Chapter XIV: Resurrection.-Emigration (1)

To the eye of a keen beholder, Ireland to-day presents the appearance of a nation entering upon a new career. She is emerging from a long darkness, and opening again to the free light of heaven. Whoever compares her present position with that she occupied a century ago, cannot fail to be struck with wonder no less at the change in her than at the agencies which brought that change about. And when to this is added the further reflection that she is still young, though sprung from so old-an- origin-young in feeling, in buoyancy, in aspirations, in purity and simplicity-the conclusion forces itself upon the mind that a high destiny is in store for her, and that God proposes a long era of prosperity and active life to an ancient nation which is only now beginning to live.

In such cases, whether it be a people or an individual, which is entering upon its life, crowds of advisers are ever to be found ready to display their wisdom and lay down the plans whose adoption will infallibly bring prosperity and happiness to the individual or people in question.

Ireland, to-day, suffers from no lack of wise counsellors and ardent well-wishers. Unfortunately, their various projects do not always harmonize; indeed, they are sometimes contradictory, and, as their number is by no means small, the only difficulty is where to choose which road the nation should take in order to march in the right direction.

In entering upon this portion of our work, where we have to deal with actual questions of the day, and if not to draw the horoscope of the future, at least to give utterance to our ideas for the promotion of the welfare of the nation, we shall appear to come under the same catalogue of advisers, fully persuaded, with the rest, that our advice is the right, our voice the only one worthy of attention.

Our purpose is far humbler; our reflections take another shape; we merely say

During the last hundred years, Ireland has changed wonderfully for the better; and although the old wounds are not yet quite healed up, though they still smart, though she is still poor and disconsolate, and her trials and afflictions far from being ended; nevertheless, though sorely tried, Providence has been kind to her. Many of her rights have been restored, and she is no longer the slave of hard task-masters. When she now speaks, her voice is no longer met by the gibe and sneer, but with a kind of awe akin to respect, her enemies seeming to feel instinctively that it is the voice of a nation which no longer may be safely despised.

This fact being indisputable, the conviction forces itself upon us that her improved condition is mainly, perhaps solely, due to Providence; and that the career upon which she has entered, and which she is now pursuing with a clear determination of her own, has been marked out, designed, and already partially run, under the guidance of that God for whom alone she has suffered, and who never fails in his own good time to dry up the tears shed for his sake, and crown his martyrs with victory.

Our task is merely to examine the progress made, the manner of its making, the direction toward which it tends, with the aim, if possible, of adding to its speed. We have no new plan to offer, no gratuitous advice to give. The plan is already sketched out--God has sketched it; and our only aim is to see how man may cooperate with designs far higher than any proposed by human wisdom.

The first thing that strikes us, standing on the verge of this new region, opening out dimly but gloriously before our eyes, is one great fact which is plain to all; which is greater than all England's concessions to Ireland, more fruitful of happy consequences, not alone to the latter country itself, but to the world at large; a fact which is the strongest proof of the vitality of the Irish race, which now begins to win for it respect by bringing forth its real strength, a strength to astonish the world; which began feebly when the evils of the country were at their height, but has gone on constantly increasing until it has now grown to extraordinary proportions; and which instead of, as their enemies fondly supposed, wresting Ireland from the Irish, has made their claim to the native soil securer than ever, by spreading strong supporters of their rights through the world. This great fact is emigration.

At this moment, Irishmen are scattered abroad over the earth. In many regions they have numbers, and form compact bodies. Wherever this occurs, they acquire a real power in the land which they have made their new home. That power is certainly intended by Almighty God to be used wisely, prudently, but actively and energetically; not only for the good of those who have been thus transplanted in a new soil, but also for the good of the mother-country which they cannot, if they would, forget. How can they utilize for such a purpose the power so recently acquired, the wealth, the influence, the consideration they enjoy, in their new country? How may such a course benefit the land of their nativity as of their origin? These are important questions; they are not airy theories, but rise up clearly from a standing and stupendous fact. The turning their power of expansion to its right use, the reproduction with Christian aim of that old power of expansion peculiar to the Celtic race three thousand years ago, is what we call the first true issue of the Irish question:- Emigration and its Possible Effects.

