The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1899-03-25
Was With Franklin and Chase
on a Canadian Mission.
ARCHBISHOP HUGHES OF NEW YORK
He Accompanied Thurlow Weed
on a European Embassy.

The Catholics of Ireland, barred from
their national forum, found their oppor-
tunity in resentful refusal to enlist for
service against the American revolu-
tionists, writes Margaret F. Sullivan in
the Catholic World. 1t was the COM
plete failure of the recruiting officers in
Ireland that compelled the king to seek
mercenaries on the continent. Here
again English testimony is not wanting
in freshness. Had not the poet Cowper
condemned Americans? Did not SAM
uel Johnson write against the right Of
remonstrance? Was it not that splendid
genius who affirmed, while calling the
American patriots robbers and pirates
Liberty is to the lowest rank of every
nation little more than the choice Of
working or starving?" An admiring
biographer OF General Burgoyne writes:
"The extravagant sums paid by the
English government in the shape OF levy
money and bounty was powerful in
centive to the avarice of the despotic
petty princes whose unscrupulous barter
OF their subjects created indignation
throughout Germany. Many of the men
were forcibly seized and sold to swell
the revenues of their sovereigns.'
Frederick the Great taxed those who
passed through his doninions like "cat-
tie exported for foreign shalnbles. :"
Catherine of Russia was requested by
the king to supply 10000 men at her
own terms. The king wrote to Lord
North: "The letter of the empress is a
clear refusal and not in so genteel a
manner as I should have thought might
have been expected of her. She has not
had the civility to answer me in her own
hand."-Political and Military Episodes
in the Latter Half OF the Eighteenth
Century: Derived from the Life and
Correspondence of the Right Hon. John
Burgoyne, General, Statesman, Drama
tist, by Edward Darlington de Fon-
blanque.
The English writer is plausibly Of
opinion that Frederick was less ami
mated by humanity than by chagrin that
England had raised the price of soldiers
for hire. On the other hand, Mr.. De
Fonblanque ought to be willing to con-
cede that the elector of Saxony was
more aesthetic than avaricious; that in
selling an entire regiment of dragons
for forty large blue and white metal
jars" he was less moved by greed for
gain than by taste for bric-a-brac
'As for Catherine, the king doubtless
did not know that sympathy with de-
mocracy had little place in her thoughts
when neglecting to send him her i'm
perial autograph. At that time Catherine
was engrossed with comparative phi
lology.-Science of Language, Max
Muller, vol. l., p. I42.
Having failed to procure recruits
among the Catholics in Ireland, the
crown tried to do so, but unsucccssfully,
in Canada. On the contrary, two regi-
ments OF Canadian Catholics aided the
patriots at the cost OF censure from the
ecclesiastical subordinates of the crown
in that province.
Chief among the irremovable barriers
was the address" of John Jay ito the
people Of Great Britain" in which he
assailed the religion OF the Canadians in
truculent terms. That deplorable error
on the part of an otherwise able and
admirable patriot placed English ascen-
dancy in Canada beyond the reach of
any influence within the means OF the
American patriots A descendant OF the
Huguenots, who had suffered SO cruelty
from bigotry in France, Mr.. Jay forgot
that no one in the new world ought to
be held responsible for old world intol-
erance, no matter in what avowed cause
practised Like the Puritans, who, fee
ing from religious oppression, were
eager for time to infict it on those
who differed from them in republic,
Mr. Jay even tried to secure for the
legislature OF New York legal authority
to deny religious liberty at any
time to any denomination. Washing
ton, Jefferson, Franklin and their en-
lightened associates, so far from sharing
Jays fatal prejudice, opposed it by pre-
cept and action. But there was one
more OF jays mind. In 1880 the envoy
of Spain, proceeding to the camp OF
Washington, died. The members Of the