The Portland daily press., 1868-06-09
Miscellany.
The Irish Abroad.


The Aprilnumber of the Edinburgh Review
contains among other valuable articles
very long and interesting one on the Irish
people. A few extracts from it can but be of
general interest:
THE GREAT MEN OF IRELAND.
Nor can it be denied that no part of the
United Kingdom has sent forth men of great
err mark in our common history. 1t was Ire
land that gave the Duke of Wellington,
Marquis Wellesley, Lord CaStlereigh, and
Lord Palmerston to the State; it was Ire
land that gave Goldsmith, Moore, and Edge
worth to literature, Mulready and Maclise to
art, and has now given Tyndall to science; it
was Ireland that sent Burke and Sheridan,
Grattan and Plunket, She'll and O'Connell to
the House OF Commons; and at this moment
it is an Irishman who holds the Great Seal
of England, while another Irishman fills the
V1ce-regal throne OF India. We know not by
what peryerson of fact and reason Ireland
is to be supposed to repudiate any of these
glorious names, because they are not the
names of Celtic Irishmen. As well might
Scotland repudiate Burns, Adam Smith, and
Watt because they were not Highlanders
q The magnitude OF their genius raised these
men from an Irish origin to imperial services
and imperial fame.
THE ULSTER IRISH IN AMERICA,
The primary colonization of American be-
ing Anglo-Saxon, both IN the Northern and
Southern States, there was a secondary col
onization in the eighteenth century, consist
ing OF Scotch, lrisl and Welsh, who settled in
the middle States, and penetrated even to
the South; but this secondary stratum was
colonization of families and individuals, and
not OF organized communities under special
charters or patents from the home govern
eminent. The Irish portion of this emigra-
tion which poured into the middle and South
ern States at the rate of nearly $4,000 per
annum for twenty years in the early part of
the last century, belonged exclusively to IN
ster, and consisted OF those enterprising, Or
DERBY, and intelligent farmers and peasants
whom the Americans still distinguish by the
name of Scotch-Iri5h. The value of this for
eign element has been fully recognized by
American historians as the cause of HIGH
moral and religious tone in the middle and
Southern States, as well as in the cor
responding parts of the Valley of the Misss-
sippi, which had been co.onized from them.
But the Celtic Irish had no part whatever in
liking the early character of American insti-
tutions. 1t is to the Scotch-Irish immigra-
ton that the Republic owes some of it's most
distinguished celebrities in Church and State.
Francis Mackenzie, the founder of American
fresbyterianism, was native of the wild and
romantic county of Donegal Four Presi-
dents and one Vice President are of Ulster
extraction. General Andrew Jackson was
the son OF poor Ulster emigrant, who set
tied In North Carolina, and was "born some
where between Carriekfergus and the shores
OF the United States" James Monroe, James
Knox Polk, John G. Calhoun, and James
Buchanan Whose father was native of
County DonegaD were all of Ulster Profess
tant extraction.
THE CELTIC IRISH.
The immigration OF the Celtic Irish is COM
paratively modern, and may be regarded as
contributing to the tertiary stratum of Ameri-
can society.
Ihey are, in many respects, a peculiar ma
ton. They are usually most successful
whore the framework of society is Anglo
Saxon. Unlike the Americans, the English,
or the Scotch, they do guide their own des-
TIMES but stay in towns where stronger
race furnishes them with labor and food, and
builds up more complete civilization out of
the substantial fruits of the substantial fruits
OF their industry. They possess, no doubt,
qualities OF very serviceable kind, but these
qualities require the example and the power
at another race, more highly endowed, to
bring them to perfection and turn them 10
full account. They have strength, courage
and impusiveness, but they are not steady
and pertinacious, and labor only for time
and a limited object; unlike the Anglo-Saxon,
who possesses far more of the power of con-
tinuous and solitary labor, with a selfcon-
tainedness and an impassbility to external
and distracting excitements which you will
look for in vain in the mercurial Cet. The
Irish are deficient in that quiet energy,
that talent for accumulation, those indefinite
desires, which are the mainsprings of success
full colonization, and they are deficient, too,
in that faculty of selfgovernment without
which free institutions can neither flourish
or be permanently maintained. Thus, in a
new country, let them settle singly among a
mass of the native population where they
take the tone of society instead of giving it,
and are disciplined and guided by others
they are very successful colonists; but let
them herd together in masses-as they are
to be found in New York city-subject to
home influences, traditions and caprices, a
prey to their old improvident and disorderly
tendencies-they are prone to degenerate,
they become an element of danger to the
commonwealth, and they continne-at least
for generation-to be the traditional hewers
of wood and drawers of water. The Ameri-
cans are in the habit OF saying that the Irish
make bad nation, but that a generation
makes them excellent ingredients to nation.