In order to judge with proper understanding of the prospective effects of Irish emigration, it is fitting to study the fact in all its bearings; to examine the origin and various phases of the mighty movement, the religious direction it has invariably taken, the immediate good it has produced, and the special consideration of the vast proportions which it has finally assumed. The task may be a long one; but it is certainly important and interesting; and it is only after the details of it have been thoroughly sifted that one may be in a position to judge rightly of the aid it has already furnished, and which it is destine to furnish in a still greater degree, to the uprising of the nation.

The movement originated with the Reformation. It began with the flight of a few of the nobility in the reign of Henry VIII.; their number was increased under Elizabeth, and grew to larger proportions still under James I.; but a far greater number, sufficient to make a very sensible diminution in the population of the country, was doomed to exile by Cromwell and the Long Parliament. It then became a compulsory banishment.

The next following movement on a large scale occurred after the surrender of Kilkenny, when the Irish commanders, Colonel Fitzpatrick, Clanricard, and others, could obtain no better terms than emigration to any foreign country then at peace with England. The Irish troops were eagerly caught up by the various European monarchs, so highly were their services esteemed. The number that thus left their native land, many of them never to return, amounted, according to well-informed writers, to forty thousand men, of noble blood most of them, many of the first nobility of the land, and almost all children of the old race. The details of this first exodus are to be found in the pages of many modern authors, particularly in Mr. Prendergast's "Cromwellian Settlement."

The example thus given was followed on many occasions. The Treaty of Limerick, October 3, 1691, gave the garrison under Saarsfield liberty to join the army of King William or enter the service of France. Mr. A.M. O'Sullivan has given a spirited sketch of the making of their choice by the heroic garrison as it defiled out of the city:

"On the morning of the 5th of October the Irish regiments were to make their choice between exile for life or service in the armies of their conqueror. At each end of a gently-rising ground beyond the suburbs were planted on one side the royal standard of France, and on the other that of England. It was agreed that the regiments, as they marched out with all the honors of war, drums beating, colors flying, and matches lighted, should, on reaching the spot, wheel to the left or to the right, beneath that flag under which they elected to serve. At the head of the Irish marched the Foot Guards, the finest regiment in the service, fourteen hundred strong. All eyes were fixed on this splendid body of men. On they came, amid breathless silence and acute suspense; for well both the English and Irish generals knew that the choice of the first regiment would powerfully influence all the rest. The Guards marched up to the critical spot, and in a body wheeled to the colors of France, barely seven men turning to the English side! Ginckle, we are told, was greatly agitated as he witnessed the proceeding. The next regiment, however (Lord Iveagh's), marched as unanimously to the Williamite banner, as did also portions of two others. But the bulk of the Irish army defiled under fleur-de-lys of King Louis, only one thousand and forty-six, out of nearly fourteen thousand men, preferring the service of England."

From that time out a large number of the Irish nobility and gentry continued to enlist under French, Spanish, or Austrian colors; and the several Irish brigades became celebrated all over Europe until the end of the eighteenth century. It is said by l'abbe McGeohegan that six hundred thousand Irishmen perished in the armies of France alone. The abbe is generally very accurate, and from his long residence in France had every means at his disposal of arriving at the truth. Some pretend that double the number enlisted in foreign service. There is no doubt that in all a million men left the island to take service under the banners of Catholic sovereigns, and it is needless to dwell on the bravery and devotion of those men whom the persecution of an unwise and cruel Protestant government drove out of Ireland during the eighteenth century-it is needless to dwell upon it, for the record is known to the world.

