The Sun.
London, England, 1866-03-28 00:00:00

D'Arcy M' Gee on the Irish.

The Times quotes a letter addressed by Thomas
D'Arcy M'Gee, Esq., to an American paper, in
which the character of the Irish race race in
America is discussed at considerable length. If
any one in this country wonders why American
citizens of Irish extraction should be thinking of a
raid upon Canada instead of minding their own
affairs, Mr. M'Gee will furnish a solution of the
enigma. These Irish in America are Americans
only in name. They are naturalised citizens, it is
true, and they owe allegiance to the American Go-
vernment, but they have taken no real root in the
country, nor amalgamated with the rest of its
people. Between them and Americans there is no
kind of affinity. The Irish are unpopular in Ame-
rica; in fact, scarcely more popular than the Eng-
lish. They form a separate, almost an alien, class,
and have fallen either by accident or propensity into
pursuits little calculated to improve their condition.
Full 75 per cent., says Mr. M'Gee, of Irish immi-
grants remain to swell the population of great towns
and seaports, instead of settling to agricultural in-
dustry in the rural districts. " Never, in the
world's history, were a purely agricultural popula-
tion so suddenly and unpreparedly converted into
mere town labourers. They did not, indeed, ex-
change agriculture for artificers' pursuits, for you
cannot well call mere loading and unloading ships,
or porterage, or digging drains, or domestic ser-
vice, works of art. But the hundreds of thou-
sands of this class who were peasants in Ireland
in spring, and town labourers in America ,
the same summer, threw up to the surface by the'
natural law of their numbers a small fry of dema-
gogues and overseers (or bosses') whose interest it
never was that they should look to dock and suburb
labour only as a temporary condition, but to the ac-
quisition and ownership of land as their ultimate
object. Hence this strangely contradictory result,
that a people who hunkered and thirsted for land in
Ireland, who struggled for conacre and cabin even to
the shedding of blood—that this same people, when
they reached a new world, where a day's wages saved
would purchase an acre of wild land in fee, wilfully
concurred, under the lead of bad advisers, to sink
into the condition of a miserable town tenantry
to whose moral squalor even European seaports can
hardly present a parallel." Such is the picture given
of that class of American citizens from which
Feniansm obtains its recruits, and the conclusion is
obvious that these emigrants become Fenians pre-
cisely because they have not become Americans.
They have forsaken one country without adopting
another. They have landed in America without as-
similating themselves to the people of the United
States, and as they have acquired no new nationality,
they cherish vague and distempered dreams of the
old one. " This very Fenian organisation in the
United States, what," asks Mr. M'Gee, " does it
really prove but that the Irish are still an
alien population, camped, but not settled, in Ame-
rica, with foreign hopes and aspirations, neither
shared in nor respected by the people among whom
they live ? If their new country was their true
country, would they find time and money to spare
in the construction of imaginary Republics beyond
seas? If their leaders were rulers at Washington,
would they be playing at Governments, think you,
in Moffatt's pill-box ?" No doubt these questions
could be promptly answered by those to whom they
are addressed, but they give us an easy clue to the
origin of the phenomenon in prospect. In America,
the Irish of recent immigrations are a distinct and
almost a foreign class, imbued with revolutionary
tendencies, under no retraint from new connections
or obligations, and subjected to influences which,
with the natural impulsiveness of their race, they
are quick to obey. The rank and file of Fenianism,
with all its follies, can be thus pretty well accounted
for.

The Charge of Felony Against a Child.

REDDITCH, March 24.

After the ordinary business of the weekly petty
sessions here on Monday afternoon, the magistrates,
Messrs. H. Millman (chairman), E. Holyoake, W.
Tabberer, W. Smith, J. Smith, and J. Brown, pro-
ceeded to hear the case of Emily Ballard, aged 10
years, charged by the Rev. G. It. Gray, vicar of
Inkberrow, Worcestershire, with stealing a penny
from a schoolfellow, named Sarah Jane Gough. The
case excited a great deal of feeling, and the court
was crowded to excess by people who gave vent to
their feelings in such an open manner as to call for
a threat by the chairman thatif persisted inhe would
have the court cleared and the case heard in private.
Mr. J. Smith, solicitor, attended on behalf of the
prosecutor, the Rev. G. R. Gray ; and Mr. Sim-
mons for the prisoner.

Mr. Gray was present, but did not sit on the
Bench, as at the former examination.
Mr. Simmons applied for an adjournment in con-
sequence of the absence of Mr. Motteram, of the
Oxford Circuit, who was to conduct the defence;
but the magistrates refused the application.
Mr. Smith then stated the charge. The prisoner
was a scholar at the Inkberrow parish school, and
about three weeks ago she stole a knife.
The magistrates, after some discussion, requested
Mr. Smith to confine himself to the charge before
them—viz., that of stealing a penny.
Mr. Smith proceeded to say that the Rev. Mr.
Gray had established a money club in his parish,
to which the children were to subscribe id. per
week. On Sunday, March 11, while at church the
prisoner took a penny from the pocket of Sarah
Jane Gough, who missed it when she was about to
pay her club-money. The prisoner was charged by
the schoolmistress with the theft, which she at first
denied, but afterwards gave up the money. Mr.
Smith went on to charge the girl with using obscene
language and with disgusting conduct, and said that
Mr. Gray, as an act of justice to the other school
children, and out of Christian charity to the girl
herself, had decided upon having Ballard charged
before the magistrates. He complained of Mr. Gray
having been " badgered" in the newspapers, and
said a great deal of factitious importance had been
imported into the case. He then called
John Gough, father of Sarah Jane Gough, who
deposed that he is a labourer at Inkberrow, and that
on Sunday, the 11th inst., he gave his daughter 3d.
to pay her club-money with. After church she
complained that Emily Ballard had taken money
out of her pocket in church. On cross-examination
the witness admitted that he had had 14 days' im-
prisonment for something ; it was not poaching.
Sarah Jane Gough, aged 10 years, deposed that
when at church she took her money out of her pocket
to see if it was all right. Did not know whether
Ballard saw her. Ballard was next to her on her
right hand. When standing up to sing she felt a
hand in her pocket, which was on Ballard's side, and
afterwards she missed a penny and a halfpenny.
She charged Ballard with taking it, but she denied
it. Afterwards Ballard gave her a halfpenny back.
She told the schoolmistress, Mrs. Davies, who, after
church, said to Ballard that if she did not give up
the money she would tell Mrs. Gray. Ballard then
gave up the penny. _ _

A girl named Emily Winter, aged 12 years, a
schoolfellow of Gough, was next called, but her re-
plies to questions put by the Bench as to the nature
of an oath, &c., were not satisfactory, but she was
not sworn.

Mrs. Davies deposed that she was in charge of
the children at Inkberrow Church, and that while
at church on the 11th she saw Ballard put her hand
into Gough's pocket and take out a penny, which
she put in her mouth. Witness shook her head at

her, on which she put the coin into her pocket.
Subsequently she charged Gough with taking the
money, which she denied, but produced a penny,
which she said was for the club, and that she would