Chapter XIV: Breaking the Ice (6)

One, and not the least potent, of the causes which led to that fratricidal struggle was the advocacy of what was called “manifest destiny,” which is simply a delusive, dangerous, and, in its application, very often a dishonest doctrine. It is not unnatural that in a young and sanguine republic, whose short history is so full of successes, many ardent propagandists of freedom should be found, who without calculating consequences would like to extend the benefits of our political system not only to the utmost confines of this continent, but over all Christendom; but this feeling, though creditable, is hardly one to be encouraged. It leads, as we have often seen, to a national lust for the acquisition of our neighbor’s territory, to the undue extension of our boundaries, disproportionate to even our ever-increasing population, and to the weakening of the bonds that hold together the comparatively settled states of the Union, by the bodily introduction of foreign elements into our polity at variance with our real interests. The annexation of Texas and the acquisition of our Pacific territory, though productive of many tangible advantages, were undoubtedly some of the remote, but, nevertheless, very important, influences which, operating on the public mind, tended to unfix our loyalty to the whole country, and to induce us to view the recent forcible attempt on its integrity with feelings somewhat akin to indifference. That enlargement of the national domain was so sudden and immense that men’s minds, accustomed to defined limits, failed to realize it. Patriotism is not a mere sentiment, but a love of something of which we have some accurate knowledge, whether associated with a particular race, locality, or historical record, or all together; and hence, when we could not understand how in one moment what we had thought was our country, the object of our affection and source of our pride, was extended thousands of miles and millions of acres, our imaginations could not 94 keep pace with the monstrous growth of the country, and we fell back on our native or adopted states, and felt prouder of being known as Virginians or Vermonters than of being United States citizens.

It is not at all improbable that posterity will see the whole of North America united under one government, but this consummation, so devoutly to be wished, to be permanent and salutary, must be the result of time and the observance of the laws of right and justice, for nations as well as individuals flourish or fade in proportion as they follow or despise virtue. It must also be when our population is not forty millions, as it now is, but quadruple that number, and when our sparsely settled territories are well filled with citizens, their resources in full process of development, and their varied interests assimilated with those of other portions of the country. Steam and electricity may do much to bring about such results, foreign immigration more, but a proper administration of our own laws, and a judicious, liberal, and conciliatory policy towards our American neighbors, most of all.

Happily for us, we are at present on terms of friendship with all nations, and, remote from Europe and Asia, we are not likely to become involved in the complications and disputes of the Old World. Still, no human penetration can foresee how long such a desirable state of accord will exist. The monarchical states of Europe are not very sincere friends of republicanism, and, should war occur between us and them, our greatest difficulty would be to defend our already too extensive frontiers from their attacks. Why, then, should we increase our danger by enlarging them? A good general never lengthens his lines unless he has proportionate reinforcements to maintain them.

As to becoming propagandists of republicanism in Europe, we think the attempt, in this century at least, would be both injudicious and useless. The impious atrocities and dark designs of the secret societies there, who profane the word _liberty_ and blaspheme against all religion, have put so far back the cause of true freedom in the old countries that they who sincerely desire a more liberal system of laws are glad to seek under the shadow of despotism protection and security even at the sacrifice of their political liberties. If we truly wish for the spread of free institutions, let us use example rather than precept, and prove, by the honest administration of our own concerns, respect for the doctrines of Christianity, and, by proper regard for the rules laid down by the church, that republicanism has ceased to be an experiment, and has become a practical and glorious reality. Such a result would be an argument so cogent that no sophistry could refute it and no force could combat its logic. We must remember, also, that the greatest enemies of free government are not, after all, kings and nobles, but those deluded men who have banded themselves in every part of Europe, ostensibly as republicans, but secretly as the destroyers of all law and order. These men, it is well known, mock the inspired word of God and deny his very existence, contemn truth, ignore the first principles of justice, and scoff at the beautiful domestic virtues which bind the wife in affectionate duty to the husband, and the child in love and gratitude to the parent. Empires are governed mainly by force, republics through obedience, and yet those pretended apostles of freedom acknowledge no law except their own and that of their passions. Human laws, no matter by whom made, or how just they may be in letter 95 and spirit, are mere pieces of paper or parchment if the people are not disposed to obey them, and this disposition can only come through religion. For, as man is constituted, he becomes amenable to the operation of the divine law of obedience before he comes under the edicts of human legislation; in other words, he is a Christian or the reverse before he is a lawyer or responsible to the temporal law. “The characteristics of a democracy,” says Blackstone, “are public virtue and goodness as to its intentions;” and Napoleon I., though by no means as good a Christian as he was a far-seeing statesman, when about to reduce chaotic France to order and decency, found it necessary first to restore religion and recall her exiled priesthood.