Without following the fortunes of the Irish brigades, the history of one of which, that in the service of France, has been given us in the very interesting and valuable narrative of John R. O'Callaghan-its various fortunes and final dissolution at the breaking out of the French republic, when the English Government was glad to receive back the scattered remnants of it-the question which bears most on our present subject is: What was the occupation of those Irishmen on the Continent when not actually engaged in war? What service did their voluntary or compulsory exile do their native country? Was that long emigration of a century productive of something out of which Providence may have drawn good?

The first departure of a few under Hugh O'Neill and Hugh O'Donnell had already spread the name of Ireland through Spain, Italy, and Belgium. The reports of the numerous English spies, employed to dog their steps and watch their movements, reports some of which have been finally brought to light, conclusively prove that most of the exiles held honorable positions in Spain and Portugal, at Valladolid and Lisbon, where the O'Sullivans and O'Driscolls lived; at the very court of Spain, or in the Spanish navy, like the Bourkes and the Cavanaghs.

In Flanders, under the Austrian archdukes, were stationed the McShanes, on the Groyne; the Daniells at Antwerp; the posterity of the earls themselves with that of their former retinue. All held rank in the Austrian army, and even in times of peace were occupied in thinking of possible entanglements whereby they might serve their country, while they made the Irish name honored and respected all over that rich land. In Italy, at Naples, Leghorn, Florence, and Rome, in the great centres of the peninsula, the same thing was taking place, and there, at least, the calumnies, everywhere so industriously circulated about Ireland, could not penetrate, or, if they did, only to be received with scorn.

But, when the next emigration, at the end of the Cromwellian and Williamite wars, landed forty thousand soldiers, and twelve thousand more a few years afterward, on the European Continent, these armed men proved to the nations, by their bravery, their deep attachment to their religion, their perfect honor and generosity, that the people from which a persecuting power had driven them forth could not be composed of the outlaws and blood- thirsty cutthroats which the reports of their enemies would make them. How striking and permanent must have been the effect produced on impartial minds by the contrast between the aspect of the reality and the base fabrications of skilfully-scattered rumor!

And be it borne in mind that those men founded families in the countries where they settled; as well as those who continued to flock thither during the whole of the eighteenth century. They carried about with them, in their very persons even, the history of Ireland's wrongs; and the mere sight of them was enough to interest all with whom they came in contact in favor of their country. Hence the esteem and sympathy which Ireland and her people have always met with in France, where the calumnies and ridicule lavished on them could never find an entrance.

It would be a great error to imagine that they were to be found only in the camp or in the garrisons of cities. They made themselves a home in their new country, and their children entered upon all the walks of life opened up to the citizens of the country in which they resided. Thus, at least, the name of Ireland did not die out altogether during that age of gloom, when their native isle was only the prison of the race, where it was chained down in abject misery, out of the sight of the world, the life of it stifled out in the deep dungeon of oblivion.

In all honorable professions they became distinguished-in the Church and in trade, as in the army. Thus, speaking only of France, an Irishman-Edgeworth-was chosen by Louis XVI. to prepare him for death and stand by him during his last ordeal of ignominy; another-Lally Tollendal-would have wrested India from England, if his ardent temperament had not brought him enemies where he ought to have met with friends; another yet-Walsh- during the American War, employed the wealth acquired by trade, in sending cruisers against the English to American waters.

It would take long pages to record what those noble exiles accomplished for the good of their country and religion, quite apart from the heroism they displayed on battle-fields, and their fidelity to principle during times of peace. Their very presence in foreign countries was, perhaps, the best protest against the enslavement of their own. They showed by their bearing that they owed no allegiance to England, and that brute force could never establish right. By identifying themselves with the nations which offered them hospitality and a new right of citizenship, they proved to the world that their native isle could be governed by native citizens. Their honorable conduct and successful activity in every pursuit of life showed that, as they were capable of governing themselves, so likewise could they claim self-government for their country.

