The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1900-04-28


to deathleas deeds of glory. But Ine,
caught no inspiration from such scene
| and never felt a thrill or glow of Hell
lenic fire. and never ceased to be augh
but Orientals. or children or the Pro
, phet They wereSTurks, and not Greeks
and so with the descendants of th'
WilIiamites and Cromwellianites. The!
knew not, needed not, cared not fo
glory of ancient Ireland, and they neve
realized the innate greatness of th'
race whom they crucified for full 20
wears. An impossible gulf parted the
II oppressor and the oppressed. natlo1
of martyrs on the one side, clinglng
with the heroism of the first Christian;
to the ideals of their glorious past; anC
on the other the tyrant and his min
ions using the might of England tC
crush. to plunder and to degrade. The
worlds annals present no greater con
trast: and let us hope that the world
shall never present such another.
We Irish are a proud race. Somehow
in physique and bone and muscle we
excel the world. ThS dauntless valol
of the Irish soldier and the genius OF
the Irish captain have been proved
on a thousand battlefieldss At Fonte-
noy brigade of Irish eXiles fell upon
a triumphant English army and smote
it hip and thigh, and trampled it in the
! dust In the American civil war an
other Irish brigade led by Meagher
charged the heights of fredericksburg,
and the glorious valor of the achieve
ment will be renowned in history for
! ever. Cremona. Families and Magenta
saw Irish eXiles winning the admira-
! ton of the world.
THE IRELAND OF THE PAST.
But the glory of the Irish race is not
! its achievements in war, but in its
wondTous achievements in the darkest
days of Europe. Here is a picture of
Ireland in the seventeenth and eight
eenth centuries on the one side. and
on the other picture of ancient Ire
land prior to the Norman period. I'm
til you appreciate ancient Ireland, you
cannot understand modern Ireland. In
the ancient world three civilizations
shone out resplendent-the Jewish, the
Greek and the Irish. l omit that of
Rome for breVity, and because its art,
its literature and its civilization were
reflection of that of Greece. In art,
in poetry, in architecture and in liter
ature the Greeks surpassed the Irish;
but in music, in melody, in oratOry,
in Jurisprudence and in refining social
influences Ireland not only surpassed
Greece, but all other nations Of the
pagan world. A great Irish warrior in
pagan days, in bidding farewell and
giving advice to his grandson, used
these words: ''MacLuggah, let three
fourths of thy gentleness be shown to
women and children and to men of
art Such a sentence has no parallel
in the literature of the whole pagan
world outside of Ireland, and it reveals
the existence of social conditions no
where else existing in the world prior
to Christianity. Then st. Patrick came
and took this whole people into the
fold of Christ. Ireland became i'm
mediately the island of saints and
scholars. The Frank. the Goth. the
Hun and the Vandal had swept the
last vestige of Roman civilization
away, and art, learning and refinement
seemed to have perished utterly on the
European continent. But all. this time
in Ireland the lamp of learning was
burning more brilliantly than ever, and
the youth Of France, of Spain, Of
Italy of Germany and Of England has
tened to Ireland as to the fountain of
all learning, the art and the civiliza-
tiOn then existing in the world. They
were received with the open hospitality
of the Irish, educated free of all cost
and sent back TO spread the fame and
the glory of Ireland. Armies of Irish
schoolmasters, priests and missionaries
went forth from the motherland to res
and the Hun from barbarism, igno-
rance and unbelief.
1t was Irish genius and Irish zeal
and Irish talent that paved the way for
the civilization of the modern world.
Iona, LindisfaTne and Melrose were
Irish schools. founded by Irish monks,
and the schools and the schooImasters
of Anglo-SaXon England We're almost
exclusively Irish. The Jurisprudence
which the good King Stephen tried to
establish was the inspiration of an
cient Irish laws. Indeed, the Irish race
was the prime factor in dispelling the
awful night of darkness and ignorance
which followed in the wake Of the tri-
umphant Goth. Hun and VandaI, and
this [ consider a more glorious achieve
ment than the conquest of an empire
or the world by the sword.
ALIENS IN CONTROL.
The horde of adventures that Will
liam and Cromwell planted in Ireland
to rule the Irish people and to plunder
the fruits Of their sweat and toll knew
nothing of the glorious past of the
Irish race. They cared less. The Irish
clung to the religion ST. Patrick plant
ed with a passionate devotion unparal-
leled in history That religion was
part Of their glorious past. 1t was the
consolation Of their lives and the hope
of their existence The Williamites
stole their churches and their schools,
and tried to make the Irish people
abandon the religion of st. Patrick for
the gospel Of Martin Luther, John Knox
and Elizabeth. The preachers of the
new creed, the creed Of the Oppressor,
the tyrant and the knave. were housed
and fed and clothed and enriched at
the expense of the people Of a nation
that hated them as false prophets and
teachers of a false creed. But the
tribute money that kept this frightful
incubus of an alien church alive was
wrung from the Irish people through
the might Of the tyrant's sword. The
Irish priest and the Irish teacher had
a price set upon his head, and the
Irish Catholic had to worship his God
in caves, in woods and on the noun
tain tops at the peril of his life, while
the descendants of Dutch and English
Doors whom Cromwell and William
made the lords of Ireland ranted and
preached and prayed in the grand and
aolemnr temples which the piety Of the
ancient. Irish built to the living God.
A parliament Of this caste Of scoun-
drels sat in Dublin framing laws and
providing ways and means for the
plunder and degradation of nation
An executive, a judiciary and police
system were contrived, which for dia-
bolical infamy never have had a paral-
lei. The martyrdom Of the early
Christians by Roman tyrants pales be-
fore the martyrdom which the Irish
endured at the hands of the scoundrels
to whose government England handed
over the Irish nation. Call these scoun-
drels aristocrats, oligarchists, Hes
slams, glo-SaXons-wha you will,
but do not call them Irish, for they
were alien in blood, in creed, in senti-
ment, in heart, in thought and mind to
anything and everything Irish The
ruling caste remained entirely dis