all the sweet or bitter memories of his past life crowding on his mind, and the dreary prospect spreading before him, to the end of his life, of no change from his rude and slavish occupation under the burning sun, hearing no voice but that of the harsh taskmaster; his eyes saddened and his heart sickened by the open and daily spectacle of immorality and woe, with no ending but the grave.

It seems, however, that these holy men found some means of fulfilling their sacred duty as G.o.d's ministers, for the inhuman traffic in such slaves as these to the Barbadoes lasted but one year. In 1657 it was decreed that this island should no longer be their place of transportation, but, instead, the desolate isles of Arran, opposite the entrance to the bay of Galway, and the isle of Innisboffin, off the coast of Connemara. Mr.

Prendergast thinks that this change of policy in their regard may have been caused by the price of their transportation, which probably mounted to a high aggregate sum. But he must be mistaken. They certainly cost no more than women and children, and their labor in the West Indies surely covered this expense.

The reason for the change is more plainly visible in the nature of the site subst.i.tuted for the Barbadoes as their place of exile. The "holy isles" of Arran and the isle of Innisboffin were then, as now, bare of every thing--almost of inhabitants.

The priests could be there kept as in a prison, and, though they might be of no profit to their masters, they could not hear a voice or see a face other than those of their fellow-captives.

In the West India islands there existed an already thick population, and the very women and children who had been transported thither before them would be consoled by their ministry, though practised by stealth, and strengthened in their faith, which might thus have not only been kept alive among them, but spread over the whole country.

Who can say if the faith, preserved among the many Irish living in the island until quite recently, was not owing to their exhortations?

"The first Irish people who found permanent homes in America,"

says Thomas D'Arcy McGee, "were certain Catholic patriots banished by Oliver Cromwell to Barbadoes. . . . In this island, as in the neighboring Montserrat, the Celtic language was certainly spoken in the last century,1 (1 The Celtic language-- that sure sign of Catholicity--was not only spoken there last century, but is still to-day. The writer himself heard last year (1871), from two young American seamen, who had just returned from a voyage to this island, that the negro porters and white longsh.o.r.emen who load and unload the s.h.i.+ps in the harbor, know scarcely any other language than the Irish, so that often the crews of English vessels can only communicate with them by signs.) and perhaps it is partly attributable to this early Irish colonization, that Barbadoes became 'one of the most populous islands in the world.' At the end of the seventeenth century, it was reported to contain twenty thousand inhabitants."

Although Barbadoes is the chief island concerned in the present considerations, nevertheless nearly all the British colonies then existing in America, received their share of this emigration. Several s.h.i.+p-loads of the exiles were certainly sent to New England, at the very time that New-Englanders were earnestly invited by the British Government to "come and plant Ireland;" Virginia, too, paid probably with tobacco for the young men and maidens sent there as slaves. The "Thurloe State Papers" disclose the fact that one thousand boys and one thousand girls, taken in Ireland by force, were dispatched to Jamaica, lately added to the empire of England by Admiral Penn, father of the celebrated Quaker founder of Pennsylvania.

Thus, then, began the first extensive emigration of the Irish to various parts of British America--a movement quite compulsory, which in our days has become voluntary, and is productive of the wonders soon to claim our attention.

The involuntary emigration of soldiers and clergymen to the Continent of Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was, as has been seen, the cause of great advantages to Ireland, and became, in the designs of a merciful Providence, a powerful means of drawing good from evil. At first sight, it seems impossible to discover a similar advantage in this other most involuntary emigration to the plantations of America.

A pagan has declared that "there is no spectacle more grateful to the eyes of G.o.d than a just man struggling with adversity;"

and where, except in the first ages of Christianity, could more innocent victims, and a more cruel persecution, be witnessed?

After the horrors of a civil war, horrors unparalleled perhaps in the annals of modern nations, the children and young people of both s.e.xes are hunted down over an area of several Irish counties, dragged in crowds to the seaports, and there jammed in the holds of small, uncomfortable, slow-going vessels. What those children must have been may be easily imagined from the specimens of the race before us to-day. We do not speak of their beauty and comeliness of form, on which a Greek writer of the age of Pericles might have dilated, and found a subject worthy of his pen; we speak of their moral beauty, their simplicity, purity, love of home, attachment to their family, and G.o.d, even in their tenderest age. We meet them scattered over the broad surface of this country--boys and girls of the same race, coming from the same counties, chiefly from sweet Wexford, the beautiful, calm, pious south of Ireland. Who but a monster could think of harming those pure and affectionate creatures, so modest, simple, and ready to trust and confide in every one they meet? And what could be said of those maidens, now so well known in this New World, of whom to speak is to praise, whom to see is to admire? Such were the victims selected by the Bristol firms, by "Lord" Henry Cromwell, Governor-General of Ireland, or by Lord Thurloe, secretary and mouth-piece of the "Protector." They were to be violently torn from their parents and friends, from every one they knew and loved, to be condemned, after surviving the horrible ocean-pa.s.sage of those days, the boys to work on sugar and tobacco plantations, the girls to lead a life of shame in the harems of Jamaica planters!

