The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1879-11-20
Are the Romanized Irish a Menace
so to the United States?
MIR. FROUDE'S CASSANDRA SHREK
"The Question Will Have To Be Fought 0ul
with Bullets Instead Of Ballots"
HAS PROTEsTANTISM FAILED?

The striking article in the present number of the
NorA American Repeo is by Mr.. James Anthony
Froude, and is entitled "Romanism and the Irish
Race in the United States" We will not attempt to
crticise this article but merely give such extracts
from it as will inform readers of its hat-footed
assertions and general Tone The present article is
only the first insalment of this essay which will be
continued in the nexs number.
Mr. Froude begins his paper in n somewhat poetic
vein. 1.-THE forces which produce the most remark
able effects in this world" he remarks, work I'M
and unthought Of till the time comes for their
operation manifest ITSELF He refers to the fields
that lie bare and barren while the seed is swelling in
the SOIL and the forest trees that stand naked while
the sap is rising in the trunk. "The phenomena OF
human life." he argues, care the result OF causes
similarly and secretly active"
1.-THE WOMAN OF THE SEVEN HILLS"
America is the land of wonders. From 100000
Europeans thrown into vast virgin continent.
with the arts and sciences. the accumulated knowl-
edge and experience of all autecedent time may
naturally look for surprises. There, unconstrained
by traditions and superstitions ideas organ
ize themselves, and that under such conditions
phenomena should rise which had never been seen
before is no more than what reason would have
expected. What would could have
pected is that in America OF all countries a creed
which the Old World century ago universally
supposed to be worn out and done with. should
have been precisely the one which has taken root
there most firmly and is growing with the most
amazing rapidtty. A prophet, who had foretold at
the time Of the Declaration of Independence that
within a century the Roman Catholics would be the
largest single religious community in the United
States, would have deserved place in lunatic
asylum, SO absurd such an anticipation would have
seemed. MormJnism might have appeared unlikely,
socialism might have appeared unlikely; it would
have been distressing to expect resurrection of
belief in magic under the contemplate aspect OF
Spiritualism. Yet no one who understood
the erratc capabilities of mans nature would
have said that either of these extravagances
was entirely impossible That in New York and
New England, the chosen home of Calvanism and
Puritanism, the Woman Of the Seven Hills should
set up her standard and that American citizens
would be gathered round it in millions. would
have seemed an hypothesis wild that every man
or'woman with ordinary sense would have agreed
that it could not be. Yet this extraordinary fact has
literally come to pass, and the dream of the ultra
montanes that the Pope will soon exercise as COM
plete authority in the United States Gregory
VII. ever exercised in Europe is scarcely more pre-
posterous impossible of realization than the
OF things which actually exists would have seemed
to the grandfathers of the present generation.
FACTS AND FIGURES
Mr.. Froude then proceeds to give the statistics on
the subject
In 1855 there was one Roman Catholic bishop in
the United States with fifty priests and twelve
churches. The Roman Catholic population was
French or Spanish They had neither school. col
lege, convent monastery. They were declining
in numbers were being absorbed in the preponder
ating Auglo-Saxon element. In 1879 the number of
Catholics is $500 900. They have GO bishops $3.50
priests, $3.50 churches, 500 converts TOO colleges
scmina ries aud academies and nearly 1000 parish
increase
and pastors having more than doubled in the last
twenty years The chief explanation is the immi.
grafton of Irish peasantry, which began a large
scale in 1851. The Irish who were in America be-
fore the potato famine were chiefly Presby terians
from the north. part OF the Protestant colony
which had been planted by Cromwell. They were
worth their weight gold to Ireland for it for
Irelands interest to become Protestant country.
But they were too sturdy and independent to please
the bishops and landowners of the Established
Church. They were prosecuted away and went to
New England, where they paid their debt, with in
terest, TO the old country at Lexington and Bunker
Hill.
Folly and msgovernment sent the Irish Presbyte-
rians to America. The famine sent the Celtic peas
antry thither in ten times larger numbers. They,
too, when they went. supposed that they had to
thank England for their Punishment So scan
dalously had Ireland been treated that the people
not unnaturally set down whatever they suffered at
Englands door. That they would carry with them
the old hostility to England. their Protestant
fellow countrymen had done, probable enough.
That their religion would survive the change was
expected by no one Their own clergy dreaded the
effect upon them of contact with American liberty.
Absorbing RAGGED" PAT.
The Americans themselves thought that they
could absorb and assimilae these ignorant millions
of ragged wreches as easily as shoal of sprats are
swallowed and digesed by a whale. ''How long
man ut New York. "to make Irishman into an
American "How longY he said; "h'm! well,
about half hour" This answer. unfortunately,
was more epigrammatic than true He went on to
explain that they would be scattered a vast
tent country, where their priests could not follow
them; a man could not remain Roman Catholic to
any purpose without priest, sacrament or chapel. If
the parents continued, for their own lifetime, to
pray to the Virgin and the saints, the American
children.
ACTIVITY CATHOLICISM.
In this as in some other points the fine confidence
of the Americans in the effect of their institutions
has been disappointed. The Irish peasant has sui.
fered long his religion that 1T is in the gran
ules of his blood Roman Catholicism, which grew
sick and stagnant in power and prosperity, has in
Ireland been braced into vigor by calamity. Like
the Psychological monster has been in contact with
1t. With an energy infinitely creditabe to them,
when they. reached the New World the Irish.
clergy and people themselves to meet
their new circumstances. There money in
plenty. The old sixpence-a-day wages of Ireland
turned into many shillings and out of the
shings the Irish boys aud girls parted cheerfully
with as many were needed for II faith which was
second nature to them thousands. perhaps tens
the enormous continent, but the Church soon over
took its straying sheep. 1t watched over their
marrages-the Irish in America marry wholly
among themselves and within their creed
it kept its hold the children and furnished
them with antidotes to correct the poison
the faith. relatively large, have wholly
ceased, and after thirty years the Roman Catholic
Union; its members are the most perfectly organ
lied and the most completely obedent to their spir
itual chiefs. The immigration from Ireland has
almost ceased. 1t has been checked In part by the
rise OF wages at home other causes must be at work
also which are not understood; for the population
OF the island once so extremely prolific, does not
tend any more to an increase at home, and
either children are no longer born there
in the proportion, or the drift
is directed into the English towns and
colonies, TO carry on the propagandism elsewhere.
But the Irish in America are now independent of
additions from without There already six mill
ions OF them. They preserve the abstinence from
sexual vice which distinguishes them honorably
Mt home. and this is favorable to large families IL
they go on growing they have grown for tho last
twenty years there will be twelve millions the end
of the century.
wEIoHTY ELEMENT.
The irish. whom Dean swift regarded merely as
hewprs OF wood and drawers OF water are now,
says Mr.. Froude, virtually masters of their own
country they turn the elections in the great Engs
citiqs; they weighty element in the English
colonies; while in the New World they have
banded into a nation, separate in religion, little
likely merge in the old race of republican Ameri
cans as tire parent stock ut home Is likely to assimi
late with the British. though grated i'll upon the
American constitution, bear its own fruit there
for good or evil"
UxcuNGESfAL wfTH REpUBLfcANrsM
The Irish nationality" continues Mr.. Froude
sslika the LnMiah. hnnid with its religion. and