The moral condition of France during the eighteenth century, and the depths of corruption into which the higher class sank in so short a time, are known to all. To the honor of the Irish nobility and gentry then in France, not a single Irish name is to be met with in that long list of noble names which have disgraced that page of French history. Not in the luxurious bowers and palaces of Louis XV. were they to be found, but on the battle-fields of Dettingen and Fontenoy. It was a Scotchman- Law-who infected the higher circles of the natives with the rage for speculation, and the folly of gambling in paper. It was an Italian- Cagliostro-who traded on the superstitious credulity of men who had lost their faith. It was an Englishman-Lord Derwentwater-and another Scotchman-Ramsay-who, by the introduction of the first Masonic Lodge into France, opened the floodgates of future revolutions.

Among those of foreign birth, no Irishman was found in France to contribute to the corruption of the nation, and give his aid to set agoing that long era of woe not yet ended.

And needless is it to add that never is one of them mentioned, among those who were so active in propagating that broad infidelity peculiar to that age. If a few of them shared to some extent in the general delusion, and took part with the vast multitude in the insane derision, then so fashionable, of every thing holy, their number was small indeed, and none of them acquired in that peculiar line, the celebrity which crowned so many others. -the Grimms, the Gallianis, and later on the Paines, the Cloots, and other foreigners.

As a body, the Irish remained faithful to the Church of their fathers, honoring her by their conduct, and their respectful demeanor toward holy names and holy things. Eventually they, in common with all Frenchmen, had to share in the misfortunes, brought on by the subversion of all the former guiding principles; but, though sharing in the punishment, they took no part in the great causes which called it down.

These few words will suffice for the emigration of the Irish nobility, and its effects on foreign countries; as well as Ireland itself.

But another class of noblemen had emigrated to the Continent side by side with those of whom we have just spoken; namely, bishops, priests, monks, and learned men. England would not suffer the Catholic clergy in Ireland; she was particularly careful not to allow Irish youth the benefit of any but a Protestant education. Irish clergymen were compelled to fly and open houses of study abroad. Their various colleges in Spain, France, Belgium, and Italy, are well known; they have already been referred to, and it is not necessary to enlarge on the subject. But, though mention has been made of the renown thus acquired by Irishmen then residing on the Continent, it is fitting to speak of them again in their character of emigrants.

They took upon themselves the noble task of making the literature and the history of their nation known to all people; and in so doing they have preserved a rich literature which must otherwise have perished.

What was their situation on the Continent? They had been driven by persecution from their country, sometimes in troops of exiles to be cast on some remote shore; sometimes escaping singly and in disguise, they went out alone to end their lives under a foreign sky. Behind them they left the desolate island; their friends bowed down in misery, their enemies triumphant and in full power. The convents, where they had spent their happiest days, were either demolished or turned to vile uses; their churches desecrated; heresy ruling the land, truth compelled to be silent. All the harrowing details given by the "Prophet of Lamentations" might be applied to their beloved country.

True, they could find peace and rest among those who offered them their hospitality; at least, the worship of God would be free and untrammelled there. But it was not the place of their birth, where they had received their first education; it was not the mission intrusted to them when they consecrated their lives to God. They would bear another language, see around them different manners, begin life anew, perhaps, in their old age. What a contrast to their former hopes! What a sad ending to the closing days of their life!

Nevertheless, they might be of use to their countrymen. It was not for them now to convert Europe, and preach Christianity to barbarous tribes, as did their ancestors of old. The world which received them was languishing with excess of refined civilization; corruption had entered in, and was fast destroying it; and they could scarcely hope to hold it back from its downward career. But, at least, they might open houses for the reception of the youth of their own country, where they should receive an education according to the teachings of the true Church, which was denied them at home. So they went to Salamanca, to Valladolid, to Paris, Louvain, Douai, Rheims, Rome, wherever there was hope or possibility of directing Irish youth in the ways of true piety and learning.

The labors to which they devoted themselves, though unknown to posterity, were of great utility at the time. They saw the youth they educated grow up under their care; when their studies were concluded, they sent them to labor in the ministry among their countrymen; they heard of them from time to time of their arduous life, the dangers they braved, the many persecutions they underwent, their imprisonment when captured, their conviction, torture often, and death by martyrdom. And thus, through the exertions of those emigrant monks and priests, the true Gospel was preached in Ireland, and the faith of the people kept alive and strong.