Unfortunately for us, this spirit of irreligion is not confined to the other side of the Atlantic. We find it already making its way into American society, though as yet it assumes more the character of indifferentism. We call ourselves a Christian people, yet less than one-half of the entire community ever enter a church for devotional purposes from one year’s end to another. Recently, too, we notice, in our larger cities particularly, exhibitions of the same wicked spirit which animated the Carbonari and Socialists of Europe, and which reveals itself in many expressions of sympathy for the infamous Communists of Paris in the columns of some of our newspapers and the speeches of more than one prominent politician. This insidious danger to our venerated institutions ought to be closely watched and sternly repressed. It is opposed alike to private virtue and public morals, and, if ever allowed a controlling influence in the state, would sweep away every safeguard that stands between the citizen and the passions of the mob. No person who values the blessings of domestic peace or venerates the memories of our ancestors, no true American, can tolerate for a moment these communistic and socialistic designs which are creeping in amongst us, utterly foreign as they are to our soil and the genius of our people and government.

While thus excluding vicious principles from our shores, we ought to, as we have ever done, continue to welcome the oppressed and impoverished people of the Old World, and, as far as is consistent with the public safety, to extend to them every facility to a participation in the political as well as the material prosperity of the country. They are our relations. Very few of us, going back two or three generations, but will find that his ancestors were also immigrants, like those who to-day seek our protection and hospitality. Since the formation of our government, eight millions of them have made their homes in the young republic, helping to develop our resources, commerce, and manufactures, and always proving faithful to their obligations of allegiance in peace as well as in war. An enlightened and tolerant treatment of our immigrants is both charitable and wise; and the best evidence that we have profited by our superior political and educational advantages, is our readiness to make allowance for the intellectual defects and antiquated habits of those who have left home and country to join their lot with ours. The exclusion of any class of citizens from a participation in the benefits of our government, on account of religion or previous nationality, never has had, and is never likely to have, the countenance of the people of this country. The spasmodic efforts of those fanatics, vulgarly but not inappropriately called Know-nothings, 96 which have been made occasionally, were directed against Catholics, but they never reached the dignity of national movements, and, being the offspring of disappointed ambition and blind prejudice, withered before the scorn and contempt of all good men. Politically, there can be little possible danger arising from the exercise of the elective franchise by all citizens of foreign birth, even conceding their inferiority in some respects to the native-born, as the former number less than one-eighth of our entire population, and these, in the natural course of events, will disappear from among us, their children born here growing up thoroughly imbued with the spirit and liberality of our institutions. Even to-day the immediate descendants of adopted citizens hold, under both the great parties that divide the country, many high places of honor and trust, and perform their duties with an ability and patriotism that reflect credit on the American name. The nationality that would deal harshly or jealously with friends or neighbors because they were born in a foreign land, or are poor in the world’s goods, is not American, and is more fitted for the latitude of London or Peking than of New York or Washington.

We are well aware that there are many things in the conduct of some of our adopted citizens that we find difficulty in understanding, and which require all our good-nature to overlook or palliate. A great famine, we might say a succession of famines, the misgovernment of England, and the oppression of the worst class of alien landlords with which a people ever were afflicted, have driven among us, within a quarter of a century, over two millions of the inhabitants of Ireland. Having been denied practically all participation in the government of their own country, they never have had an opportunity of acquiring that steady habit of thought and reflection necessary to qualify them to judge of the relative merits or demerits of the manifold political measures which the exigencies of a free nation are, from time to time, presenting for popular endorsement; and having unlimited confidence in those who profess to be their friends in their new homes, they fall an easy prey to the demagogue and the political charlatan. The victims of long, cruel, and unrelenting tyranny, and ardent lovers of their fatherland, their hatred of England is, if possible, stronger than their love for Ireland. In fact, those two engrossing passions sometimes so absorb their minds that prudence, toleration, and even self-interest are forgotten. This circumstance, while it may be creditable to themselves, cannot but be regretted by us for many reasons, but more particularly because it renders their assimilation with the vast majority of our people more slow and difficult, and operates against their material advancement, and consequently against the welfare of their children. In the abstract, we do not blame our Irish immigrants for this fond devotion to their natal country, nor for their hatred of her oppressor; on the contrary, we admire it as long as it works no injustice to them or to the country they have selected as their future home; but we do most emphatically deprecate the conduct of those among them who, trading on such natural and generous feelings for selfish purposes, turn them aside from their duty as parents and citizens, and, assuming to be their leaders, have swayed them in the interest of this or that faction, wholly neglecting at the same time the performance of duties to the execution of which 97 any one might be proud to devote his life.