Such of them as were sent North, were to be distributed among the "saints" of New England, to be esteemed by the said "saints"

as "idolaters," "vipers," "young reprobates," just objects of "the wrath of G.o.d;" or, if appearing to fall in with their new and hard task-masters, to be greeted with words of dubious praise as "brands s.n.a.t.c.hed from the burning," "vessels of reprobation," destined, perhaps, by a due imitation of the "saints," to become some day "vessels of election," in the mean time to be unmercifully scourged by both master and mistress with the "besom of righteousness" probably, at the slightest fault or mistake.

Such was the sorrowful prospect held out to them; there was no possibility of escape, no hope of going back to the only country they loved. In the South they soon, very soon, sank into an obscure grave. In the North a prolonged life was only a prolongation of torment. For, who among them could ever think of becoming a "convert?" They had been taken from their island-home when over twelve years of age; they had already received from their mothers and hunted priests a religious education, which happily could never be effaced; they were to bury in their hearts all their lives long the conviction of their holy faith, supported by the only hope they now had, the hope of heaven.

Could the eyes of G.o.d, looking down over the earth, and marking in all places with deep pity his erring children, find souls more worthy of his vast paternal love? Can we imagine that the ears of Heaven were deaf to their prayers poured out unceasingly all those long days and nights of trials and of tears? Can we read in the designs of Providence the blessed decrees which such scenes called forth? Blind that we are, unable often to judge rightly of our own thoughts, often an enigma to ourselves, how shall we dare to judge of what is so far above us? No Christian at least can pretend that all those miseries, acc.u.mulated on the heads of so many innocent victims, had no other object than to make them suffer. Ireland will yet profit by all the merits, unknown and untold, gained by so many thousand human hearts and souls and bodies given over to misfortunes which baffle expression.

And as yet we have said nothing of those cargos of priests s.h.i.+pped from Carrickfergus to Barbadoes, and afterward to Arran and Innisboffin. Deprived of all means of making their new country in America a witness of Catholic prayer and wors.h.i.+p--not one of them probably being able to offer the holy sacrifice even for a single day, nor administer any sacrament unless perhaps that of penance-by stealth; not one dared open his mouth and preach the truth publicly to all. What could they do? They offered the sacrifice of themselves; the very sight of them possessed almost the virtue of a sacrament, and their lives preached a sermon more eloquent than any of those which entrance the vastest audience of a solemn cathedral.

No! the first emigration of 'the Irish to America was not unfruitful in its results. And were we to attribute the great progress made by Catholicity on the American Continent in the present age to the merits of those numerous victims of persecution, who could prove us to be in error, and say that between the sufferings of innocence in the seventeenth and the glorious success of their countrymen in the nineteenth century there is no connection? The old phrase of Tertullian, "Sanguis martyrum, s.e.m.e.n Christianorum," has been proved true too often in the annals of the Catholic Church to be falsified in this one instance; yet, if what our days witness be not the result of former sufferings and sacrifices, those trials were barren, and are consequently inexplicable. Every cause must have its effect; and it is a truth which no Christian can hesitate to admit, that the most efficacious source of blessings is the tear of the innocent, the anguish of the pure of heart, the humble prayer of the persecuted servant of G.o.d.

When we come to speak of the emigration of the race to the American Continent, which is now in progress, the stupendous facts which will make our narrative and excite our admiration must be regarded and accounted for from a religious and Catholic stand point, and we shall then be able to refer to this first and apparently barren emigration. Many losses, spiritual as well as temporal, may stagger the unreflecting, particularly when the whole designs of Providence are as yet scarcely in their inceptive stage; but the more they are developed before our eyes, the more the truth is made clear; every difficulty vanishes; and the soul of the beholder exclaims "Yes, G.o.d is truly wise and merciful!"

But it is time at last to enter on the consideration of what we esteem the first great issue involved in the resurrection of Ireland, namely, all the probable consequences of the present emigration, which is the true point we are aiming at, as our purpose is to show the benefit that Ireland has already derived, and is sure to derive later on, from that incessant flow of the great human wave starting from her sh.o.r.e to oversweep vast continents and islands of the sea. What aid will it afford to her own resurrection at home, in order to render that complete and lasting? This may be said to have been our main object in writing these pages; for, although it may be impressive enough for those who regard the subject attentively, and although it will certainly be a source of wonder to those who come after us, nevertheless it fails to strike as it ought the great ma.s.s of beholders.

Often in the history of nations, while the mightiest revolutions are in progress, they are scarcely perceptible to the actors in them; all their circ.u.mstances, their most active and effective operations, being like the silent workings of Nature, scarcely sensible to those around, until the end comes and the great result is achieved; then history records the event as one fraught with the greatest blessings, or misfortunes, to mankind.

So will it be, we have no doubt, with that strange concatenation of small domestic facts which now form the universal phenomenon of all English-speaking countries: the spread of the Irish everywhere.

What were its beginnings? Nothing at all. What good effects followed it? None perceptible for a long time. These two reflections claim our attention first, for we must study the phenomenon, in all its circ.u.mstances and bearings.

