IRISH
151
IRISH
land in those thirty years was inappreciable, the ap-
proximate figures of the native-born Irish Canadian
population between 1871 and 1901 was 142,307 +
117,822=260,129. This shows that what the Irish
element lost in Quebec and the Maritime Provinces
during the period named, it gained in Ontario and
the West. Owing to the strides which Canada is
making in development, the census of 1911 will un-
doubtedly show an increase in the Irish population
far greater than that of 1901.
The Irish Catholics in Canada, who now number about three-quarters of a million, are fully organized both socially and religiously. They have their
Province
1871
1901
British Columbia
?
?
100,643
62!,851
559,442
? 123,478
?
?
20,658
47,418
New Brunswick
83,384
54,710
624,3.32
Prince Edward Island...
21,992
114,842
North- West Territories. .
Unorganized Territory . .
18,797
2,588
846,414
988,721
churches, schools, convents, colleges, orphanages,
etc., many of them imposing-looking institutions.
They have their bishops, priests, and their teaching
and charity orders of both sexes. They have their
fraternal societies of all kinds. They have their
writers and their ably edited newspapers. They are
represented in every avenue of public life. In com-
merce and the industries they are contributing their
share to the wealth of the Canadian nation. Some
of the most eminent members of the legal and medi-
cal professions in Canaila, iluring the last fifty years,
have been, and are still, Irish Catholics; several of
them have been knighted for eminence in their re-
spective callings. The Irish have had their governors
of provinces, cabinet ministers, senators, members of
both the Federal and Provincial Parliaments, and
they are still well represented in the.se functions in
the government of the countrj^. Thomas d'.\rcy
McGee asserted forty years ago that, since 1792,
Lower Canada was never without an Irishman in its
legislative councils. This tradition is kept up not
merely in old Quebec, but in the sister provinces and
in the Federal Parliament at Ottawa. An Irish
Catholic is (1910) Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
and Deputy Governor-General of the Dominion.
Davin, The Irishman in Canada (London, 1877); 0'C.\lla- GHAN, Documentary History of the State of New York, X (Al- b:mv, 1858) ; O'Callaghan, The Irish Brigades in the Service of Fra'nee (New York. 1874); Maguibe, The Irish in America (London, 1877); Reports of the Canadian Archives (Ottawa, 1905) : MacMillan, The Early History of Prince Edward Island (Quebec. 1905); The Canada Year Book (Ottawa. 1908); Vie lie Madame d' Youvitle (Ville Marie, 1852) ; Ferland. Biographi- cal Notice of Joseph Octave Plessis, Bishop of Quebec {Quebec, 1864) ; TfcTD, Journal des visiles pastorales de Mgr Plessis (Que- bec. 1903): .\lexis, L'Enlise Catholique au Canada (Quebec. 1909); Uomce, History of the Calk. Church in Western Canada (Toronto. 1910); Laut. The Conquest of the Great Northwest (2 vols., Toronto, 1909). ^ j divine.
IV. In Great Britain. — England and Wales. — Mr. Joseph Cowen has called the Ireland of the sixth century "Christian Greece". Irish monks from lona repeated in England their work in .\lba. Irish soldiers helped Athelstan to victory in 937. Early in the eleventh centurv Irish merchants were trading with Bristol. There," in 1247, died O'Murray, Bishop of Kilmacduagh. In the same year Irish students resided at Oxford, where, said Newman, "there was from the earliest time even a street called 'Irishman's Street'". Later, a Bishop of Meath died at Oxford. A native of Dundalk, Fitz-Ilalph, was Chancellor of
Oxford in 1333. While the Gaelic-Irish followed the
fortunes of Wallace and of Bruce, the Xorman-Irish
fought for the Enghsh against Scotland, 1296-1314.
Thence for 400 years the Irish helped England in her
continental wars.
Up to the middle of the sixteenth century there was no Irish colony in Great Britain. Then Irish traders began to settle in London and Bristol. Leland, in 1545, wrote of Liverpool: "Irish marchants come much thither as to a good haven. . . . Good mar- chants at Lyrpole and moch Yrish yarn that Man- chester men do buy there". Irish music had also found favour in England. The Earl of Worcester, writ- ing, in 1602, to the Earl of Shrewsbury, said: "Irish tunes are this time most pleasing". Pistol's "CaU lino custore me" (Henry V, ,\ct IV, sc. 4) has been explained as Colleen oge astore (young girl, my treas- ure). From some dialect in the plays of this period, Kniglit thinks that the costermongers were largely Irish. Among the martyrs of Elizabeth's reign were some Irish-born. James I severely penalized in Ire- land his mother's religion. A Catholic landowner was prohibited from appointing a guardian for his heir, who, through the Court of Wanls, was brought up by Protestant noblemen. Early in liis reign there were 300 of such children in the Tower of London, and at the Lambeth schools. After the .-Vet of Settlement two-thirds of the fertile land passed into Protestant hands. In 1651 Hewson, Governor of Dublin, re- ported that, "in Dublin, which formerly swarmed with Papists, he knew there now but one, a surgeon and a sensible man ". Referring to 1699, Lord Clare (speech on the Union) declared: "So that the whole of your island has been confiscated, with the exception of the estates of five or six families." — "Such of the Roman Catholic gentry as had retained their estates were stripped of all political and many civic rights, and left virtually at the mercy of a Protestant enemy " (Bryce). To provide for the education of emigrating sons consequent upon this state of things, Irish col- leges were founded in several parts of the Continent. Thence they joined the armies and political life of the nations in which they were educated, some reaching high positions as officers and statesmen. Thus the idea of emigration was created.
In Charles I's reign ambassadors of foreign powers only were allowed in England to have Catholic chap- els. It was in this way that around the Sardinian Chapel in Lincoln's Inn Fields gathered the first con- siderable Irish colony in London. By 1666, the year of the great fire, a considerable importation of cattle from Ireland to England was going on. To relieve the distress in London a gift of 15,000 bullocks was sent over from Ireland. Ludovic Barry, the first Irish dramatist to write in English, Sir James Ware, the antiquarian, MacFirbis, the la.st of the Irish annal- ists, Denham, Roscommon, and Flecknoe, poets, Cherry, actor and poet, Artliur Murphy, lawyer, dram- atist, "and editor, and Barry, the painter, were Cath- olics among the many Irishmen, eminent in science, art, and literature, living in England during the eigh- teenth century. The comparative fewness of Cath- olics among the.se is explained by the fact that the penal laws made learning a crime. "The avowed pol- icy of the [English] Cabinet was to discourage the teaching of the Irish 'better orders' in Ireland. . . . ■They passed out of the country's ken and became aliens" (Bridges). The difficulty of recruiting suffi- cient men for the British .\rmy and Na\-y; the invest- ment abroad of money by Irish Catholics (it being illegal to invest it in Irish land), money which Protes- tant landowners could have profitably used, the suc- cess of the American War of Independence, and pos- sibly ideas of liberty and toleration caught from the French Revolution made for some relaxation of the penal code. The first Relief Bill came to England in 1778 when there were about 60,000 Catholics there, of