Let us illustrate what we mean. There are, at least, two and a half millions of Irish in the United States, the great majority of whom, for very sufficient, if not obvious, reasons occupy socially and pecuniarily a very inferior position to that which their natural abilities would entitle them, yet we see how little effort is being made by their countrymen, of more education or larger wealth, to assist them. The Catholic Church has done much, but the church, necessarily, can only attend to their spiritual wants and to the education of their children; the temperance and benevolent societies are good in their way, but their power is limited, and their sphere of action very restricted; but we look in vain for an organization that will take by the hand the bewildered and uncertain stranger as he lands at Castle Garden or in the harbor of Boston, shield him from the temptations and villany which mark him out as a victim from the moment his foot touches the firm earth and his battle of life commences, find him employment in the great centres of trade and commerce, or conduct him safely to the broad spreading fields of the free and fruitful West. If he be a farmer or agricultural laborer, as the majority of Irish immigrants are, what society of his countrymen is prepared to defray his expenses to the rural districts, where labor is always in demand, and wages high, or help him to locate on the Western lands, which can be had almost for the asking, and where he can bring up his family in comfort and happiness? If half the money and one-quarter the time and labor which were recently so foolishly expended in futile efforts to free Ireland and invade the British dependencies had been used for the benefit of the poorer class of our Irish immigrants, how many thousands of them might now be enjoying happy homes in our fertile Western states and territories, instead of infesting the purlieus of New York, underbidding each other for precarious and unhealthy employment. How many victims of disappointed hope or mistaken confidence might have been rescued from the slough of despondency and degradation into which they have fallen, and placed in a position of at least comparative independence. The liberation of Ireland through the instrumentality of her exiled children is an old and a splendid dream, but it is only a dream so long as the present relations exist between this country and England. We yield to no one in appreciation of all that is noble in that pious and gallant nation, and would, perhaps, sacrifice as much as the most enthusiastic of her sons to see her not only independent, but in the enjoyment of the fullest liberty; but no person who has ever casually studied the relative strength and resources of England and Ireland, and who has had any practical experience of the enormous expenditure of life and money so unsuccessfully incurred by the people of the South, even when military training and available population were so evenly balanced, can for a moment believe in the success of any attempt of the people themselves to separate forcibly one from the other.

But whatever the people in Ireland may see fit to do or dare, the organization of armed men in this country to assist in that purpose is most reprehensible and fraught with the greatest mischiefs. For any person within our limits to attempt to levy war on a country at peace with the United States is clearly illegal. If he be a stranger, it is a criminal abuse of our hospitality; if a citizen, he disregards his 98 oath of allegiance. Such a movement gives color to the assertions of the worst enemies of all foreigners, the Know-nothings, who accuse Irishmen of not becoming citizens in the true spirit of their oath, but merely pretended ones, whose object is to use this country as their _point d’appui_ for ulterior objects. Besides, such societies have a tendency to unsettle the minds of the people, and divert them from the main objects of their self-expatriation--free homes and altars. But even if Ireland were to-day independent, not one-tenth of the Irish in America could or would return. The mass of them are permanently attached to America by affection, association, or interest; their children are growing up around them, naturally imbued with a love for this, the country of their birth; their property and business are here; some are too old to be retransplanted, and others young enough to prefer seeking fortunes in our stupendous and but yet only partially developed commonwealth, to spending a lifetime in the necessarily limited sphere of enterprise presented by so small a country as Ireland under the most favorable auspices. True patriotism should, therefore, dictate to the Irish-American the wisdom of promoting the welfare of this large majority of his countrymen who, for good or evil, must pass their lives with us. And what a vast and enticing field is thus presented to the successful merchant and ardent Irish nationalist! If they cannot free Ireland, they can by their money and their intelligence free tens of thousands of their countrymen from the slavery of poverty and dependence, from the vices of the cities and the degradation of the factories and the coal-mines. Such an effort, judiciously made, apart from the benefits it would confer on so many poor and deserving citizens, and the unanswerable argument it would present of practical, disinterested sympathy, would, if the occasion should ever present itself, enable the persons so benefited to assist in their turn the cause of true Irish nationality. There is nothing so successful, it is said, as success, and while the sympathies of most nations, particularly of our own, are easily enlisted in favor of an oppressed nation like Ireland, there is generally observable an implied doubt that she is misgoverned because her people have not the capacity to properly govern themselves. At home, they certainly have not been allowed to try the experiment, but here, with free institutions already firmly established, vast mineral, agricultural, and commercial industries to invite their labor and excite their ambition, and with an area of unoccupied land almost beyond conception, a people incapable of profiting by these advantages, either as individuals or by mutual co-operation, expose themselves to the suspicion of being deficient in that organizing faculty and mental grasp which create and sustain independent governments.