This new emigration we call voluntary, to distinguish it from the first, which was forced upon large portions of the Irish race. But, in reality, the Irish undertook it at the beginning with reluctance; the intolerable state of existence which they were compelled to undergo in their own land acting upon them with a kind of moral compulsion amounting to an almost irresistible force. For it was either the famine or persecution of the century preceding which first drove them to emigrate.

Necessity of expansion is a great characteristic of their race, an instinctive impulse which three thousand years ago carried a part of it into the heart of Asia. But this particular branch had been rooted to the soil for so many centuries, by the stern necessity of repelling a series of successive invasions, that this great characteristic appeared for a long time to be totally extinct in it. They seemed neither to know nor care any more for foreign countries; and no race in Europe, from the ninth to the eighteenth century, showed itself so completely wedded to the soil, and incapable of the thought of spreading abroad.

At last they began to move. And what was the first origin of the new movement? No one can say precisely. Only, in various accounts of occurrences taking place in the island during the last century, we occasionally meet with such entries as the following by Matthew O'Connor, in his "Irish Catholics:"

"The summer of 1728 was fatal. The heart of the politician was steeled against the miseries of the Catholics; their number excited his jealousy. Their decrease by the silent waste of famine must have been a source of secret joy; but the Protestant interest was declining in a proportionate degree by the ravages of starvation. . .

"Thousands of Protestants took s.h.i.+pping in Belfast for the West Indies. . . . The policy that would starve the Catholics at home would not deny them the privilege of flight."

This is the first mention of emigration, on any extensive scale, which we could find in the records of last century; and, at the time when the Protestant Irish went to America, where they doubtless met with congenial minds in the Puritans of New England, the Catholics still turned, as before, to Spain and France.

But a new entry in 1762 unfolds a new aspect. This time Catholics alone are spoken of: "No resource remained to the peasantry but emigration. The few who had means sought an asylum in the American plantations; such as remained were allowed generally an acre of ground for the support of their families, and commonage for a cow, but at rents the most exorbitant."

This is the first instance we meet with of Irish Catholics emigrating to America, at least in comparatively large bodies.

They were no doubt encouraged to take this step by the accounts which reached them of the success of the Ulster Protestants who had gone before, and whose posterity is now to be found in the South chiefly, as low down as Carolina and Georgia.

But the relative prospects of the Protestants and Catholic were at that time far from being equally good. The first, driven from home by famine, found a land of plenty awaiting them, a genial climate, perfect toleration of their religious tenets everywhere, and in some districts they gained real political influence.

They were received with open arms by the colonists, who were unable to occupy the land alone, and ready to welcome new fellow- citizens, who would aid them in their contests with the Indians, and add materially to their prosperity and resources. All persons and all things then smiled on the new-comer, and within a very short time he found himself possessed of more than he had ever expected. Thus others were induced to follow from the north of Ireland, and famine was no longer the only motive power which impelled them to leave their native land. Mr. Bancroft tells us they were called Scotch-Irish.

On the other hand, the Irish Catholics found a fertile soil and an inviting climate; Nature welcomed them, but man recoiled, inflamed by a bitter hostility against their faith and their very name. This feeling of opposition, on both accounts, was already fast wearing away in Europe; but the "liberality"

springing up in the Old World, owing to a variety of circ.u.mstances, had not yet penetrated into the British colonies of North America. They were still, in this respect, in the state in which the Revolution of 1688 had left them: Catholicity was proscribed everywhere, and the penal laws of the Old World were attempted to be enforced in the New, as far as the different state of the country would permit. A few details, taken mainly from Mr. Bancroft's history, will give us a tolerably exact idea of the situation in which the newly-arrived Irish Catholic found himself in that future land of liberty.

The consequences of the downfall of James II. were soon fully accepted by the British colonies, throughout which changes of greater or less degree took place in the laws, not only without any great opposition, but in the main with the full applause of all parties. The Stuart dynasty was thrown over more easily in America than it had been in the British Isles.

It is universally admitted that one of the greatest consequences of that downfall was the renewed persecution of Catholics in England and Ireland. In the words of Mr. Bancroft:

"The Revolution of 1688, narrow in its principles, imperfect in its details, frightfully intolerant toward Catholics, forms an era in the liberty of England and of mankind."

It will be no surprise, then, on coming to review the various colonies, to find the oppression of the Catholic Church common to all without one exception.

Beginning with the South, we find the new governor of South Carolina, Archdale, a Quaker, and, on that account, personally well disposed toward all, desirous of showing that a Quaker could respect the faith of a "Papist," commencing his administration by sending back to the Spanish Governor of Florida four Indian converts of the Spanish priests, who were exposed as slaves for sale in Carolina. He likewise enfranchised the Huguenots of South Carolina, who, up to this time, had been kept under by the High Church oligarchy. Yet, when he came to urge the adoption of liberal measures toward all in the state, the colonial Legislature consented to confer liberty of conscience on all Christians, with the exception of "Papists."

In North Carolina, the Church of England was actually made the state Church, in 1704, and the Legislature enacted that "no one who would not take the oath prescribed by law should hold a place of trust in the colony."