IRISH
145
IRISH
ent clay there is hardly a diocese or archdiocese
in continental United States but has been governed
by prelates of Irish birth or descent. In the earlier
days of the Republic and continuing to about 1830,
bishops of other nationalities, chiefly French bishops,
had much the larger share in the government of the
Church ; but with the steady and large accessions of
the Irish to the Catholic population, the latter acquired
a predominance which has ever since been maintained.
At the time of the First Provincial Council of Baltimore (1829) two only of the nine prelates con- stituting the hierarchy were of Irish birth. At the time of the Thiril Council (1.837) there were four such prelates. In 184ti, of the twenty-tliree dioceses repre- sented in the Sixth Council, ten sent bishops of Irish origin. In 1852, of the incumbents of the twenty- seven sees, fifteen were of the Irish race. In 1876 the hierarchy of the Church included four archbishops, who were Irish either by birth or descent, and twenty- eight bishops s[)rung from the same race. Of the fourteen provinces now (1908) constituting the terri- torial divisions of the Church in continental United States, nine are governed by archbishops of Irish blood, and forty-eight of the bishops of the seventy- eight dioceses comprised in these provinces are of the Irish race. The same race has furnished the two cardinals with whom the Church in the United States has been honoured, viz.: Jolin McCloskey, for- merly Archbishop of New York, and James Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore.
It would be difficult, if not impossible, to apportion the Catholic laity of the present day strictly according to their racial origin, but in view of the figures of immigration as before ascertained, and the propor- tion of the ecclesiastics of Irish origin engaged in the service of religion, it is safe to assume that more than one-half of the total number of Catholics in the United States come of Irish stock. As regards the moral and material aid contributed by the Irish in the United States in support of religion, the distinguished French Jesuit, Rev. A. J. Th^baud, in his work, " Ire- land, Past and Present" (p. 45.3), quotes approvingly the language of John Francis Maguire, M.P., who says: " What Ireland has done for the American Church, every Bishop, every priest, can tell. Through- out the vast extent of the Union there is scarcely a church, an academy, a hospital, or a refuge, in which the piety, the learning, the zeal, the self-sacrifice, of the Irish — of the priest or the professor, of the Sisters of every order or denomination — are not to be traced ; there is scarcely an ecclesiastical seminary for English-speaking students in which the great majority of those now preparing for the service of the sanctuary do not belong, if not by birth, at least by blood, to that historic land to which the grateful Church of past ages accorded the proud title. Insula Sanctorum" (Maguire, "The Irish in America", p. 540).
Still another competent judge, the distinguished Bishop J. L. Spalding, in his work, "The Mission of the Irish Race ", says (p. 61) : " As in another age men spoke of the gesla Dei -per Francos, so may we now speak of the gesta Dei per Hibernos. Were it not for Ireland, Catholicism would to-day be feeble and non- progressive in England, America, and Australia. Nor is the force of this affirmation weakened by the weight and significance which must be given to what the converts in England, and the Germans and the French in the United States, have done for the Church. The Irish have made the work of the con- verts possible and effective, and they have given to Catholicism in this country a vigor and cohesiveness which enable it to assimilate the most heterogeneous elements, and without which it is not at all certain that the vast majority of Catholics emigrating hither from other lantls would not have been lost to the Church. ' No other people', to repeat what I have elsewhere written, 'could have done for the Catholic VIII.— 10 -
faith in the United States what the Irish people have
done. Their unalterable attachment to their priests;
their deep Catholic instincts, which no combination of
circumstances has ever been able to liring into con-
flict with their love of country; the unworldlj^ and
spiritual temper of the national character; their in-
difference to ridicule and contempt, and their unfail-
ing generosity, all fitted them for the work which was
to be done, and enabled them, in spite of the strong
prejudices against their race which .\mericans have
inherited from England, to accomplish what would
not have been accomplished by Italian, French or
German Catholics'."
Prendergast, The Cromwellian Settlement of IreUiml (New York, 1868); D'Arcy McGee, A History of the Irish Settlers in North America (Boston, 1852); Harrison, The Scot in Ulster (Edinburgh, 1888)- D'Arcy McGee, A Popular History of Ire- land (Glasgow) ; Walpole, A Short History of the Kingdom of Ireland (New York, 1882); O'Kane Murray, PopuZar //isiory of the CatlMlic Chureh in the United Stales (New York, 1876); De Courcy, History of the Catholic Church in America^ ed. by J. G. She-A (New York, 1857); Bagenal, The American Irish (Boston, 1882); Maguire. The Irish in America (New York, 1868); Immigration into the United Slates, U. .S. Bureau of Sta- tistics, Monograph (Washington, 1903); Thebaud, Ireland, Past and Present (New York, 1901) ; Stephenson Gregg, Irish History for English Readers (New York, 1886); Kapp, Immi- gration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the State of New York (New York. 1870); Conyngham, The Irish Brigadeandits Campaigns (New York, 1867); Young, Tour in Ireland 0778-1779), reprint (London, 1892); Treacy, Old Catholic Maryland and its early Jesuit Missionaries (1889); O'DoNOGHUE, The Geographical Distribution of Irish Ability (Dublin. 1906); O'Rouhke, History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (Dublin, 1902) ; The Original Lists of Persons of Quality; emigrants; religious exiles; political rebels; serving men sold for a term of years; apprentices; children stolen; maidens pressed; and others who went from Great Britain to the American Plantations — 1600-1700, edited from manuscripts preserved etc. by John Camden Hotten (New York, 1874); .A.. M. Sullivan, New Ire- land (Philadelphia, 1878); Lester, The Glory and Shame of England (New York, 1866); O'Connor, The Parnell Movement (London, 1887); O'Neill D.\unt, Ireland and her Agitators (Dublin, 1867) ; Annalsof the Sisters of Mercy (New York, 1889); Spalding, The Religious Mission of the Irish People etc. (New York, 1S80); Hanna, The Scotch-Irish, or the Scot in North Britain, North Ireland and North America (New York, 1902); Abstract of the 13th Census {1900) and otherCensiM and Emigra- tion Reports (Washington) ; files of the Boston Pilot and other Irish and Catholic newspapers: American Irish Historical Society Publications (Boston, 189S-190&); American Catholic Historical flesearcAes (Philadelphia. 1884-1910); Cullen, The Story of the IrishinBostan (Boston, ISS9)\Caupbei.u History of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick (Philadelphia, 1892).
Peter Condon.
II. In Australia. — Nowhere in modern times has the Church made such substantial progress as in the United States of America and in the great island com- monwealth of Australasia. In both Irish immigration has been a large contributing factor of this develop- ment, and between both, notwithstanding the immense intervening distance, there is to be found in the early records a curious correlation of pioneer missionary effort. To the political and economic results of British rule in Ireland both these countries owe no little part of their present-day vigour and expansion. It was the declaration of American independence that stopped the transportation of British convicts across the .\t^ lantic, and forced the establishment at Botany Bay, in January, 1788, of the first penal settlement on the Australasian continent. Thither the religious persecu- tions in Ireland and the political disturbances there sent many unfortimate representatives of the race. Thousands of these prisoners, transported from Ire- land for political or religious offences, were exiled with- out any intimation of the duration of the sentences passed on them by drumhead courts-martial. Hence, under date of 12 November, 1796, there is record of Governor Hunter wTiting liack from the colony to the authorities of the Home Office in England that the " Irish Defenders " were threatening to resist all orders because of the indeterminate terms of their sentences, "as they may otherwise be kept longer than is ju.st in servitude". In May, 1802, tiovernor King also WTote praying the home government not to send any more Irishmen there and "as few as possible of those con-