Without intending to draw an invidious distinction between one class of citizens and another, we may point to the German immigration to this country as an admirable example of the benefits arising from organization and mutual support. It is this harmony of purpose that has given to the Teutonic element, though by no means the strongest in our population, a preponderating influence in several of the Western states, and the proprietorship of innumerable farms on both sides of the Mississippi River. Coming from a self-governing country, and leaving behind an extensive trading and manufacturing connection, the German immigrant has of course many advantages over his Irish 99 fellow-voyager, but those who have closely watched the progress of both races in America assert that it is to the admirable system of mutual help and protection enjoyed by the former that his great industrial progress is mainly due.

We are satisfied that there are many wealthy citizens of Irish birth in this city and elsewhere who would gladly contribute of their super-abundant means to assist their less fortunate fellow-countrymen, were any feasible project inaugurated by which they could do so practically and efficiently, and we trust that there are among us adopted citizens themselves--persons who, abandoning chimerical schemes of conquest and invasion, would devote their time and ability to assist those of their helpless countrymen who have come and are coming among us. Every intelligent agriculturist that can be planted on the virgin soil of our now waste public lands, every ingenious mechanic that is furnished with employment in our workshops, and, we may say, every stalwart laborer that is removed from the overstocked labor market of the East and assisted to the towns and smaller cities of the South and West, adds to the general wealth of the community, increases the strength and glory of our republic, and conduces to its growing intelligence and morality.

The pursuit of wealth, however important, is not of course the primary duty of man, considered either as an individual responsible being or as a citizen. Religion, in its proper practical sense, is not only the source of happiness for mankind in this world and the next, but is absolutely necessary for the preservation of all well-regulated society, and it is on this account among others that so many admirers of American institutions have seen with regret that a large portion of our immigrants from the continental countries of Europe evince a complete disregard for the plainest forms of Christianity. Now, the founders of this government were essentially a religious people. The Catholics of Maryland and the Puritans of New England; the Virginia Episcopalians and the Pennsylvania Quakers, feared God and revered his laws, as far at least as they understood them; and the excellent institutions which those men of diverse opinions, but honest intentions, originated and transmitted to us, are but the reflex of that reverential and devotional spirit. We admire the thrift and enterprise of our German fellow-citizens, we admit their general good order, taste, and proficiency in art, particularly the beautiful one of music, and we know how many fine churches and hospitals they have built and are sustaining, but it cannot be denied that there is a great deal of indifferentism, and even worse, among the anti-Catholic portion of them, the outward evidence of which may be found in the complete disregard that is so generally manifested for the holiness of the Sunday. We are not of those who would deny to the hard-working and hard-faring classes their proper share of innocent and healthful amusement on the only day in the week that they can escape from labor, but this recreation should be preceded by some act of devotion, some solemn and open recognition of our dependence on the great Giver of life and happiness. Still, whoever visits our saloons and pleasure gardens on a Sunday will find them thronged with persons of all ages and both sexes from early morning till midnight, while churches that would gladly receive them are comparatively deserted. Luther’s revolt against the church has much of this to answer for, but Kant, Fichte, 100 and other so-called philosophers of more modern times have much more; for while the “Reformers” only unsettled the religious mind of Germany, and partially succeeded in alienating it from the Catholic Church, the schoolmen succeeded in making atheism fashionable among the intelligent classes by covering it with a thin veil of learned mysticism. This want of proper deference for the day set apart by the church, and by all Christian sects, for special reverence, and the observance of which is even enjoined by our common and statute law, is, we maintain, not only un-American, but is likely to produce a general contempt for all law, and lead to a weakening of the sense of that obedience which every individual citizen owes to the public authority.

In thus alluding to the characteristics of some of our adopted citizens, we have touched only on those of the two most numerous representatives of European nationalities, not because there are not others whose deficiencies, from an American point of view, are not as apparent, but from the fact that we consider, from their numerical strength and intrinsic qualities, they are destined to exercise a marked and extensive influence on the future character of the country. In feeling or temperament, they are not opposed to us nor to each other. The vivacity and even excitability of one race find their complement in the solidity and matter-of-fact disposition of the other--a union of qualities which, governed and properly managed by the practical genius of Americans, will in all human probability lead to results in the distant future of the magnitude of which we scarcely dare to dream. No people ever possessed the advantages that we, native and adopted, enjoy. Let us avail ourselves of them in such manner that posterity may look back to us, as we to the Revolutionary fathers, with unmingled feelings of gratitude and admiration.

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OUR LADY OF LOURDES.

FROM THE FRENCH OF HENRI LASSERRE.

(_Concluded._)