A few of them chose another path, and consecrated the remainder of their days to literary labors, which have shed down on their persecuted country a halo of immortal glory.

Some Franciscan friars (two of them the brothers O'Cleary) had already begun this work in the island itself, when driven from their quiet homes to take refuge in the obscure "convents," that is, out-of-the-way farm-houses mentioned before, where they were received and hidden away from the world. The literature of Ireland was fast perishing; the rage of their enemies being as violently directed against their books as against their houses and churches. Precious manuscripts were every day given to the flames and wantonly destroyed, seemingly for the mere pleasure of destruction. A very few years would have sufficed to render the former history of the country a perfect blank. In no spot of the same size on earth had so many interesting books ever been written and treasured up; but before long there would remain no friars on the island to preserve them, no library to contain them, no one to care for them in the least. The brothers O'Cleary saw this with dismay; and they, with two companions, became known as the "Four Masters." They interested in their work the faithful Irish who still retained possession of a farm, or a cabin with a few acres of ground attached; the men, and women even, were to search the country round for every volume concealed or preserved, for every parchment and relic, for vellum manuscripts, even a stray solitary page, did one remain alone. The annals of Ireland were thus saved by the literary patriotism of poor and unknown peasants. All that remains of Irish lore was collected together in the rural convent of the O'Clearys, and an ardent flame was enkindled which lasted the whole of the seventeenth century.

To this initiative must be referred the subsequent labors of Ward, Colgan, Lynch, and others; herculean labors truly, which have enabled antiquarians of our days to resume the thread, so near being snapped, of that long and tangled web of history wherein is woven all that can interest the patriot and the Christian of the island.

Knowing the position in which the writers found themselves, it is astonishing to see what they wrote. It was not a work of fancy to which their pens were devoted: A strong, feeling heart and an active imagination were certainly theirs; but of little service could either prove to them in the ungrateful task of collecting manuscripts, classifying, reading them through, ascertaining their age and authenticity, and finally using them for the purpose of preserving the annals and hagiography of the nation.

The large libraries they found in the various cities which received them could be of little use to them. They had first to collect their own libraries, to summon their authorities from distant lands; many books were to be procured from Ireland itself. With what precautions! It was real, (though lawful) smuggling; for the export of Irish books was not only under tariff, but strictly prohibited; the mere sight of them was more hateful to a British custom-house officer of those days than the sight of a crucifix to a Japanese official of Nagasaki. It would be interesting to know the various stratagems devised to conceal them, tarry them away, and convey them triumphantly to Louvain, Paris, or Rome.

But Ireland was not the only repository of Irish books. Many letters, official documents, copies of old MSS., interesting relics of antiquity, had been gathered ages before and during all the intervening time, in convents, churches, houses of education, on the Continent, along the Rhine chiefly. It is said that even to-day the richest mines of yet unexplored lore of this character are scattered along both sides of the great German river. The frequent movements of various armies, the sieges of cities, the horrors of war which have raged there constantly from the days of Arminius and Varro down, have not destroyed every thing, could not exhaust the rich deposit of Irish manuscripts there concealed. But the labor of striking the mine!-of' opening those musty pages falling to pieces between the fingers and leaving in the hand nothing but illegible fragments of half-blackened parchment; and the further labor of deciphering them, of discovering what they speak about, and if they are likely to prove useful to the purposes.

It is needless to descant on such a theme. It is impossible to give any true idea of the literary labors of those men, without having seen and perused their huge folios, many of which have not yet been published to the world. Poor Colgan could give us little more than his "Trial Thaumaturga and that was only destined to form the portal of the edifice he purposed erecting as a shrine to the memory of the whole host of saints nurtured in the island-the Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae

The grand idea, which first germinated in the minds of those men, expanded afterward in others under circumstances more favorable. Did they not suggest to Bollandus and his fellows the thought whose realization has immortalized them?

