The Irish standard., 1897-01-23
RSI FAMILIES FRAUDS.
:nglish Jails J.. Supplied Many Of
the Upper Crust with
- Ancestors.
.-4-- -
Convicts Shipped Over Here in
Large Numbers to Create
Our SnObS.
Blue=BIO0ded BoStOnians Have
Little to Boast of from
the Record.

When one is the last twig on the fam.
lily tree he is apt to feel so elevated as
never to dream that the trunk from
which he idirectly sprang sends its roots
down deep into some miry bog. He car.
ries his head so high that he puzzles
himself over the source Of his elation
and can account for it only by an appeal
to. his ancestry The aspirations after
ancestry are the promptings of the de-
sire of Immortality. When one is sure
of the future he is eager to be equally
sure of the past. Wrapped In the over
coat of prosperity, he turns to the ward
robe of family history for the ancestral
"eoat of arms" never suspecting that his
grandfather might have had coat with
out arms, and moreover had never
"rolled up his sleeves because he never
had "shirt to his back says writer
in the Providence Visitor.
/ Reflections of this nature rise natur-
ally as one scans the escutcheons bla-
zoned on the equipages of men whose
turnout" in youth was push CART OF
peddlers wagon. Sarcastic Writers
turn up their noses of this harn .in-
sanity of the nouveaux riches. But even
the "best" families, our aristocracy,
might not escape their jeers if the truth
were to be told about the ancestors OF
our. noblest colonists. Indeed nowhere
should the truth OF Tennyson's radical
lines be more welcome than here, for the
"coronets' and "noble-blood" are rare
ingredients in the farrago out OF which
the American people has been made.
"Howe'er it be, it seems to me,
'Tis only noble to be good;
Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood -
An article in the last number of the
American Historical Review on the
British Convicts Shipped to American
Colonies has hitherto escaped much
notice. 1t is certainly worthy of notice.
for, written as the result of long investi-
cations, there is nothing fippant about
it; but the sarcasm of the facts it sets
forth is unmistakable. Mr.. Butler in
introducing his subject quotes DR.. John
sons description of Americans as a
"race of 'convicts who ought to be con-
tent with anything we may allow them
short of hanging" Another saying Of
DR.. Ferguson, an English celebrity, who,
after q comment on the refined beauty
of American women, remarked that it
was "easily accounted for, for the super
abundance of public women, who are al
ways rather good looking, were sent to
America in early times" furnishes
continuation Of the same apparently ILL
natured criticism.
Is there any truth to it? If one de-
pended on Bancroft and the Older histor-
ians, he should answer no. Bancroft,
indeed, told Mr.. Butler once that he had
been chary of saying much on the sub
iect. and Bancroft and his school wrote
history for the glorifcation of the United
States, He and they allowed that polit-
ical offenders were sent to the colonies.
They refused to admit that Botany Bay
became penal settlement only after the
close of the American war In 1887.
So OF course there We're political Offend
eers transported to the sundry
Scots" who were royalists sent out by
Cromwell to his Roundhead brothers in
New England, and some even to Vir-
ginia. Sundry Roundheads also were
sent to royalist Virginia in the successful
DAYS of King Charles II. Maryland re-
ceiyed also some of those who rallied
to the forlorn cause of the Old Pre-
tender in 1716. But the bulk: of those
"transported''-th word was first used
in 1856 under the Protector-were not
political offenders, but ordinary felons.
and felons of the worst stripe. They
were brought to this country and sold
into slavery, sometimes for life and
sometimes for a number Of years. Alto
gether there must have been thousands
of them, and 1t is computed that fully
20, 600 went to Maryland alone.
One Of the diligent students of John
Hopkins University has written broch-
ure on the white servitude in Virginia,
but the facts for a. complete history Of
this phase Of colonial life are not yet
.collated. In. spite Of the. protest Of
preachers and Of companies, the disso-
lutte and the immoral were sent in
.droyes, and not without good result ID
q. virginia preache In 1909 dsslared 81
Iii1iI1RI