In tasks such as these were the Irish emigrant monks of the time employed.

There was yet another class of involuntary Irish exiles those shipped to the " plantations" of America, to the 11 tobacco" and 11 sugar" islands, to Virginia and Jamaica, but principally to the Barbadoes. The origin of this new kind of emigration, already touched upon, is worthy of the times and of the men who called it forth.

After forty thousand soldiers had been allowed, or rather compelled, by Cromwell to enlist in foreign armies, it was found that many had left behind them their wives and children. What was to be done with these " widows" whose husbands and numerous offspring were still living ? They could not be sent to Coff as women, with children only, could not be expected to "plant" that desolate province; they could not be expected to "plant" that desolate province; they could not be allowed to remain in their native place, as the decree had gone forth that all the Irish were to "transplant" or be transported: it would have been inconvenient and inexcusable to do what had been so often done in the war-massacre them in cold blood-as the war was over.

To relieve the government of this difficulty, Bristol merchants, and merchants probably from other English cities, trading with the new British colonies of North America, thought it a providential opening for a great profit to accrue to the soils of the benighted Irish women and children, and likely at the same time to add something to their own purses and those of their friends, the West India planters.

It was only under Elizabeth that permanent colonies were sent out from England to the continent and islands of the New World. The Cavaliers of Virginia are as well known in the South as the Puritans of New England in the North. This last colony dated only from the time of the Stuart dynasty. The great question for all those transatlantic establishments was that of labor; but in the South it was more difficult of solution than in the North, where Europeans could work in the fields, a thing scarcely possible in the tropics. The natives as we know, were first employed in the South by the Spaniards, and soon succumbed to the demands of European rapacity.

In the West Indies, natives of two different races existed: the soft and delicate Indian of Hayti and Cuba, and the ferocious Caribs of many other islands. The first race soon disappeared; the other continued refractory, indomitable, choosing to perish rather than labor; and some remnants of it still remain, saved by the Catholic Church. As yet, African negroes had not been conveyed there in sufficient numbers.

A brilliant thought struck the minds, at once pious, active, and business-like, of those above-mentioned Bristol merchants-a thought which was the doom of thousands of Irish women and children.

The names of a few of those Bristol firms deserve to be handed down. Those of Messrs. James Sellick and Leader, Mr. Robert Yeomans, Mr. Joseph Lawrence, Dudley North, and John Johnson, are furnished by Mr. Prendergast, who tells us that-

"The Commissioners of Ireland under Cromwell gave them orders upon the governors of garrisons to deliver them prisoners of war . . . . upon masters of work-houses, to hand over to them the destitute under their care, `who were of an age to labor,' or, if women, those 'who were marriageable, and not past breeding;' and gave directions to all in authority, to seize those who had no visible means of livelihood, and deliver them to these agents of the Bristol merchants; in execution of which latter directions, Ireland must have exhibited scenes in every part like the slave-hunts in Africa."

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 godly gentlemen who bartered over them, may be well imagined. It is calculated that, in four years, those English firms of slave-dealers had shipped 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 shipped 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 ships; 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 shipped off to the same American plantations; so that persons of every class which is held sacred in the eyes of God 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 ships as should sail with the first opportunity to the Barbadoes. One may imagine the sufferings of this toilsome journey by the petition of one of them. Paul Cashin, 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 perishing in restraint from want of friends and means of relief. On the 27th of August, the commissioners having ascertained the truth of his petition, 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.

Ship-loads of them had been discharged on the inhospitable shore 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 God'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 substituted 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 longshoremen who load and unload the ships 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 ship-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 God 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 sexes 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 God, 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-passage 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 God;" or, if appearing to fall in with their new and hard task-masters, to be greeted with words of dubious praise as "brands snatched 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 God, 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, accumulated 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 shipped 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 worship--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, semen 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 God.

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, God 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 shore 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 mass 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 circumstances, 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 circumstances 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 shipping 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.